What did the average Confederate soldier fight for in the American Civil War? was it slavery?

Besides which the answer on that front is tautological. Conscripts fight because they're conscripted.

Your average Southerner didn't benefit much from slavery. They bought the idea that they were resisting northern oppression and control.

...

How shallow.

>Still more deep than the "WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION WASNT ABOUT SLAVERY" memesters

>the north fought the war to end slavery

What can Veeky Forums tell me about Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative"? Is it worth a read?

they unironically believed that lincoln was going to abolish slavery and put blacks on top of the southern racial order, where they'd proceed to impregnate their wives and daughters. so much for "muh states rights"

>Your average Southerner didn't benefit much from slavery
>implying people will not go to extreme lengths to fight for something that is against their economic self interest if they think it will advance their position in society over others
just look at our latest election

>wasn't even President and brought tens of thousands of jobs backs to the U.S.
>against their economic interest
/leftypol/ raus

look at his tax plan my man

But muh trickle-down user. Surely any money saved on taxes will go back to the public and not into an offshore bank acount

The tax plan that the non-partisan American Tax Foundation admitted would stimulate economic growth at a healthy 2+% per year and save tax payers more money than any other candidates tax plan? I don't know what you want from me here user. Voting for more personal capital and overall national economic growth seems to be in most people's economic interest. You're not one of those dirty seditious commies that thinks personal capital is a BAD thing, are you?

do you have a source for that

I included the Foundation, but I'll spoonfeed you, you lazy Commie shit.

taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-donald-trump-tax-reform-plan-september-2016

Specifically, check the "Impact on Economy" section (though I know you won't since you're going to cherry-pick the source to shit)

Also just in case you want to call bias, here's a democrat aligned article which comes to the same basic conclusions. Economy will grow, investment will increase, jobs created and so on. The only real drawback at this point is a loss of revenue, but the proposed protectionist policies will likely fill in the gaps there.

taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-donald-trumps-revised-tax-plan/full

>protectionist policies
>making money
Kek

People can't afford to not pay the tarriffs. There's not a single country on earth that can afford to NOT pay.

Or they can trade with another superpower like China. Plus the price also goes to the consumer, since the person exporting would need to charge more for a profit.

>Or they can trade with another superpower like China
And China is just going to stop trading with their largest trade partner? The only one keeping its economy afloat? Again, there isn't a country on earth that can afford to not trade with the LARGEST FUCKING ECONOMY ON EARTH. As a matter of fact, there are two countries that don't (well, I guess one since the sanctions on Cuba were technically lifted). They're in great economic shape. So great, in fact, they're in constant poverty.

yeah, and cotton is king right?

The confederates were sure that europe would line up with them and smash the US navy because they couldn't live without confederate cotton. They found other sources, this is the exact same hubris in thinking that no one can find other trading partners.

China literally can not find another economy the size of the United States (25% of global GDP by itself). They don't even come close themselves. King Cotton is a massive false equivalence.

who says they have to trade with just one country, China has been preparing for this for years
forbes.com/sites/jwebb/2017/01/03/the-new-silk-road-china-launches-beijing-london-freight-train-route/#7a4923275205

So China is purposely going to lose access to 25% of the world economy, it's largest trading partner by far (approximately 1/4 of it's trade) when it can barely function with said access? There is no situation where a country dependent upon trade successfully navigates 25% of it's trade disappearing. There's no economy that can make up the difference. You are a special kind of stupid for even dreaming it to be true.

>So China is purposely going to lose access to 25% of the world economy
if Trump's new tariff makes it less profitable to trade with America than with other countries, yes

There aren't enough "other countries" to fill the gap, you idiot. The U.S. has a larger economy than the next three countries combined. It would take every country on earth BESIDES THE UNITED STATES to increase their trade capacity with China by 3 billion dollars, just to make up the difference lost. This is a statistical impossibility for everyone except Japan and Germany and even then it's really stretching it.

>75% of the world economy is less than 25% of the world economy

Americancentralism, folks!

>75% of the economy can make up the difference when they're incapable of the growth to achieve it because of wealth concentration and the reality that China, a country teetering on the brink, would immediately collapse

Shelby Foote is a South Carolina native with a strong sense of southern pride who writes fairly and honestly about the civil war. He's one of the definitive living writers about the subject.

Veeky Forums approved

>75% of the world's markets are completely saturated
uh huh
>china is teetering on the brink
Isn't that what people have been saying for the past 25 years? Sure China has problems, what country doesn't, but you don't teeter on the brink of collapse all day every day forever.

This is bullshit. The vast majoroty of the south lived in poverty. Most joined up to defend their country. Unlike today people had a much higher connection to their state seeing it as their place of orgin not the USA.

Saturated enough that they can't fill the gap of the worlds largest economy. Judging by average GDP growth, it would take several years to fill the gap, which is far too long for the shaky economies of Europe and China.

>Isn't that what people have been saying for the past 25 years?
Chinese economists are saying it now. It's why their markets are so volatile. They're pretty much expecting a hard stop any day now.

Now when you say 'fairly and honestly' do you mean he was a Southern apologist who ignores the actual causes of the war in favor of sanctifying the Confederacy?

>tax foundation
>non partisan

Either way Trump's plan would massively increase the debt, something republicans bitch about

Tax Foundation is non-partisan and I provided an alternate source, which is democrat aligned, which agrees with their findings. Eat shit.

which economists?

I know that the officership and politicians owned slaves and seceded over the preservation of slavery, but I don't buy that your average Johnny Rebel did it to enslave blacks.

I'm awful certain just living in Texas/Georgia/Virginia or whatever abd the concept that an army is coming southward and will kill your neighbors and rape your mom is enough.

Sometimes it isn't a question about the overarching morality of the conflict, it's just that victory is better than defeat for your state no matter what.

As a Texan I would've joined for that reason.

>but I don't buy that your average Johnny Rebel did it to enslave blacks
what about doing it to maintain their superior position in society to blacks

when they rebel against their own country they no longer are your neighbors

Yes they fucking are

I don't know if you just stay inside all day or are riding some moral high horse and not thinking like it were your reality, but when you live and know these people, babysit for their kids, help repair their roof, it goes well beyond politics.

Maybe. I would think that is an awful petty position to throw lives away over, but folks have been deluded with less.

I still think my observation makes more sense, and it hasn't been proven otherwise.

/leftypol/ supports Trump

>I know that the officership and politicians owned slaves and seceded over the preservation of slavery, but I don't buy that your average Johnny Rebel did it to enslave blacks

Then you are objectively incorrect. A third of southern men of the general population at the time at the time were part of slave holding families, and even then slave holding families were drastically overrepresented in the Confederate army, and not just the officers.

>A third of southern men of the general population at the time at the time were part of slave holding families
A "family" is a husband and wife. That means 15% of Southern men and 15% of Southern women were part of slave holding families, not getting into other details like children.
> slave holding families were drastically overrepresented in the Confederate army
wow you don't say

>I don't know if you just stay inside all day or are riding some moral high horse and not thinking like it were your reality, but when you live and know these people, babysit for their kids, help repair their roof, it goes well beyond politics.

>tfw you have no loyalty for country or neighbors
>tfw you'd just hang out with your friends as the world falls apart around you
It is a strange feel.

For creation of separate state under British aegis.

> living writers

I hate to break it to you user, but he died over a decade ago.

Not him, and I haven't read his books, but I did watch the Ken Burns documentary where Foote contributes enormously, and no, he doesn't advocate one of these southern revisionist pseudohistories. He is, however, very character driven; it's not quite a great man sort of historical philosophy, but he doesn't tell the story so much of "The Civil War" as he tells the stories of a bunch of prominent figures in the ACW and lets their narratives stitch themselves together to create the narrative of the ACW.

I have read the first two of the Narrative books, and Foote is not a proponent of the lost cause myth and treats the North with equal fairness as the south. As a non-American I would certainly recommend it.

Everything south of Columbus is Kentucky anyway.

What did the average American soldier fight for in Iraq? Was it democracy? Oil? Christianity? Jews?

Look faggot, soldiers fight because leaders tell them yo go and fight. They don't think too much about it.

short answer: yes

long answer: yes, because the entirety of their society was build on the foundation of owning land and slaves - so state rights was the easiest way of protecting that system without outright saying "we want to keep slaves even though it contradicts our christian beliefs"

"muh 9/11" actually

Which had nothing to do with Iraq. The Saddam hate existed on America for more than a decade before 9/11

True, but the average american didnt know/understand that

Did you live in America back then or are you just making shit up?

A significant proportion of the US thought that Saddam did 9/11.

usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm

Not that guy, but I was a little kid when this shit was going down. I remember this shit.

You realize that there's nothing contradictory about slavery and Christianity, correct? In fact, the OT sanctions slavery.

Why did the North fight the war? To end slavery? To restore the Union?

Did Lincoln really care about slaves?

The Slave States' political aristocracy were the 19th century equivalent of shitposters. Everything was about Slavery for them, and they spent all their time complaining about being oppressed for keeping humans beings in bondage while actively trying to subvert American's rights to self-determination (i.e. Bleeding Kansas, Fugitive Slave Act)
The Civil War was fought exclusively over Slavery, because it was a cancer that was destroying America.

61-63 to restore the union
63-65 to restore the union and end slavery

I don't get why people think "because slavery" and "because states' rights" are mutually exclusive. Obviously the South made statements addressing the legitimacy of slavery, as it was the issue at hand in secession. This doesn't mean their rights of self-determination as states wasn't under attack, as they clearly felt an institution important to their economies and way of life was under attack from people it didn't much matter to.

Pretending that the South went to war only because the North wasn't letting them be as mean to black people as they wanted is pure willful ignorance.

>they clearly felt an institution important to their economies and way of life was under attack

Important to the economy and lives of a very small percentage of the population. The vast majority of Southerners were dirt poor substance farmers. The only reason the average Southerner hated the idea of ending slavery was because they had been brainwashed into believing that

The north fought to stop secession.
Secession happened because of slavery.

Stop trying to make the north out to be heroes, they clearly weren't.

>slavery only benefited a small few
>almost all confederate soldiers fought to preserve slavery

Which is it

>had been brainwashed into believing that
And of course because while they had slavery no matter how poor and shit they were they could still tell themselves they were better than niggers

>Which is it
Both you moron, slavery only benefited those at the top but the whole of southern society was convinced it was good for everyonbe

>tens of thousands of jobs
bigly.

I bet you think every Red Army soldier in WW2 was a communist too

No, why would they be?

So why would every confederate have to support slavery?

Not really no. Remember why West Virginia seceded from Virginia?

>a family is husband and wife
Found the "traditionalist" who honestly belies the nuclear family is anything more than a lucrative capitalist construct to sell more goods (you need a lot more houses, washing machines, cars, etc for every family if it fractures every single generation)

>while they had slavery no matter how poor and shit they were they could still tell themselves they were better than niggers

This is pretty similar to how most racism works today, btw. Successful people tend not to give a shit about race.

Most soldiers fight because they have no choice and because they'd get shot if they tried to opt out of the war

no, that's just what families in the mid 19th century were for statistical purposes, you fucking spastic

>you rebel from an industrially advanced and numerically superior neighbor
>we miiiiight just get invaded

Confederates knew the Union would immediately invade. It doesn't matter what you believe in if your crops are all burned and you starve to death.

cincy here, can confirm