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Which ones?



Not the British Isles, not France, not Belgium, not Spain, nor Portugal, Norway, Sweden or Finland. Not Italy or Swtizerland either.

Germany?

This one.

Were any of the eleven States the seceded between 12/1860 and 06/1861 ever consolidated?

Were the borders of any of the eleven States that seceded to form the CSA changed in any way during their reincorporation into the United States?

Germany and Italy, of course were the most notable. And of course, you could say Britain as well as that Great Britain was literally England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The same with Spain as that it was an amalgamation of many duchies and kingdoms. And even France contained what had been Burgandy and other states. And of course, that doesn't even count the consolidation of the Austro-Hungarian empire with its swallowing of the Balkans and the dismemberment of Poland in concert with Russia.

The US followed the centuries old process of consolidation of small states into a single centralized state.

Ya, I forgot about the whole Papal States thing, but neither the consolidated Germany nor Italy were hardly the dictatorial monoliths the article implied, and I'm not recalling any real desire among the citizens of these nations to go back to their previous fragmented state after the deed was done.

Heck, long prior to that, EVERY state in Europe ultimately was ultimately assembled from fragmented fuedal holdings, so what?

Those who voluntarily did the fighting on the Union side, and who collectively reelected Lincoln for a second term (he was sure he would lose) were fighting to "preserve the Union". Why does that have to be part of some greater conspiracy?

Birdwatcher

Venice threatens to this day. Scotland came pretty close not long ago. Spain is and always has been wracked with separatist movements. The Balkans have been under strife for centuries. And so on and so forth.

No conspiracy, but fighting to enslave a nation to keep it from enslaving others is the worst cause in history. It destroyed the old republic by fundamentally changing it and the balance of power between the federal government and the states, making them mere provinces instead of sovereign states.

Thanks for that link, sir. It was a very enjoyable read and I am further convinced that Chamberlain was top quality people.

BTW, you were right about the account of Gordon and his horse.

Not a damn thing. NC is freaking barren wasteland with nothing but mesicans and rugheads. No running water or electricity. Keep going till you hit Florida.

But at what point do you stop? Had Scotland become independent, you would have then seen the centuries old divisions between Scots start to raise its head..Lowlanders v Highlanders...The Islanders v the mainland, not to mention the whole Clan thing...

Sometimes folks have to get past events from 150 years ago and concentrate on making things better in the present..

At what point does it even need to stop? Computers and the internet make decentralization possible today that could not have been dreamed of in centuries past. And wars have gone from small inter-tribal affairs, or the conflicts of small states, to the nightmares of the 20th Century where somewhere north of at least 150 million people were directly slaughtered by states and/or in gigantic wars between all powerful nation states.

Tell me again, the benefits of this infatuation with gigantic centralized states?

From the Northern side easily the most oft-stated reason for war, including from the President, was to preserve the Union. Your average Northerner was not willing to die for what most of 'em would have called a bunch of Africans to put it mildly.

Among the Southern leadership the implication was that the South was about to be collectively outvoted and thus effectively disenfranchised by the North. The most pressing concern, besides the appalling prospect of an enormous former slave population running amok, was the threat to the cotton industry upon which the whole existence of the South as they knew it then depended.

It was this Southern economic elite that wrote those odious provisions enshrining slavery in the Confederate Constitution and who enumerated those slavery-based statements of Causes of Secession.

For the rank and file Southerner, a main motive seems to have been a natural loyalty to the place of one's birth and/or residence (Robert E. Lee for example fit this profile), as well as a resentment and contempt of the Yankee. An almost universal confidence of an easy victory at the start played into it too.

But even for the common Southerner, the prospect of a forced Emancipation of te hordes of slaves in their midst would have been catastrophic.

As to the economic ruin of the South in the decades after the war, I dunno how much of that can be ascribed to a fall in the price of cotton on the world market.

Going into it, the Confederacy had been planning to use their near-monopoly as a cotton producer to coerce world opinion and win recognition of the Confederate States, especially from England, their primary trade partner.

In anticipation of a conflict however, England had stockpiled millions of bales of Southern cotton in advance, such that IIRC as major supply shortage on the world market was not felt until 1863. Ironically, far from motivating the UK to recognise the South, the shortage and resulting rise in prices brought about huge increases in cotton production in India and IIRC Brazil, such that a post-war South, win or lose, would no longer enjoy their prior monopoly on production.

Also, if the War of Secession over here was only indirectly about slavery, in England it most certainly WAS about slavery. Americans commonly overlook the innate morality of the British nation at that time.

Ninety years later, Lancashire textile workers would give a warm reception to Mahatma Gandhi when he visited Britain, even though Ghandi's own proposed boycott of sales of Indian cotton to the UK threatened their own livelihood.

Likewise, by 1861, slavery in the Empire had already been abolished a quarter century earlier through the efforts of the widely celebrated Christian hero William Wilberforce.

More importantly, Queen Victoria herself was an ardent abolitionist, and even if she had few actual powers as monarchat that time her influence on British policies was enormous. Because of slavery, the South's hopes for recognition from England was a long shot from the start, and Lincoln's well-timed Emancipation Proclamation hammered the nails in that particular coffin.

Given the worldwide fall in cotton prices in response to increased worldwide production anyway, it is interesting to ponder what the South's post-war fortunes would have been even if they had won.

Birdwatcher

No worse than it was. The Depression went unnoticed in the South as that things had been that bad for decades for most people.

However, I suspect that it would have been much better. Where I live, hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin timber was sold to carpetbaggers for as little as 7 cents an acre in some cases.

In any case, timber, agriculture, and the discovery of massive oil deposits in Texas and Oklahoma would have seen the South's fortunes rise as they have today...but probably much sooner.

Pray tell what you think "...preserve the Union" means if it doesn't mean drafting large armies, invading heretofore sovereign states, bringing devastation on their populations, and forcing them to remain as vassals to a centralized national government?

I know "Saving the Union" sounds a lot better, but it is what it is.

Actually, I think you will find the situation in the UK was far from "black and white" (no pun intended)..

Many of the textile tycoons in the North West had a lot of sympathy for the South and so did their associated workers.

Despite the UK's Government's official stance, many industries in the North West supported the South. For instance, in a town not far from me there are the remains of an iron foundry that exported cannon and cannon balls to the South..

A further example would be that some of the ships of the Confederate Navy were built or exported from Birkenhead, then one of the major ship building ports in the North West..

That said, I am not sure if any of this support was in anyway based on "principle" but rather more on "capitalism" as the North West had major trading link to the South at that time..

Turns out that it was a valid concern and we as a nation are still suffering the effects. I am not saying that they should have remained slaves, but that they were ill equipped to be freed, all at once. Much like the the failed experiment with the Indian Reservations.



They would have fared much better than what they did under re-construction. The South is just now getting out of the Democrat voting bloc that resulted from that fiasco. miles

Well Pete, if'n they had been giving away all that stuff, you might have a point.

The much-missed SteveNO used to proudly sport a Confederate Club tie, that having been a Brit organization at the time. Of course most all of them were merchants profiting from the war.

Birdwatcher

LMAO, I know how you feel.

Having been raised in New Hampshire, the 9th colony to become a state in the United States of America, I don't ever recall anyone except my Grandmother either talking about or caring about the American Civil War, except on Memorial Day, when the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) made an effort to put bronze flag holders with small American flags on the graves of Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate. My Grandmother's interest was due to family ties, as she was the unofficial genealogist of her side of the family. Several of her ancestors fought in the Civil War and one, Salmon P. Chase, was a member of President Lincoln's Cabinet. I point this out because although the population of the United State during 1861 thru 1865 was roughly split 70% in the USA and 30% in the CSA, there seems to be very little interest among the descendants of the 70% when compared to the ill feelings still held by descendants of the 30%.

If a reasonably educated group of people can hold a grudge after 150 years, you can see why there will never be peace in most of the less educated world.

I"m still mad at the Africans, that sold Africans to us, and that we were dumb enough to think it a bargain to buy them.

Something that happened so long ago and we are still paying today, likely much more so than we've ever paid.

I'd have chopped my own cotton.

But what I don't get is that those today that think we are so much better off today having to constantly pay "repartations" every day... In so many varying ways.