The Civil War started in South Carolina...and for a**holes like Wilson

[joeybee12]

that's still a point of pride.

Tells you something.

[hedgehog]

1. .If you've ever read about the political atmosphere leading up to the

Civil War, it's stunning to see how unchanged the rhetoric is after 150 years. The rabid secessionists were the original tea baggers!

[Barack_America]

Oh, please let them try it again.

We'll not make the mistake this time of trying to get them back.

Apologies to Southern DUers, but yeah, that's how I feel.

[joeybee12]

6. Has progress passed them by completely? Are they immune to evolution

or any other sort of advancement?

[JHB]

7. Even the political cartoons could have been drawn yesterday...

Here's Abe going into the White House leading the 1860 equivalent of brainless celebrity worshippers, gays (the "free love element"), atheists (Mormons, in the sense of "religious deviants"), "special rights" minorities, "feminazis", lazy bums, criminals and terrorists.

[joeybee12]

9. This is great....

...they are de-volving!

[JHB]

Keep in mind that when that was drawn Republicans were the "radical leftists"

There's been a flip since.

[JHB]

15. dupe

[krispos42]

16. Pic doesn't work

:-(

[imdjh]

10. Mostly I saw property values rapidly rising and people moving.

The secession apparently wasn't much of a secret. I see economic and population movement in the year prior.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. it used to be a point of pride for a lot of DUers, too.

I don't know if the sentiment has changed, but a few years ago there used to be regular flame wars about "southern heritage" here, with many a DUer defending the bravery and loyalty of confederate troops to their cause.

I'm not takin' side this time -- I have in the past -- but be prepared if this ignites another outbreak. It might not, but it might.


TG

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

3. I don't have a problem with Southern Heritage

This from the descendent of a member of the 17th Illinois Volunteers.

It's one thing to acknowledge that sacrifice can be noble, even if the cause was not. It's another thing altogether to glorify the Cause.

And these guys are all about the Cause, make no mistake about it.

[imdjh]

12. Chicken or the egg?

Southern identity may brand under the imagery of the Civil War, because that's the point at which the lines were most clearly drawn but to lash it to the issues of the Civil War is like saying that the American Revolution was about "freedom of religion" or "taxation without representation". Regional identities evolve. If you depopulate Cuba, and then drop a homogenous group of people on the island, isolated, you're going to end up with Hillpeople and Lowlanders, or Easties and Westies. Give it ten generations and you might even have a visible genetic divide.

As with nearly all identities, some of the most enthusiastic about the Southern identity are the ones with the least connection or claim to it. There is many a Rebel flag patched young man in the heart of Dixie whose family isn't even from the South. People like to belong where they are.

[tularetom]

4. I wouldn't be proud of the fact that I started a fight and got my ass kicked

For all their maudlin sentimental bullshit about it, and glorification of their military abilities the fact remains they started something they couldn't finish.

Their cause was economically unsustainable and morally wrong, and their leaders were incompetent.

The saddest part about it is a lot of poor white southerners lost their lives defending a system that was set up to screw them and their descendents haven't yet caught on to this fact for 150 years.

[LuvNewcastle]

13. How very true.

That war was started by a bunch of self-styled aristocrats and was fought by men and boys, most of whom never owned a slave. Some Southerners realized that it was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight and they either refused to fight or chose to fight for the Union. The Rebels were goaded by fears of the former slaves and their retaliation against the system. The upper classes in the South, more than anything else, fear that poor whites an blacks will find common cause against their overlords, which explains all the race-baiting that takes place.

[bridgit]

5. Well, if HBO is to be believed via John Adams they had SC swishing about in silk & lace...

peppering disruptive poniards upon any & all with questions for their beliefs in white supremacy and longings for tax free monarchical aristocracy in absentia and however undeserved

[imdjh]

8. The first blood of the Civil War was in Baltimore.

Just being a pain in the ass, here. Carry on.

[joeybee12]

11. Fort Sumnter! n/t

[imdjh]

14. Nope, Baltimore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1861

[JHB]

17. Sumnter fell a week before the Baltimore riot....

...as clearly stated on the Wikipedia page you just cited.

[imdjh]

18. The claim is that Baltimore is the first BLOOD of the war.

Note that in my original response, I said I was being a pain in the ass. This "first blood" v "first shots fired" is an old thing used to win bar bets. And now you can do it too.