American Civil War

They got what they deserved

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon B Johnson

>Union troops marching into town usually meant mass killings, burning of crops, stealing livestock, burning houses after ransacking them, raping women, etc.
I'm sure this happened, but the scale your describing it makes it seem as though it was systematic policy akin to nazis. really what you describe was isolated as far as I know. The Union army was also literally the best equipped and nourished army up to that point in history (t-thanks mcclellan) so I highly doubt what you say is true. It was the Confederates who were awfully supplied and so requisitioned crops during their northern invasions on a larger scale than the Union.

>Says the guy who whined and complained when his pillagers were lynched

Union had far more.

It worked in 1776.

The poor and stupid are easily conditioned to fight for their superiors, even if it isn't in their own best interests.

Have either of you got citations?

Because yankees refuse to mind their own fucking business.

Nope.

encyclopediavirginia.org/Desertion_Confederate_during_the_Civil_War
>Confederate Virginians fled military service at a rate of between 10 and 15 percent, more or less comparable to the desertion rate among Union troops, which stood between 9 and 12 percent.
Note that the CSA had far fewer troops to start with so such a desertion rate completely crippled them.

did you seriously just compare Virgina to the entire union?

Other states like Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee had even higher desertion rates. I'm not even talking about the units which were voluntary and not a result of the national draft (think Missouri or Kentucky), their desertion rates were as high as 40%.

Why would that make any difference to rates?

Thanks for the citation.

It should be noted that desertion really started to pick up around the end when the rebs were starving and their towns were being pillaged. When they still had a semblance of a chance their wasn't a problem.

Now that's a spicy meme

virginia had some of the largest populations and did a lot of the fighting, though, right?

Because they were all racist and didnt like black people

watch this

youtube.com/watch?v=PWJpwc21Ft4

Fpbp

Read about Sherman's march to the sea. All of Atlanta was burned to rubble. Or bleeding Kansas. Also what does it matter if the union soldiers were well fed and armed? They weren't well paid, and they were fighting a disgustingly brutal war. It was total war.

Yes, the confederate army basically took whatever they needed to stay unified as an army, and while this too was met with infighting and resistance, the southerners were happier to see their crops feeding their family members fighting for the south than to watch it burn at the hands of marauding gangs of union troops. Do you realize what a potent weapon food was in the agrarian south? How many people starved to death if they werent just hacked to death outright? You think that having rations and weaponry stops rapes, mass killings, or the looting of valuables? It very much was a large scale thing. When a general institutes a "scorched earth policy", that gives the men in his command full authority to burn, loot, kill, and rape. All of those properties, foodstuffs, or people could be potentially aiding the confederacy, right?

I bet you a million dollars that you would either fight or shit yourself and flee if you lived in the south and heard the bluecoats just torched the town and massacred the inhabitants, and now they're just a day's march from your farm

>Before the war there was big push back against slavery from poor white southerners
>When the war broke out those very same poor whites refused to fight for the confederacy
>When the union began committing atrocities against the civilian populations in occupied territories, many poor whites joined the confederacy
>After the war, former slaves wanted revenge and could not get to their former masters so they victimized poor whites
>Guilt was collectivized and any white was fair game for reprisals
>The union didn't do anything to curtail the revenge killings
>Whites who resisted were actively punished
>In the late 1860's the union troops would perform public hangings of any white man who killed black men for any reason
>That led to the formation of a secret police force which morphed into the KKK

I saw a picture the other day of a black man waving a Confederate flag.

I'm pretty anti-CSA LARPing, but genuinely want to know the historical reason for why a black man would be pro CSA.

>southerners unironically believe this

>They weren't well paid, and they were fighting a disgustingly brutal war. It was total war.
again, you're making it out to be something akin to operation barbarossa, which is was not at all. you're reasoning was circular anyway: "the soldiers are brutal because war is brutal". It's just a shallow aphorism that is empty of substance until you actually show me who was brutal, what was brutal about it, where it was brutal, when it was brutal.
>the southerners were happier to see their crops feeding their family members fighting for the south than to watch it burn at the hands of marauding gangs of union troops.
where are you getting this from? when did i say this?
>do you realize what a potent weapon food was in the agrarian south? How many people starved to death if they werent just hacked to death outright?
Show me a source instead of this pathetic appeal to emotion.
>You think that having rations and weaponry stops rapes, mass killings, or the looting of valuables?
You have shown me no reason that it shouldn't. All I'm seeing in your post is crocodile tears.
> It very much was a large scale thing. When a general institutes a "scorched earth policy", that gives the men in his command full authority to burn, loot, kill, and rape.
yes, but how many people did this affect? when was this policy implemented?
>I bet you a million dollars that you would either fight or shit yourself and flee if you lived in the south
muh tu quoque

good. fucking proto nazis.

>c-span
my nigger

Conscription

the CSA had mobilized their entire fighting age white male population by the end of the war.

havechanged.blogspot.com/2013/04/civil-war-demographics.html

which wasn't much compared to the 20 plus million the Union had and the unlimited numbers of irish fresh off the boat.

It's true.
t. West Virginian

There were free black rregiments fighting for the CSA. Many of them owned slaves themselves.

you forgot the unconstitutional military occupation government. the unconstitutional disenfranchisement of southern whites. which lead to free blacks taking a huge number of southern government seats.

The only "Black Regiments" that ever fought for the confederacy were a single group of hospital orderlies during the closing months of the war who we have no records of having ever actually served. Having armed blacks around was the very thing the confederacy hoped wanted never to happen.

they understand that there was more to their homeland than the suffering
southern US was not nazi germany. it wasn't propped up with the explicit intent to exterminate blacks.
yes, the industries keeping it going were inherently racist, but some saw perhaps that the ideologies behind the state constitutions, the culture, and the land, their history - as being in some way worthy of pride.
it's not just for CSA, it's "dixie".

perhaps in some way, blacks today who wave that flag understand that even slavery would have inevitably passed without their country being burnt to the ground by unionists. that it was a status quo which in 1861 simply had to be embraced and allowed to diffuse on its own.
i would generally doubt there are people with the sheer optimism and depth of forgiveness to embrace that particular foresight, but it's possible...not everyone in the south hated blacks or abused their slaves. there had to have been pockets of forward-thinking individuals.

how does mr shekelstein in sheleks and co. persuede millions of americans to work for him fully knowing theyll never make it

Wrong

This is just dumb. Freedmen in the south fought for similar reasons as whites. To protect their town from being torched, their valuables, food, or property being looted, and so on. Do you think the average union soldier saw the Negro as his equal, let alone being a strict abolishonist? The mass riots over the draft in major northern cities (and Abraham Lincoln himself ) suggest otherwise.

I agree with this guy. The north had no problem implementing segregation, lynchings, taking native lands, and other blatant racist policies that were the norm of the time. Jesus, Abe Lincoln himself said he didn't care about slavery, he just wanted to preserve the union. He did not think highly of blacks at all from a lot of his quotes saying just that and worse

Not really. He is very attached to the idea that it was a war between racism and anti-racism and will not even consider any other explanation. Fear of political disfranchisement in a state where the north runs everything, even if the south disagrees, was probably a big factor.

Same way a corporate shill like our President LLC, convinced millions of blue collar types that he gives a fuck about them.

you do realize that the Southern soldiers did the same kinda fucked up shit right?

war is hell.

here is your answer.
same reason that a nuristani fought against americans in kamdesh afghanistan.
isn't it past your bedtime, lad?

Slaves were thought of as property, like a horse that pulls a carriage. Do modern farmers beat and rape their animals? No, they want them healthy so they can do the work they were bought to do. The war was about slavery, not racism. The North didn't go on a moral crusade to liberate the black race.

he didn't whine...he protested and shot rebel guerrillas in retaliation.

This.

Basically the Southern men had absolutely no choice and probably were had a death sentence either way. At this point the war was basically American life and it was, quite literally, kill or be killed and have everything you've ever loved be burned to the ground. There also wasn't a meaningful class of people that were simply sipping on Mint Juleps, everyone who could fight was fighting. Another added bonus was the fact that Union plans would lay waste to their economy and there was a "they took my job!" fear amongst average southern whites surrounding freed slaves and what that would entail.

Sorry for the grammar mistakes boys, it's been a long day.

>thread mentions mass killings of Southern civilians by Union troops

god I hate you Veeky Forums. this literally never happened. the worst atrocities akin to something like this would have been during the anti-guerrilla campaigns in Missouri.

propaganda

>everyone who could fight was fighting

total bull-shit. the population of Southern Appalachia largely stayed out of the war and when they did fight it was largely for the Union.

Main reason my ancestor did. He heard about the shit the Union Army was doing and decided to go fight. Surrendered with Lee at Appomattox.

It was like less than 10%

>"total bullshit"
>names one of the most divided areas in the war