The only good thing that came from the Civil War?

[SmokethatGreen]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

There was at least one more: The determination to never do it again, which we have certainly lost.

 

[code1211]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

There's that whole thing about the preservation of the Union...

 

[noonereal]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

What war is not about economics?

 

[SmokethatGreen]

There's that whole thing about the preservation of the Union...

People that say it was all slavery tend to ignore the California Gold Rush. And the Nevada Silver Rush.


I notice how you parsed that quote, leaving out the part that said "The only good thing to come from the Civil War was the abolishing of slavery.", typical.

 

[SmokethatGreen]

What war is not about economics?

Yeah. The politicians were more focused on helping people than helping themselves to money.

Just like now.

That's exactly what I am saying.


Blaze On.

 

[code1211]

People that say it was all slavery tend to ignore the California Gold Rush. And the Nevada Silver Rush.


I notice how you parsed that quote, leaving out the part that said "The only good thing to come from the Civil War was the abolishing of slavery.", typical.

I responded to your post. I didn't edit anything out of the posted quote.

I assumed that the comment about involvement in "theME" meant Middle East. That is nonsensical as a comparison to the Civil War. Maybe you were talking about Maine? That is still nonsensical but less so.

Care to expand?

 

[SmokethatGreen]

I responded to your post. I didn't edit anything out of the posted quote.

I assumed that the comment about involvement in "theME" meant Middle East. That is nonsensical as a comparison to the Civil War. Maybe you were talking about Maine? That is still nonsensical but less so.

Care to expand?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Lode


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_in_the_American_Civil_War


"Its main contribution to the cause came from its burgeoning mining industry: at least $400 million in*silver ore from the Comstock Lode was used to finance the federal war effort."

The Comstock Lode in Nevada alone contributed $400 million to the Union Army during the Civil War. How much is that in today's currency?

 

[SmokethatGreen]

What war is not about economics?

Here's something interesting ...

https://www.officialdata.org/1800-dollars-in-2017?amount=100

$100 in 1800 →$1,945.40 in 2017

Kinda puts that $400 million contribution from the Comstock Lode in perspective.

 

[code1211]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Lode


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_in_the_American_Civil_War


"Its main contribution to the cause came from its burgeoning mining industry: at least $400 million in*silver ore from the Comstock Lode was used to finance the federal war effort."

The Comstock Lode in Nevada alone contributed $400 million to the Union Army during the Civil War. How much is that in today's currency?

Oh! I see! You're trying to preach about something that has a tangential connection within this topic area and using this as a tool to make your point.

As with most cynics, you have confused the means by which anything is purchased with the reason they are purchased.

For your education and enlightenment, I offer the words of the man who led the war effort for the Northern States:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

[Bum]

: The only good thing that came from the Civil War?

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

That clearly takes first place...but, the repeating rifle and Gatling? How cool are those nifty little inventions....

 

[Zachariah]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

Even that is a severely tarnished 'victory'.

Letter written by Federal Chaplain and Surgeons, dated Dec 29th 1862, Helena, Arkansas:

General, The undersigned Chaplains and Surgeons of the army of the Eastern District of Arkansas would respectfully call your attention to the Statements and Suggestions following. The Contrabands within our lines are experiencing hardships oppression & neglect the removal of which calls loudly for the intervention of authority. We daily see & deplore the evil and leave it to your wisdom to devise a remedy. In a great degree the contrabands are left entirely to the mercy and rapacity of the unprincipled part of our army (excepting only the limited jurisdiction of Capt. Richmond) with no person clothed with specific authority to look after & protect them.

Among the list of grievances we mention these:
Some who have been paid by individuals for cotton or for labor have been waylaid by soldiers, robbed, and in several instances fired upon, as well as robbed, and in no case that we can now recall have the plunderers been brought to justice--
The wives of some have been molested by soldiers to gratify their licentious lust, and their husbands murdered in endeavering to defend them, and yet the guilty parties, though known, were not arrested. Some who have wives and families are required to work on the Fortifications, or to unload Government Stores, and receive only their meals at the Public table, while their families, whatever provision is intended for them, are, as a matter of fact, left in a helpless & starving condition.
Many of the contrabands have been employed, & received in numerous instances, from officers & privates, only counterfeit money or nothing at all for their services. One man was employed as a teamster by the Government & he died in the service (the government indebted to him nearly fifty dollars) leaving an orphan child eight years old, & there is no apparent provision made to draw the money, or to care for the orphaned child.
The negro hospital here has become notorious for filth, neglect, mortality & brutal whipping, so that the contrabands have lost all hope of kind treatment there, & would almost as soon go to their graves as to their hospital. These grievances reported to us by persons in whom we have confidence, & some of which we known to be true, are but a few of the many wrongs of which they complain---For the sake of humanity, for the sake of Christianity, for the good name of our army, for the honor of our country, cannot something be done to prevent this oppression & stop its demoralizing influences upon the Soldiers themselves?...

--Samuel Sawyer, Pearl P. Ingall, J.G. Forman

"My cattle at home are better cared for than these unfortunate persons."
--Col. Frank S. Nickerson, U.S. Army (describing condition of southern blacks in the care of Federal Army)

"Contrabandism at Fortress Monroe is but another name for one of the worst forms of practical oppression--government slavery. Old Pharaoh slavery was government slavery and Uncle Sam's slavery is a counterpart..."
"Masters who are owners or who have been brought up with their slaves [have an interest in them]; but what do government officers generally care how they treat these poor waifs, who have been cast upon their heartless protection..."
"But most of the slaves are compelled to work for government for a miserable pittance. Up to town months ago they had worked for nothing but quarters and rations. Since that time they have been partially supplied with clothing--costing on an average $4 per man. And in many instances they have received one or two dollars a month cash for the past two months..."
"Yet, under the direction of Quarter Master Tallmadge, Sergeant Smith has lately reduced the rations, given out, in Camp Hamilton, to the families of these laborers and to the disabled, from 500 to 60. And some of the men, not willing to see if their families suffer, have withdrawn from government service. And the Sergeant has been putting them in the Guard-house,
whipping and forcing them back into the government gang. In some instances these slaves have been knocked down senseless with shovels and clubs."

"But I have just begun to trace the long catalogue of enormities, committed in the name of the Union, freedom and justice under the Stars and Stripes.

Yours with great respect, Lewis C. Lockwood"

 

[Zachariah]

A letter from Chaplain Fisk, dated the 14th inst., to the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, presents some facts which are new. He says: “ There are between Memphis and Natchez not less than fifty thousand blacks, from among whom have been called all the able bodied men for the military service. Thirty-five thousand of these, viz: those in camps between Helena and Natchez, are furnished the shelter of old tents and subsistence of cheap rations by the Government, but are in all other things in extreme destitution. Their clothing in perhaps the case of a fourth of this number is but one single worn and scanty garment Many children are wrapped night and day in tattered blankets as their sole apparel. But few of all these people have had any change of raiment since, in mid summer or earlier, they came from the abandoned plantations of their masters.

“ Multitudes of them have no beds of bedding” the clayey earth the resting place of women and babes through these stormy winter months. They live of necessity in extreme filthiness, and are afflicted with all fataled seases. Medical attendance and supplies are very inadequate. They cannot during the winter, be disposed to labor and self-support, and compensated labor cannot be procured for them in the camps. They cannot, in their present condition, survive the winter. It is my conviction that, unrelieved, the half of them will perish before the spring. Last winter, during the months of February, March, and April, I buried, at Memphis alone, out of an average of four thousand, twelve hundred of these people, or twelve a day. One day we buried thirty-five. Those who have been gathered into camp this summer are quite as destitute as those who were on our hands last winter.” [/b]

The Daily Dispatch: April 27, 1864. Richmond Dispatch. 2 pages. by Cowardin & Hammersley. Richmond. April 27, 1864. microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mi : Proquest. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant provided support for entering this text.

The Daily Dispatch: April 27, 1864., [Electronic resource], Negro soldiers in the North

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war

Downs has collected numerous shocking accounts of the lives of freed slaves. He came across accounts of deplorable conditions in hospitals and refugee camps, where doctors often had racist theories about how black Americans reacted to disease. Things were so bad that one military official in Tennessee in 1865 wrote that former slaves were: "dying by scores “ that sometimes 30 per day die and are carried out by wagonloads without coffins, and thrown promiscuously, like brutes, into a trench".
So bad were the health problems suffered by freed slaves, and so high the death rates, that some observers of the time even wondered if they would all die out. One white religious leader in 1863 expected black Americans to vanish. "Like his brother the Indian of the forest, he must melt away and disappear forever from the midst of us," the man wrote.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5...page&q=contraband camp mortality rate&f=false

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War By William L. Barney

 

[Zachariah]

As in any Civil War encampment, disease was rampant and sanitary standards abysmal. Compounding the medical problems was the weakened state of many of the refugees when they arrived. As noted by John Eaton, a Union military chaplain in Mississippi, the refugees from slavery encompassed "every stage of disease or decrpitude [and were] often nearly naked, with flesh torn by the terrible experiences of their escapes." Northern benevolent societies contributed emergency food and military supplies, but the care provided remained inadequate. The mortality rate in the contraband camps hovered around 26% during the war.
https://books.google.com/books?id=1...page&q=contraband camp mortality rate&f=false

Southern Families at War : Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South ... edited by Women's History Catherine Clinton Historian of Southern History, and the American Civil War
Lucy Chase letter, 7 February, 1 April 1863, Swint, Dear Ones at Home, 42, 59.
Conditions in contraband camps only accelerated the high infant mortality rates of black children during the antebellum period. According to Wilma King, the chidren of slave mothers "died at rates twice that of their white cohorts,"
https://books.google.com/books?id=y...page&q=contraband camp mortality rate&f=false

Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War By Margaret Humphreys
In late 1863 the president of the Western Sanitary Commisson, James E. Yeatman, issued an appeal for funds to help the freedmen throughout the Mississippi Valley. He composed a pamphlet that reported on their condition with sympathy, although one might suspect some bias on his part in making their condition appear as needy and worthy as possible. Still, he had the following to say about conditions at You's Point, Louisiana, a site near Vicksburg. The camp housed about 2,100 people, and was under the command of D.L. Jones of the 9th Louisiana Corps D'Afrique. "There appears to be more squalid misery and destitution here than in any place I have visited. The sickness and deaths were most frightful. During the summer from thirty to fifty died in a day, and some days as many as seventy-five." Others put the mortality rate in contraband camps in the Mississippi Valley at 25 percent....

https://books.google.com/books?id=y...page&q=contraband camp mortality rate&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=5...page&q=contraband camp mortality rate&f=false

Map showing camps and work farms:

http://www.nps.gov/hdp/exhibits/african/images/ContrabandData_110128.jpg

I included the sources in the text, since some of the links may not work.

 

[Zachariah]

Given the North's control of the rivers and railroad networks, the above was entirely unnecessary; they could have been dispersed to smaller and far more sanitary camps , or allowed to flee north, but of course 'freed' didn't mean the same thing when applied to blacks; they simply were left to rot. After the war most stayed in the South, still not welcome or tolerated by their supposed 'liberators'. We know they had more than enough food to feed them since the North exported huge quantities of food overseas.

 

[SmokethatGreen]

That clearly takes first place...but, the repeating rifle and Gatling? How cool are those nifty little inventions....

I have, however, argued that the Civil War was over money. I've also provided evidence to support my claim. I've yet to have seen a credible argument to dispute that fact.

 

[SmokethatGreen]

Given the North's control of the rivers and railroad networks, the above was entirely unnecessary; they could have been dispersed to smaller and far more sanitary camps , or allowed to flee north, but of course 'freed' didn't mean the same thing when applied to blacks; they simply were left to rot. After the war most stayed in the South, still not welcome or tolerated by their supposed 'liberators'. We know they had more than enough food to feed them since the North exported huge quantities of food overseas.

You said

but of course 'freed' didn't mean the same thing when applied to blacks; they simply were left to rot. After the war most stayed in the South, still not welcome or tolerated by their supposed 'liberators'. We know they had more than enough food to feed them since the North exported huge quantities of food overseas.

Doesn't that part of your statement mean the North didn't give a crap about the slaves and kind of proves my point?

 

[VanceMack]

The preservation of the United States was the only good thing to come out of the Civil War. Slavery would have ended in a natural death, just as it has in every civilized country.

 

[Tom Horn]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

There was still slavery during the civil war in the north. Limited, but not abolished. As there still is today through confinement by either monetary control, or threat of violence.

 

[Zachariah]

You said



Doesn't that part of your statement mean the North didn't give a crap about the slaves and kind of proves my point?

Yes, it does; did you think I was disagreeing with your premise or something?

I also agree it was all about money, mainly the railroads wanting huge subsidies and free land, something the southern pols were dead set against, for obvious reasons; they didn't benefit the south in any way, the massive increase in tariffs needed to offset and pay for the north's corporate welfare programs would be a total loss to them. The huge land grants to the Michigan Central and Illinois Central only generated a lot more greed among financiers. these facts aren't even debatable.

Lincoln lost a lot of seats for his 'cause in the 1862 mid-terms because many thought he was going to emphasize freeing slaves over their interests; he only maintained a thin margin of support in Congress and the Senate because his personal private army controlled the ballot boxes in the border states and their votes.

 

[jet57]

Was the abolishing of slavery. The rest was all about the dollar, no different than the current US involvement in the ME.

Slavery was all about the dollar, so we really accomplished nothing. That is to say money still leads decrepit and despicable policies that propagate the thinking that created slavery in the first place.

 

[Tigerace117]

The preservation of the United States was the only good thing to come out of the Civil War. Slavery would have ended in a natural death, just as it has in every civilized country.

That’s what the founders thought—-however, they failed to take into account the fact that slavery had been increasingly embraced as a crucial part of the “southern way of life” as the years rolled in, with southerners convincing themselves that slavery was a good and moral thing due to the “curse of Ham” and other such idiotic ideas.

 

[SmokethatGreen]

Slavery was all about the dollar, so we really accomplished nothing. That is to say money still leads decrepit and despicable policies that propagate the thinking that created slavery in the first place.

You're comparing the open legal owning of slaves to today's underworld slave trade? They're nothing alike. To say nothing was accomplished when the North won is beyond r-tarded.

 

[jet57]

You're comparing the open legal owning of slaves to today's underworld slave trade? They're nothing alike. To say nothing was accomplished when the North won is beyond r-tarded.

Nope, not comparing that at all. I said that the mindset of owning slaves is still around today: a mind set of money above all still rules, so morally we've learned nothing.

 

[Oozlefinch]

Actually, I can think of a great many things that came from the Civil War.

First of all, it was pretty much the death of the older style of tactics, like "Napoleonic Tactics". Lining up all of your troops in open fields and marching them at an enemy was largely dead by the time you got half way through that war. Instead, what evolved is much closer to the "Trench Warfare" of the First World War. Troops instead standing behind barricades and defensive works, who instead of waiting for a charge across open ground could take shelter.

Medical is a big one. The Civil War is really the foundation of a lot of our medical procedures to this day. First was the creation of the "Ambulance Corps", the first modern military to have groups of soldiers trained to provide basic first aid and to actually whisk soldiers who were wounded from a battlefield and bring them to a highly organized field hospital. Prior to that, the general rule was to leave the wounded where they were, and to simply have soldiers collect them up after it was over.

It is also where Clara Barton created the first organizations which would ultimately become the American Red Cross. Originally the backbone of the Nurses Corps, then later she founded the Office of Missing Soldiers. After the war she combined these 2 core duties into the Red Cross, a mission they still conduct to this day.

But in the medical field the good things are vast. Anesthesia, field sanitation, modern hospital layouts (prior they were just huge buildings, where somebody suffering from cholera would be placed next to an individual with a gunshot wound). The first battlefield doctors became the basis for the then "modern" concept of "Emergency Room Treatment". Where individuals were triaged based on the severity of the injury. Also the use of bromine as an antiseptic, which greatly reduced the rate of gangrene compared to earlier conflicts.

Because of the Civil War, people of this country now think of themselves as "Americans first". Prior to that, allegiance was more to the home state than the country itself. As somebody who they were or where they were from, and they were a "New Yorker" or a "Virginian". After the war, identity transformed to the country itself.

The Transcontinental Railroad was built to help tie the Western States and Territories (California, Oregon, Nevada) into the US, so they would not possibly drift into supporting the Confederacy. This and the use of the Telegraph helped bind the nation together.

It also caused both the Homestead Act (which guaranteed land to soldiers after the war), as well as the Agriculture and Military (A&M) education system.