I have some disagreements with him obviously, but I think he is generally a good person. Voted FF.
The Confederacy is no random group of people. It was an embodiment of the South's very soul, and to deny in favor of the Union it is to deny the Southern tradition of limited governance, individualism, and agrarianism that my ancestors lived and died for on Southern soil for centuries, long before the United States itself was even a twinkle in the eye of humanity. This tradition -- and my loyalty to the South -- transcends comparatively trivial and meaningless political boundaries or organizations such as The United States.
I have a question for you.
My people lived in New England and then Pennsylvania for centuries. They had their own traditions of hard work, self-reliance and equally a desire to be left alone also. They often supported for instance pre-Civil War Democrats in many instances, including Andrew Jackson and before him Thomas Jefferson. They too believed in states-rights and limited government.
And yet if state's rights are so important, why were my people forced to help police-state like search and recovery missions for the South's escaped property? Why were my people forced to face the direct competition in the workplace from slave labor that their state had long since abolished following the Dred Scott decision, which essentially nullified free state constitutions and laws?
Why is that people regardless of origin were prevented from freedom of speech, press and assembly in the South when it became inconvenient (usually following slave revolts)?
I have never considered the South to be a legitimate and principled defenders of any principles relating to the Constitution as they have a bad history of using it when convenient and tossing it aside when it is not.
Remember this, Lincoln never would have won, had the South not pushed non-abolitionists in Pennsylvania and Illinois into the arms of the Republicans with the fugitive slave act and the Dred Scott decision.
Throughout the broad expanse of history, the slave society is and always will be a totalitarian state. Be it the Soviets, North Korea, Rome, or any number of classical civilizations. When you start out as a basis for your economy being the forced labor of people against their will, there is no longer a free market for labor, nor longer a free and competitive market for investment. Investment will become captured and chained the existing industries (literally) and thus economic development, and most important per capita income lag behind. People will no longer be able to to develop their skills and bring those skills to the market for a price that is sustainable because they will be undercut, so they leave. That is why the South was so import dependent from the beginning. Wealth and investment flows outward, as do the laboring classes seeking better opportunities elsewhere. The South did not have a free market economy, it was distorted by an over bearing monopoly, which was maintained by Government support and intervention at every turn.
Going further structuring your society on a large enslaved population means that domestic security becomes a constant and ever present problem and the threat of a revolt and preventing such takes priority over civil and natural liberties. Any arguments or advocacy against the institution become dangerous and must be prohibited. Any escapees must be recaptured and people must be forced to help in the recapture. As people leave to find better opportunities and the proportion of slaves to free persons rises, the threat becomes larger forcing conquest, expansion and imposition of the institution elsewhere to ease the threat and pressures of slave revolts. When it comes to the national scale, the state's rights of non-slave holding populations must be made a secondary consideration to the use of the state's power to both maintain and spread the institution over a wider area. Thus the constant pressure to extent slavery westward and the desire to pass a Fugitive Slave law at the federal level.
When it comes to the Civil War itself, the South were the ones that most relied on printing money, were the first to institute conscription and they were eager and motivated to send every deserter to the firing squad. Stonewall Jackson considered such deserters as having committed a crime against god. In contrast to Lincoln to who drove his Secretary of War insane over the number of people he pardoned for desertion.
I don't agree with every action that Lincoln did, but I can see in Lincoln a person who recognized his own flaws and was at least somewhat compassionate and reluctant about utilizing the awful powers of government in a time of war. I see no such reluctance on the part of the South.
For all the talk of state's rights, limited government and opposition to war and the powers of the police state. It is hard for me not to compare the Pre- Civil War Southern societal structure to Rome, to the Soviet Union and to North Korea. All the parallels are there, all the tropes are present, and from my honest opinion, I don't see anyway to logically conclude that any mass slave society, anywhere in the history of the world, is anything but at least an authoritarian if not a totalitarian society. In the end it doesn't make much difference if 11 states individually maintain this system absent a powerful centralized state. To that I would merely add a quote from the Revolutionary War period, "To be rule by a single tyrant 3,000 miles away or to be ruled by 3,000 tyrants not a mile away".
As a Constitutionalist who believes in government structure that works to check unrestrained power, as a social libertarian who believes the government should generally leave people the hell alone and as a capitalist who believes fundamentally in the free and competitive market place I don't see any redeeming qualities about the pre-Civil War South.
That being said I do respect your opinions even while I disagree with them. I do think there were people who fought for the South simply because of their love for their home like for instance James Longstreet. I also think that Lee deserves a great deal of respect for his military accomplishments and also for not conceding to the arguments of some to turn the conflict into a guerrilla war and instead working to bring it to an end.
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