Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire For you Yankee war mongers

Lately I've come to understand how deficient our history teachings in the Civil War actually are. I've come to understand why so many in the South were so hot for secession and why so many who weren't went along with them and considered that they were forced into it.

Consider John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. My whole life it was taught as a hopelessly misguided crazy act by a nut. It was that but it was much much more. Brown took over the arsenal, killing several people in the process for the express purpose of starting a slave rebellion whereby white women and children would be slaughtered mercilessly. He invoked the memories of Nat Turner and of the slave rebellion in St, Domingo (Haiti). For those who don't remember Turner went on a killing spree where several hundred white women and children, down to suckling babies were hacked and roasted to death after being raped and tortured. In St. Domingo a slave revolt had literally killed every white person on the island regardless of sex or age.

To this end Brown hae secured nearly 2,000 pikes to give the slaves that he assumed would flock to him at Harper's Ferry. To southerners, a crazy man and his followers inflamed by years out of control invective and rhetoric were bad enough, but it soon emerged from captured letters that he had received the financial backing of at least five wealthy donors and that many more people were actually aware of what he was going to try to do. It was bad enough that of the five backers, all but one or two actually left the country for fear of prosecution until after Brown's execution and things settled down a bit. Even Frederick Douglas the famous former slave split to England for a bit because Brown had told him of his plans.

Now consider southern rage when despite pretty clear evidence of the involvement of these men, none were prosecuted. Further consider that instead of universal condemnation many northern newspapers and almost all of them in New England lauded him as a hero. Then imagine as further insult to injury that within a couple of years, the party founded on the ideas Brown expressed and backed by many of the same people who had backed Brown gained the presidency. Consider that Lincoln almost unanimously carried New England where Brown's support was the strongest and the rhetoric against the South the most hateful.

To put it in modern perspective imagine a world where ANTIFA takes over a federal arsenal in Texas for the express purpose of rallying illegal aliens to rebel against and slaughter Americans. Imagine if they did that and it was proved that George Soros funded them and bought 20,000 AK-47s to give to the illegals so that they could, in fact, kill us and our women and children. Then imagine that Soros was never prosecuted, continued to fund all sorts of anti-American causes, and a candidate bought and paid for with his money and vowing to end the power of "racist white Americans" wins the next election. Imagine all that. Would you blame Texas and a few other states if they said we're not going to be in the same country as the people who tried to murder us a few years before?

When the first New England troops mustered in and marched to Washington. They were singing John Brown's body.

I can say with the benefit of hindsight that the war was a mistake. I can say that they shouldn't have fired on Sumter and waited for the numerous political divisions in the North to fester. I can say all that now. But, by gosh, I understand completely why their blood was up and hot.

There's no doubt in my mind that the people today who think the Civil War saved the nation would have sided with England during the Revolution if they had been alive.

Here's a clue for you - They did fight for England.. They were called Loyalists The south of all places had the most bloody brother against brother fighting! Google the battle of King's Mountain.. The southern rebels slaughtered
the english and their own relatives on the loyalist side in that mountain battle..

Here's a clue for you - They did fight for England.. They were called Loyalists The south of all places had the most bloody brother against brother fighting! Google the battle of King's Mountain.. The southern rebels slaughtered
the english and their own relatives on the loyalist side in that mountain battle..

"but as I understand it, both sides knew secession would bring a war."

You missed the point of my post. It shouldn't have caused a war.

Lincoln said the following on March 4, 1861:

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to
"preserve, protect, and defend it.".

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.".

Subsequent actions are well documented by historians, each with his/her own biases and perspectives.

I don't have any ancestors who fought at King's Mountain but I have a sixth-great grandfather who was killed at Cowpens fighting Banastre Tarleton and his goons. The war in the South was bad and was where the war was really won.

As a "southerner" I agree that the whole question was settled 150 years ago. And as for John Brown being a "terrorist"... The thought of slaves rising up and killing whites was terrifying....but not nearly as terrorizing as a couple of centuries of whites putting blacks in chains, raping the black women, separating families, treating them all like animals, killing or beating to death, those who desperately ran for freedom etc etc. and even though other Blacks (and Muslims) originally captured and sold the Africans into slavery, to be deported around the globe, the fact remains that the South's economy was built on the foundation of the Evil institution of slave labor.
Those most wealthy and powerful in the south were either directly dependent on slavery to support their wealth and power or politically dependent on supporting its continuation. The mere thought of outlawing slavery had huge economic and security concerns for the south. Even church denominations split over the topic of slavery. Crazy that those who organized around the Love and Redemption of Christ, placed that love in subservience to economic and social pressures of the day. Unfortunately, we were headed for civil war for 40-50 years before the war actually stated.
I am no liberal, and have great misgivings about an ever encroaching federal government, but as to the civil war, despite our loss and the loss of many ancestors, I truly believe it was God's intervention that finally had to be done. I'm just glad we were able to reconcile and eventually move on as one Nation.

As a "southerner" I agree that the whole question was settled 150 years ago. And as for John Brown being a "terrorist"... The thought of slaves rising up and killing whites was terrifying....but not nearly as terrorizing as a couple of centuries of whites putting blacks in chains, raping the black women, separating families, treating them all like animals, killing or beating to death, those who desperately ran for freedom etc etc. and even though other Blacks (and Muslims) originally captured and sold the Africans into slavery, to be deported around the globe, the fact remains that the South's economy was built on the foundation of the Evil institution of slave labor.
Those most wealthy and powerful in the south were either directly dependent on slavery to support their wealth and power or politically dependent on supporting its continuation. The mere thought of outlawing slavery had huge economic and security concerns for the south. Even church denominations split over the topic of slavery. Crazy that those who organized around the Love and Redemption of Christ, placed that love in subservience to economic and social pressures of the day. Unfortunately, we were headed for civil war for 40-50 years before the war actually stated.
I am no liberal, and have great misgivings about an ever encroaching federal government, but as to the civil war, despite our loss and the loss of many ancestors, I truly believe it was God's intervention that finally had to be done. I'm just glad we were able to reconcile and eventually move on as one Nation.

I'm just glad we were able to reconcile and eventually move on as one Nation.

What a load of abolitionist horseschit. Were the southern planters more dependent on slaves than the planters in Brazil or the British West Indies? Were they more brutal or less moral? Of course, not. But in those places slavery was oeacefully abolished with compensated emancipation. The difference? None of those places had crazed Yankee Puritans preaching heel fire and brimstone about the need to purge the nation if the sin of slavery with the blood of southerners.