Remembering the Confederacy Too Fondly [View all]

[CajunBlazer]

With all of the recent discussion about the confederate flag and the arguments used by some flag supporters, recalled a post that I made in March a local sports site. After someone veered off topic during a sports discussion to complain about attacks on on his "Southern heritage", complaining how the South was mistreated after the Civil War, and comparing the leaders of the Confederacy to the patriots who founded our great country. (Yep, people with those views still exist.) I normally would have posted something like "Let's stay on topic, but he stuck a nerve. This was my reply which I also posted on my blog.

Lincoln's plans to rehabilitate the South were far gentler and kinder than "Radical Republicans" who took over the party after Lincoln's death. Most historians believe that if Lincoln had lived he would have had political power the keep the Radical Republicans at bay, but his predecessor Andrew Johnson obviously did not. Johnson did his best to fight them off in Congress, but he was politically weak. Eventually the radicals impeached him in the House of Representatives and he was nearly convicted by the Senate. There is no way that would have happened to Lincoln.

With a weak President Johnson in the White House and later with their own man, Ulysses S. Grant, in the Oval Office, the Radical Republicans ran roughshod over the South for several years. They also ensured that the Democratic Party would ruled in the South for many decades to come.

On another issue, I have always had a problem with Southerns who equate the Civil War with the American Revolution. Unlike the colonists who had no representation in the British Royal Court or the English Parliament which imposed on them unpopular and unjust taxes and laws, the Southern states were properly represented in a functioning democracy.

Had they been able to continue to have their way through the elective and legislative process, as they did for a long time, the Southern states would have never considered succeeding from the Union. It was only when they realized that the popular vote was going against them, especially with the election of Lincoln, did they decide to go their own way.

How long would any democratic country survive if anytime a portion of the population doesn't like how the rest of the country is voting they decide to break away and form their own county? If that were allowed, democracies would be the most unstable government systems known to man.

Had the Confederacy had been successful in breaking away, instead of one great nation we would have had two lesser countries with, at least for many years, diametrically opposed political philosophies.

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