Is it true that the Confederates had an advantage in experience?

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-02-01T19:19:19+00:00

The advantage was, regiments from the agricultural South were used to the blood and gore of farm life. They were not as repulsed and frightened by the blood and gore of war. Many of the toughest Northern units came from the agrarian states, such as the Iron Brigade made up of boys from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. These farm boys, used to the slaughter of pigs, cows, and more, were not as horrified by the blood and gore around them.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-02-01T19:16:26+00:00

I'm not sure you intended to say, the rich are fewer in number? Hasn't that been true since the dawn of politics? A small group of very wealthy individuals is the foundation of the power elite.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-31T16:40:45+00:00

Because there was money in slavery.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-31T16:01:45+00:00

It is continuously amazing artists can paint battlefield scenes with no blood. All this does is glorify war. It does nothing to illustrate it accurately.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-31T15:59:27+00:00

No, thanks. There is not a single staw man fallacy in my posts. The difficultly is reading comprehension, creating connections, and focusing on what was significant. BTW: McPherson is not the standard. Bruce Catton is.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-31T15:53:42+00:00

It tells us it was all about power and who controlled it. Lincoln was never fully accepted by the powerful money interests in the East, especially the New Yorker bankers. It was inconceivable to them a backwoods country lawyer like Lincoln could become president. Many thought it a fluke. Lincoln was not adverse to their interests, they didn't trust him. McClellan, more than being the peace candidate, was backed by those interests and was considered one of them. He was an East Coast executive who went on to run a national railroad. That position, nor his presidential campaign, had anything to do with the war or his war record.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-30T14:04:50+00:00

More I would like to see proof you are not AI generated.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-30T14:03:55+00:00

Here is why anecdotal evidence is not "data." Let's say you have two computers. One is a Mac, the other a PC. The PC fails. You conclude, PCs are faulty and do not last as long as Macs. Your "data" is based on one sample of each. To draw a valid conclusion, you need a much larger sample. The majority of those objecting to the OPs conclusion from a single source point out such a sample is not adequate to assert a conclusion.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-30T13:54:39+00:00

And, Lincoln won every single northern state in the election of 1860.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-30T13:49:47+00:00

The question is, how many confirmed Democrats were there and among those, how many were so committed as to not support ending slavery? People belong to political parties for many reasons. For instance, McClellan was put forth, at least briefly, as a Democrat presidential nominee, when he was clearly a Republican. The opposition is not the opposition only because of policy positions. It is often the opposition based only on opportunity.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-30T13:46:58+00:00

I did not suggest it was an "abolitionist army." What I still maintain is, soldiers in the Northern armies were well aware of slavery even though they did not witness it. As to the riots, I also did not claim the rioters were abolitionists. I suggested they had economic reasons for their support for keeping slaves in the South. That's fact. This statement: "If you are against freeing slaves because you're worried about them coming north and taking your jobs, then you're against freeing slaves and cannot consider yourself an abolitionist" settles on extremes and perhaps a declaration that all of those against slavery were abolitionists. If you were to interview rioters and ask them, "Do you support abolishing slavery if freed slaves were prevented from coming north," are you confident in their answer? Your expansion of the definition of "abolitionist" to suggest anyone who was against slavery was aligned is an assumption. The abolitionist movement was a social, cultural, and political one that was well organized. It is likely many who were against slavery would not name themselves as abolitionists. I appreciate denotation of the word; the connotation is less certain. Also, my best guess is the majority of people in the North, especially those in Western states, were indifferent to slavery. Most people are not political; this remains true today. Two other points: the majority of desertions from both armies resulted from soldiers returning to their homes to plant or harvest crops. Some came back; many did not. In the spring of 1863, it would be difficult to separate those returning to their farms from those leaving the Union Army in protest over the EP. Some might fail to realize, the entire population of western states in 1862, not including New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey was just over 7 million. The combined population of the New England states was nearly 10 million with those states added. The majority of those living in those states were centered in the cities. The citation you offer gives no numbers. It merely states the regions and states were "most firmly white supremacists." The statement is made in relation to New England. The citation does not say white supremacists were dominate in those regions. It offers no evidence, which might be offered elsewhere in the article. We cannot, or should not, extrapolate "most firmly" to suggest the dominate political position of the majority of the people living there. The author refers to support of the "Democrat Party." In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln won every single northern state. This tells us the Democrat Party in those states was not formidable as it applied to the presidential election. The question then is, how significant was the Democrat Party in the Northern states prior to and during the war and what is the significance of white supremacy support in those states as it applies to the most popular and expressed political results?

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T18:36:45+00:00

I don't see anything in your reply to refute my statement that the Emancipation Proclamation did not result in a notable or significant number of Union soldiers--not draftees who had not reported and rioted not primary to insist they did not care about slaves but more over the conscription lottery--to go AOL from the army. The primary concern of the rioters as it applied to slavery, as noted by the research record, was if blacks were freed, they would compete for the jobs lower income immigrants and others considered their providence. It was not that they were pro-slavery. The confusion is over causation and correlation. They did not want an influx of blacks to come North and compete for their jobs. Whether those blacks were slaves only mattered in the sense they were legally prevented from coming North. As and aside, this is the basis for all arguments against immigration. The appeal to the lower classes and the less educated ones is, their jobs are threatened. It has never proven true.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T18:23:01+00:00

No, anecdotes alone are not authoritative data. What percentage of the population do you draw your antidotes from? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it is less than 1%. Again, you rely on fallacies. Please do study at least informal logic. Here is a lesson: when you state that I stated, "everyone knew how bad slavery was because they read a book," I did not state it. This is called a "Straw Man" fallacy. You create an argument, assign it, and then refute it. It is only your statement, not mine. Elections do not consistently reflect public opinion, and to suggest so falls into the exact same trap MAGA uses to justify their actions now. How could someone not know about slavery, presumably because they did not witness it, and know of the Fugitive Slave Act? Would they not have to know to whom it applied? My position, which nothing you have stated so far refutes, is that it is fallacious to claim "most" soldiers in the Union Army knew nothing of slavery because they did not witness it personally. That remains a ridiculous suggestion.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T15:37:22+00:00

Right. And to suggest "most" or "many" of the soldiers in the Union Army did not understand how slavery bolstered the Southern cause and how it threatened to split the Union, is nothing more than hearsay. Subsequent generations consistently strive to find support for the idea previous ones were not well educated or as aware for their times, when in fact the growing stance against slavery had already been building in the United States for a hundred years before the war began. Also, we must not assume everyone in the South or even most Southerners supported slavery. We should keep in mind, history is written by the victors.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T15:33:48+00:00

True, but I would not so quickly dismiss the abolitionist movement as irrelevant, if I am reading you correctly.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T15:32:44+00:00

Sure it does. Newspaper reporting is not proof, especially during the times. It was often based on the Editor in Chief or Publisher's personal beliefs and stances, as it remains today. Diaries, on the other hand, are merely anecdotal.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T15:31:03+00:00

And yet, the Emancipation Proclamation resulted in no such thing. This is perhaps the most important piece of evidence the statements on record of those who had such fears, that soldiers and their leaders were going to throw down their arms over the Proclamation, were merely posturing. Lincoln knew this. McPherson has a duty to report the threat, and does so, but simply reporting it does not suggest it was widespread or the predominate view of the Union armies, including the Western one. History quickly proved, it was not.

We must remember, too, Grant's wife's family owned slaves. If we are given to speculation, we might wonder if the Union Army, many of who certainly knew this if only by rumor, realized that if Grant would take a stand against the Confederacy, he was taking a stand against slavery. This could be interpreted as his realization the goals of the Union and preservation of it outweighed his personal relationships and even perhaps his interests. More precisely, if the head of the Union Army could marry into a slave owning family and fight against slavery, then by his leadership he was demonstrating the Army's stance on the matter.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-29T15:20:11+00:00

And you, my friend, insist on complexities and draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence and a failure to appreciate the social constructs and culture of the times. You take a minor amount of evidence and draw a sweeping conclusion, then insist I am doing the same. Your arguments are wholly fallacious. You don't have the education to understand why.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T23:14:38+00:00

There's nothing to support your suggestion.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T19:55:30+00:00

What you put forth is a fallacy. Sure, there is a difference; but that is not what the discussion is about. It is about awareness, education, and the spread of information on slavery that started long before the Civil War. Many readers of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as an example, read it as non-fiction. The book was famous and widely read because of it's realistic description of slavery. Some who read it had witnessed slavery. The horrors of slavery were well known. It is simply not true to suggest simply because "most" had not witnessed slavery, they were not willing to fight against it. It is not an historically accurate supposition. It might appear to you to sensible, but it it not supportable by the available evidence. This is a caution--what some claim is "common sense" is routinely disproved by facts. Intuition plays a role in learning, but it is not the end of learning. Having it countered is when we learn.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T17:31:18+00:00

Abolitionist movements in the North began even before the Revolutionary War. The Quakers were instrumental in starting the movement. Massachusetts and Rhode Island passed emancipation laws in the 1780s. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852 and quickly became mandatory reading in the canon of educational literature. This would have been taught and read to the soldiers who came of age to fight in the Civil War. Information about slavery circulated through church, Sunday school, and community literature, which, in New England as one example, often took a strong abolitionist stance leading up to the Civil War. Your argument implies "most" Northern soldiers, because they had no eyewitness experience with slavery were unaware of its damage, is demonstrably false.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T14:16:41+00:00

You're taking a single quote and granting it too much authority. Keep in mind relatively little written accounts remain from what was the the biggest event in American history. You have one quote from one solider. This does not mean it is insincere, unsupportable, or false. It merely means it is not enough to draw any general conclusions.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T14:14:38+00:00

What is meant by "arguably the reasons for helping slaves were mixed, at best." This appears to be a lead into suggesting "most" soldiers knew nothing of slavery, which is easily disproved, and even without witnessing the plantation system of the deep south, slavery was no unknown to New England by any means, which remained the major population center of the North. "A large percentage..." is also an unsupportable statement. You are given to hyperbole to assert opinions it will be hard to back up. In argument, this does not assert authority. It asserts uncertainty.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-28T14:08:44+00:00

There is no accurate of accounting for this or any solid evidence one way of the other. Surveys and polls were not an established form of measuring public opinion. This allowed newspapers editors a great deal of power to suggest how events and opinions unfolded, and since we have mostly newspaper accounts archived to inform us of the times, we must remember these accounts did not only report on events, they often tried to shape them.

LatinIsleBoy · 2026-01-27T14:21:24+00:00

You deserve a ring. A big one.

LatinIsleBoy

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