re: Reddit wants to know why southerners don't feel guilty about the Civil War

If only Jackson hadn’t been shot at Chancellorsville, he would have taken the high ground at Gettysburg.

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Only 5% owned them at the time.

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And the first slave owners were black.

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It was done all wrong, only Radical Abolitionists wanted the end we got, which doomed us all. Slavery was going to end soon anyway.

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They don’t have the intellect to grasp this.

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I can’t understand it. Admittedly, we didn’t spend much time on the topic in school but even if there were non slavery issues leading to the war (I’ve never heard any that were entirely non slave related) y’all surely recognize that was a major catalyst.

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People trying to ignore slavery as the main factor in the Civil War are as dumb as the Reddit posters in OP.

It's just the other side of the same idiocy.

That doesn't mean people today should feel guilt for it.

I could believe that 1/3 the population of southerners were slaves or better said indentured workers as there was a large amount of people who were share cropping in rural areas and servants in the cities. The thing is they were white as well

Yeah let me take my ggg-grandfathers sword he carried during the war to a local pawn shop and get $20 for it so I can shed my my white guilt of the slaves he never owned. That’ll end racism today.

I agree. I would never hold anyone responsible nowadays for what occurred.

I guess it’s tough to be a proud people and have your history (the south) be inextricably connected to such evil.

So it becomes “our southern ways” and stars and bars, and god, and peach pie and our freedom and the big bad northern aggressors.

I guess I do understand it but it’s such a disconnect from reality that I have trouble keeping my mouth shut on the topic.

Why do you people ever go on Reddit? It’s a cesspool.

If you read some of the declarations of succession from the states, slavery was the primary reason. Full stop. Were there many other reasons? Yes, but to deny slavery wasn't the main cause is ignoring the statements made by the people who decided to leave the union. If you read about it, the seeds for our civil war were sowed during the constitutional convention in 1787. There was already a huge divide between the northern and southern states that never really got settled then, nor could they have been settled at that time. Hell, some of the northern delegates owned slaves, yet those same delegates looked down upon the southern representatives, and you can understand why the southern states felt slighted after the convention.

As a southerner, do I feel guilty? No, I wasn't alive back then. Do I think slavery is wrong. Of course. It was and still is a terrible thing. I'm very proud to be Southern, but I'm also educated enough to know slavery was the main cause of the war. If you look at things like Sherman's march to the sea and the following years of Reconstruction, you can understand why southerners came out of the war very bitter and tried to rewrite things via this Lost Cause concept.

The Civil War did not start because of slavery, the issues that started the war are:

1. Once a state left the Union all land is to be returned to that state: The southern states wanted the forts.

Firing on Fort Sumter starts the war.

2. The Northern states once the forts are fired on by the southern states, started to recruit in mass to force the states back into the Union.

The recruiting posters of 1861 have nothing about freeing the slaves on them it is about putting down the rebellion and about a general call to arms to fight and protect the capital.

The southern states due to tariffs cannot get the means to start a large manufacturing needed for a large war and to compete with the giant manufacturing lead the northern states have over the south.

New Orleans has near 70% of the southern manufacturing in the city or near it and is the largest city in the south.

Between Louisiana and South Carolina, you have more free colored people than the rest of the states combined. The largest slave owner in Louisiana is a colored woman.

The underground railroad does not stop in the northern states, it goes all the way to Canada, as many colored people in the north are picked up and many sold back into slavery in the south.

By 1862 many in the northern state are tired of the war, so the northern state depends on the immigrants coming into the US to fill out their regiments. That need of manpower grounds as the war moves south and the demand for manpower cannot be met, which starts the call to arm the colored men.

The south raised the first colored regiments, which were not used, but by April 1863 the north has raised many regiments which by 1864 grow larger and larger.



Southerners fought for state rights, if you want to see a letter from a man from Delaware fighting for the south and why it is at LSU, I donated it to LSU as in those letter it proves baseball is being played in New Orleans before the war and the 2nd company of the Washinton Artillery is raised form that baseball team.

Northerners fought to put down the rebellion.