Was the South Ever Confederate, Anyway?

http://www.knoxmercury.com/2015/07/01/was-the-south-ever-confederate-anyway/

by dghf • 11 years ago

22 4 11 years ago

dalke• 11 years ago

The article considers these points to be relevant: "a large proportion of the [white, male] people who lived in the South—perhaps even a majority—were skeptical of the Confederacy.", "The Confederacy was not universally popular, even in the South", and "in 1861 more than 30 percent of Tennessee’s Southerners voted against secession, against joining the Confederacy. Well over 30,000 Tennesseans took up arms against the Confederacy. "

An obvious question is, is that meaningful? Is that true of other civil wars/succession movements?

We can easily compare it to the US independence movement. "Historian Robert Calhoon said the consensus of historians is that between 40 and 45 percent of the white population in the Thirteen Colonies supported the Patriots' cause, between 15 and 20% supported the Loyalists, and the remainder were neutral or kept a low profile." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_%28American_Revolution... .

This is easy to interpret as "a large proportion of the [white males] who lived in the colonies—perhaps even a majority—were skeptical of the United States", and that "independence was not universally popular in the colonies."

Another way to view the issue is that the people in the states of the Confederacy were about as willing to support the Confederacy as people in the 13 colonies were willing to support independence.

In any case, who thinks that everyone (or even all white males) in the South supported succession? The state of West Virginia exists because the northern counties of Virginia didn't want to go along with the rest of the state and "un-succeeded."

mikestew• 11 years ago

I think it's like a lot of things, whether it's leaving The Union, or Snowden's NSA revelations: a lot of people can't be bothered. I do not mean that to necessarily be a negative. In the case of the Confederacy (or even the Revolutionary War), a lot of folks are just getting by, a war is always a lot of trouble and expense, and in the end it probably benefits the well-to-do a lot more than it's going to benefit me, the common person. Meh, I'm going to go back to trying to get this year's crops in, let me know when it's over.

To put it another way, we all have different "causes". Me, it's animal welfare (for example), for you it's getting those pesky Yankees off our backs. I'm just not going to get as excited about the whole thing as the secessionists are. I might even argue that those Unionists aren't quite as bad as you make them out to be.

In summary, yeah, not everyone supported secession. Duh.

serve_yay• 11 years ago

Oh brother.

cafard• 11 years ago

The mountainous parts of the southern states tended to be unionist, I expect in large part because the terrain made large slave-worked plantations impractical. The most conspicuous case of this was West Virginia.

Was the South Ever Confederate, Anyway?

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