re: Southern hero Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson crossed over the river 154 years ago today

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what the actual frick are you babbling about

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Forget it Jake. It's Alabama.

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You are so full of shite. How many have you read?

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One of us has read a plethora of first hand accounts. One of us has not.

I spent an entire summer, 3-4 hours a day in the LSU archives reading up on this stuff. Hundreds of microfilms. Diaries. Memoirs.

And that's not including the vast amount I've read on my own time elsewhere

I'd say between 200-300 accounts elsewhere in addition to the LSU archives

How about you?

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You can start reading from the day you were born until the day you die and not cover a tenth of their stories.

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You can say this about any topic. Doesn't mean one can't have more knowledge on the subject than someone else.

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A vast, vast majority of slaves couldn't even read, much less write. How are you reading their accounts?

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Many of them had their accounts written down by freed people of color. There was a push after the war to get slaves to tell their stories. And many did.

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What you are trying to do is just shameful. Widespread abuse didn't happen? Are you serious?

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Are you trying to tell me that people woke up day in and day out with the sole goal of beating and abusing their slaves? Because that is false. What good is a slave who is starved so bad they can't work? Or beaten to where they can't work? It's counterintuitive. You don't destroy your tools just for the shits n gigs.

Was there abuse? Absolutely. We're they treated poorly? Yes. But to act like slave owners got up each day with the sole purpose of beating their slave is just plain wrong.

If what you say is correct, then your family fought because they elected legislators/governors with slaves or a slavery interest and then supported those men when they decided to revolt over fear of losing those slaves. No one is calling your family, or similar people, evil. The common man probably did just think they were defending their homes from invasion. But it was an invasion to put down a treasonous, unjust rebellion that actually began with the seizure of United States property by military force and if successful would likely have had disastrous repercussions for both the Union and Confederacy.

And yes, the Union was very magnanamus in victory. They viewed the Confederacy as a rebellious child they'd gotten back into the fold. Forgiveness doesn't validate the justness of the original rebellion. Also the Union army wasn't just murdering random people any more than the Confederates did on their couple of trips North.

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Show me where secession was considered unconstitutional prior to 1861. Show me exactly where secession was against the law prior to 1861.

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Show me where it said states could secede if they wanted. See how that works? The Constitution says very little explicitly, almost all of our Constitutional Law is interpretation or extrapolation. The argument is it was implicitly unconstitutional because the Constitution, rather than just being a document for the states as 22 separate sovereigns, was a document that acted directly on the people and the states had no right to dissolve it. A lot of the rationale was also based on differences in language and intent between the Articles and Constitution, the Articles were clearly just a confederation of states who could pretty much still do what they wanted, and the Constitution was clearly not that, in large part because of all the problems the Articles caused.

In all likelihood, if I were alive in 1860 and from Louisiana I would've fought for the Confederacy too and been all Huzzah about the right to secede, But it doesn't change the fact that looking back with hindsight and looking at the Confederacy as making the right decision and the overall outcome as unfortunate is crazy to me

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The argument is it was implicitly unconstitutional because the Constitution, rather than just being a document for the states as 22 separate sovereigns, was a document that acted directly on the people and the states had no right to dissolve it

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I'm no expert on Constitutional law, but it seems to me that you could make a pretty good argument that the seceding states weren't dissolving the Constitution, but just removing themselves from it, which wasn't explicitly forbidden. They never signed anything agreeing that they had to live under the laws set forth in the Constitution in perpetuity.

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In all likelihood, if I were alive in 1860 and from Louisiana I would've fought for the Confederacy too and been all Huzzah about the right to secede, But it doesn't change the fact that looking back with hindsight and looking at the Confederacy as making the right decision and the overall outcome as unfortunate is crazy to me

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I'm with you here.

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I'm no expert on Constitutional law, but it seems to me that you could make a pretty good argument that the seceding states weren't dissolving the Constitution, but just removing themselves from it, which wasn't explicitly forbidden. They never signed anything agreeing that they had to live under the laws set forth in the Constitution in perpetuity.

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But then the counter is if everyone has the right to leave whenever they want then it's essentially worthless as a governing document, it's more like the guidelines to a treaty. Which is why they wrote the Constitution in the first place because that's what the Articles were and they were a disaster. But there is certainly an argument you're right. There's an argument for virtually everything within the Constitution; and that's by design. I mean judicial review isn't even explicitly in the Constitution. The 2nd amendment references the right to bear arms, but in the context of a militia.

I guess I kind of think that's semantics, because the South didn't really need or I think really care about a "legal" basis to secede. The whole Thomas Jefferson "If a government is unjust you have the duty to change it" mantra(paraphrasing.) Which I agree with btw, I just don't think the Federal government was being unjust. That language/mindset should be reserved for true tyranny and oppression, not a democratically, Constituionally elected president maybe taking away your slaves down the line. Lincoln was fairly elected and had not done anything to abuse his power when the Southern States decided to secede and seize US property by force.

I do not understand your comment about La giving up and not fighting. Have you heard about Port Hudson? Do yo know that the Federals never conquered most of La? Have you heard of Mansfield? You know the battle where 8000 Confederates defeated a Union Army of 30000 backed up by the Union Navy? That same Union army retreated in disgrace back to New Orleans to never cross the river again? Please do some study on the war before you make statements not backed by facts.

Once they ratified it they were in. It has no power at all if as soon as you disagree with the majority you can opt out. The tariffs that were passed hurt notherners as well, particularly those in New England importing wool. But all the legislators in the country considered it, weighed their options, and a majority decided it was for the benefit of the country as a whole and so it passed. Whether they were right or not is an economic question, but politically that's how the whole thing was supposed to work. Unequivocally the founders specifically gave the Feds the power over tariffs because they envisioned the country functioning as one large economic unit.

I mean Lincoln provoked the war in the sense that he didn't just let the South secede. Why should he have surrendered Fort Sumter? It was built with Federal funds not state funds. And the issues at hand...using issues is a bit of misnomer. Sure other things were talked about some, but you can look at the quotes by southern legislators I posted earlier. They were explicit, the issue was slavery. They weren't being treated unfairly as a whole, but they had tied their entire way of life to slavery and they were worried it would be taken away. You're right about the north though, which makes what they did even worse. The North and Lincoln probably weren't going to abolish slavery, but they weren't going to let the country fall apart.

I assume everyone who wishes the Confederacy would've won has essentially no American love or loyalty right? Bc if they had succeeded the country would not exist. Once they successfully seceded, that potential tool to blackmail the gov't by the remaining states, and by the new states in the Confederacy to their new gov't, would've made any sort of unified national government toothless. Then what's stop cities and regions from breaking off from states? We'd be modern day Europe in North America, a collection of principalities and minor states with no sway

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A confederate hero.
Not a southern hero.