In an attempt to save another thread let's keep the discussion going on over here?

Hey J,
By the way a slave is a slave is a slave, if you are bound to that person then you are a slave sorry there is no difference.

Regards,
MARNE </font>[/quote]That is fundamentally wrong. A slave is a person OWNED by another person. A servant who signs a contract that binds them to someone isn't. I'm afraid that is a simple fact otherwise all those people who are contracted to their jobs are likewise also slaves. So your claims about slaves in the north are patantly absurd.

Care to respond to my contentions about the 1858 election? You claim the war and secession had nothing to do with slavery however it was Lincons election that was the issue causing secession, he represented an anti-slavery party and was elected on an anti-slavery platform.

Would you also care to give the sources of these figures or are you pulling them from a bodily orifice that has no business in any kind of discussion

Whilst I'm at it I'm going to quote myself. Care to respond to the points below:

True, initially at least. However if you look at accounts by Northern soldiers, as well as their letters home etc you see changing attitudes and I feel that is where things started to change for the now free slaves. You will also note that whilst what you say of the emancipation proclaimation is true, the secession of the south was still a response to the election of an anti-slavery president.

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If you look at the reconstruction period, blacks were not treated anymore better by the Northern troops than by the southern owners. What the south was defending is what in essence is happening in everyday affairs today. The right for individual states to govern themselves.

And it was hypocracy, bearing in mind the south had dominated government for most of the ante-bellum period (look at southern representation in the supreme court) and had attempted to re-instate slavery in the North. Hell, look at the repeal of the Missouri compromise.

At the end of the day however, even if it was about states rights, the issue remained that elements within the North were attempting to abolish slavery and the South opposed that. They were protecting their right not to be told they couldn't own slaves.

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BTW, the south already recognized that slavery was an outmolded institution but did not know how to get out of it. The north did not provide any help when the south did make attempts to change.

Like when? The South continued the slave trade and even attempted to spread slavery back to above the Missouri compromise line.

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As for the everyday confederate soldier, they did know what they were fighting for and it was not for slavery. If the fight was for slavery, then there would be no confederate army. A large percentage of the troops were not slave owners. The fight was not about slavery. Period.

Very entertaining. Except for the fact that desertion in the confederate army was rediculously high and when one looks at the reasons behind it a few things stand out. Firstly conditions, secondly the fact that soldiers from the western states, farmers and the like, worried about their families, thirdly the fact that most soldiers had little sympathy with slavery. Sure, they didn't have any particular love for the slaves, but why should they fight for the slaveholding minority when it didn't benefit them at all. By 1865 few confederate soldiers believed the rhetoric about 'states rights' that had so mobilised people in 1860. So far as they were concerned it was a 'rich mans war, poor mans fight.'

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Rich mans war, poor mans fight.
Someone scribe that in the Heavens!
300 dollars could buy your way out of the Union Army! or was it 200?
(6 months to a years) wages for the common man.
A Grand and Nobel cause can not be averted with money.
It cheapens it...don't ya think?
Those with money/power fight, those without die.

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Don't forget that you could hire someone to fight in your place as well.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Yes that is true. I read a book about Andersonville prison years ago and men from New York made a "career" out of taking other mens place for a price. They would desert as soon a possible and then go back and get anouther draftee to pay them.

Also what you said about western states not being too gun ho on the confederate cause is true. I have relatives that were in the 2nd Texas Cavalry and read up on them. The Cavalry was made up of farm horses and mules and they said there were over 30 different types of shotguns and other fire arms making it very hard to supply ammo. The people in Virginia promised them everything and delivered them almost nothing. The stores in the west did not want Confederate money in general and were not in favor of the cause, also in general. They did win the battle of Val Verde but after that they ran out of food and went back to their farms in Texas, long before the war was over. On the way back they had to eat coyote, snakes and what ever they could find to keep from starving.
They were not slave owners but poor farmers or sharecropers looking for a better life in the army.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

Spanish Texas did not allow any new settlers with slaves. Mexican Texas did not want any new settlers from the North. The Republic of Texas did not approve of but did allow settlers to own slaves because the majority of the new settlers were from tennessee and Kentucky. The Texas government was trying to raise the white population and thus allowed slave owners to move in. When the time came to secede from the union, it was for the very same reason of breaking away from Mexico, to preserve its own soverign rights as a state to govern itself.

What happened later and the changes that came with it are of no consequence when we are talking about why folks went to war. Each state was responsible for supplying its units with arms, uniforms and men. In the south, many a wealthy plantation owner, went broke outfitting their private units. Yes, the units were not standardized with various types of uniforms and weapons but this was the reason why. As the war progressed, it became worse since there was no industry in the South and because of the Blockade.
This is where attitudes changed for both North and South and the desertions took place. Initially, the farmers and nonslave owners did not join to get a better life in the army. They did it because of the euphoria of becoming an independant confederate nation. There were no wealthy slave owners in Texas. The slave owners were not have the long established history as those in the deep south. So their plantations were too new and small.

One thing that is certain, Texans could have cared less on the slavery issue and would have stayed out as a whole but they did not want to be subservent to a federal government.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

Now that I do agree with

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

A bloody business this conflict was.
Two fell to disease for every one to combat.
I just watched a show which said at Chancelorsville (a 3 day fight), that most of the casualties 18,400 Union-11,400 Confederate fell in the span of "seven" hours.
During that period, one man fell every second. Making it perhaps the bloodiest seven hours of Armies fighting eachother.

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

The doctors on both sides were overwhielmed with wounded and many died just waiting in the fields. They did not have anything to fight infection and more died from that. Then the "lucky ones" got to have limbs ambutated with no pain killers.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

for Stefan

North and South
Potential recruits were offered awards or "bounties" for enlisting, as much as 677$ in New York.
Bounty jumping soon became a profession, as men signed up, then deserted, to enlist again elswhere.
One man repeated the process 32 times before he was caught !
source....PBS film by Ken Burns

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Yeah, came across that in my studies last year. I was referring to the fact that you could offer money to people and they would serve in your place.

__________________
There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest had 30 horses shot out from under him, and killed 31 men in single combat.
He said, "I was one horse ahead in the end."

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight at the seige of Vicksburg.
17 to the Confederacy, and 22 to the Union.
If there is any one fact which tells of how this conflict tore the nation in half, I believe this may be a contender.

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Talk about hedging your bets!

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

A "tidbit" I found interesting...
At the battle of Shiloh all six of the division commanders in the Union Army of the Tennessee,
StephenA . Hurlbut
John A. McClernand
Benjimin M. Prentiss
William T. Sherman
Lew Wallace
and W.H.L. Wallace
Orchestrator's of one of the biggest monetary, time-wasting "Blood-baths", of that war, which in its end (a draw that ended where it started), accomplished absolutely nothing,
were All.....Lawyers !

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Lew Wallace is better known as the author of Ben Hur.

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Best Regards,
JW

One of the most innovative and powerful units in the Civil War has to be the Lightning Brigade of mounted infantry. Consisting of the 17th, 72nd, Indiana Regiments, the 92nd, 98th, 123rd Illinois Regiment and the 18th Indiana Battery of light Artillery, the Lightning Brigade play significant roles in a number of battles in the West - particularly at Chickamauga. This highly mobile unit also had the greatest fire power. It was issued with the repeating Spencer rifle, paid for by the Colonel who first organized and commanded the brigade.

The innovator and commander of the Lightning Brigade was Col. John T. Wilder, an engineer. The commande of his attached artillery battery, Capt. Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical chemist ...

Some friends (his wife) has relatives who "hail" from the Sharpsburg area, and on September 17, 1862 the farms of Hutzel, Poffenberger, and Middlekauf (her kin) were right in the middle of the battle of Antietam.
After being occupied, fired on ( both sides), and used for medical treatment ( both sides), and burial detail ( both sides), most sold and moved West.
Too much to remember I guess.
I'd hate to run a plow through those fields.....Hallowed ground.....from the Civil Wars bloodiest day.

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Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

I was surfing today and found this Civil War site that has a drawing of a novel anti shipping weapon. Scroll down to the first picture. It looks like it would work even in WWII.

Some of the letters are interesting to read also. Certainly not the Civil War Hollywood depicts in the movies !

http://www.pddoc.com/cw-chronicles/?m=200507

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

Interesting anti-shipping mine. Wonder if it worked.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!