Also, I wasn't aware it was racist to say that some (I did not say many, unless my memory deceives me greatly) blacks did fight for the Confederacy. You know, because it's true.

I believe I was trying to say that "the myth of the loyal negro" was/is racist, and I'll stand by that. Merely pointing out that a statistically irrelevent number of negroes did in fact fight for the Confederacy is not racist. I apologize for any misunderstanding that sprang from my lack of clarity.

i think this is a good thread to post the new brad paisley / ll cool j song. it is the most offensive, bizarre song. why is ll cool j apologizing for sherman? why is a singer from west virginia calling himself "a rebel son from the south land"? you should all listen to it, it also features lots of civil war references for you history guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_qbt1EVuw8

I didn't watch it, but I read this commentary by Paisley which I thought was a little more thoughtful than what I usually expect from pop music:

http://music-mix.ew.com/2013/04/08/brad-paisley-ll-cool-j-accidental-racist/

As to why ll cool j might apologize for Sherman: perhaps, as an african american, he appreciates what Sherman did to free the slaves in the cotton south. Maybe he thinks that if you're willing to break up a nation and fight a war to keep 50% of your population in chattel slavery maybe it's the lesser of two evils for Sherman to burn Atlanta. Not an african american myself, so that's conjecture.

Flem, thats my point...there is no need for anyone (and especially LL) to apologize for sherman. I didn't mean "apologize" like "defend"; instead, he actually seems ashamed of Sherman, which is ridiculous. He also equates doo-rags with confederate flags which seems crazy. Give the song a listen (or the lyrics a read), its really very strange. I have no doubt that they both had good intentions, and I like Paisley in general but the song comes off terribly awkward at best and terribly offensive at worst.

Man, I don't even know what to say about that song. The only thing I can offer is that these are guys who haven't really thought that much and don't know that much about these issues, but they've got some kind of gut feeling that they need to make a song about it, so they do. Paisley and LL Cool J are successful enough that there's probably not anybody to tell them "no" if they're serious about it.

@ Frank - sorry, I mistook your point there. Also, outstanding point about a West Virginian singing about being a rebel.

I think I get the point about doo-rags, he's equating them as content-less cultural banners. But I don't think the confederate flag is a content-less banner in the way a doo-rag is just a cool thingy you wear on your head in certain cultures.

I guess I have a really hard time separating "southern pride" from the Civil War, which I consider (see above) to be about slavery. I have "Iowa pride" - 80% of my wardrobe is black-and-gold, baby - but Iowa pride isn't based on the fact that we kicked Confederate ass at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Whereas "southern pride" usually comes off as "we're rebels, by which we mean slave-holders".

Any southerners here want to explain what "southern pride" really means, since I obviously have some pretty negative prejudices?

FlemGem I meant to respond to this earlier but didn't for reasons. I think when we talk about southern pride we need to recognize we're really talking about a number of different Souths. Generational and class differences have a big impact on how people think about these things.

One example: There is a lecture series at a college near where I work (in the state of Alabama) that attracts, for lack of a better term, elderly neo-Confederate kooks. When the band played Dixie at the banquet for the last one, most of the old folks stood up, some with hands over their hearts. These are the types who can explain to you in some detail why secession was legal, why the 14th amendment was never properly ratified. A few years ago somebody asked why there are no scholarly books about the continuing northern genocide against the white South. This kind of thinking was more popular among an older group, and that group is dying out.

Among younger white southerners, there's much more of a mixture. There's a few but not many articulate and dedicate pro-Confederates, but not many. There is some of that The South Will Rise Again stuff, but it's less coherent and based on George Wallace-style resentment against economic and cultural betters as much as anything else; some of this is based at least partly on racism, but a surprisingly large percentage is not. Among middle-age and especially young adultish middle class white southerners, I think there's a considerable sense of regional pride that's entirely divorced from the Confederacy or any covert or even conscious sense of white supremacy. It's more pride in the South's superior cuisine, manners, morals, art, athletic prowess, and so on. This is often rooted in that Confederate history but more in a tragic sense than a glorious one. To the extent that this mindset thinks about race at all, it's (if thoughtful) a recognition that much is left to be done or (if less thoughtful) back-patting that the South eventually handled racial issues better than most of the rest of the country.

Great response, ck, that helps a lot. "It's more pride in the South's superior cuisine, manners, morals, art, athletic prowess, and so on." - great insight that helps me break down my prejudices. Thanks!

I try to be helpful. I would be interested to see if other southerners agree/disagree.

SEC football, baby!

This southerner agrees.

As one myself, somewhat, yes. I had ancestors that fought for Southern independence, and I can also argue the legality of secession etc. A lot of it is regional pride. A large part of Southern culture (at least the way I see it) is wrapped up in the Confederacy: independence of spirit and defiance to those who would subjugate us. Race, while I recognize it was and is a problem, isn't really an issue confined solely to the South or even to the Confederacy.

Many also look back on the days of the Confederacy and Secession as "the good old days," when we stood united as a people and fought for our rights on the field of battle. Many see where the South is now and long for much of the culture we have lost to return.

Exactly right, it is pride in southern culture.

So a question for any Southerners who care to answer:

I visited a small Confederate redoubt outside of Nashville that saw heavy fighting during the Battle of Nashville. The site itself is remarkably well-preserved, given the trend of historic Civil War sites to be built over or developed in the South. Anyway, there was a small information board, giving a history of the battle itself as well as a short biography on the commanding officer in charge of the redoubt. His biography ended with a wrapup of the end of the Civil War, stating that (not exact words, but close enough): "...the end of the war saw the destruction of state sovereignty, and the end of slavery."

Growing up in the north, I've always heard stories about "The War of Northern Aggression," but is it actually true to the extent that official histories overlook the slavery aspects and instead take a states' rights view of the cause of the war? The information I read at the site mentioned that many of the soldiers involved in the war cared little for the cause of slavery, and to a certain extent I find that to be true, although some of the first black companies in the Federal army saw their first action at Nashville, so I'm sure the issue wasn't far from their minds.

Any southerners care to fill me in here? Stressedlines, Gen. Lee, dipplayer2004?

In my opinion, yes. There were those who advocated secession and fought to preserve the institution of slavery. However, the issue was moot to most in the South--owning slaves was expensive, and the average Southern farmer didn't have a hope of ever owning slaves. It is illogical (to me) to believe that so many would fight and die for something that affected them so little. The North also had its share of abolitionists, but they were a small minority. Most Northerners went to war because they believed the South had no right to secede and thought that by bringing it back into the union (at the point of a bayonet) would best preserve the strength of the US. At its core, the Civil War was a fight over the balance of power between the central government and the states--and the states lost.

2ndWhiteLine, I'm interested in that term "official histories." What sort of official history says that slavery was not the most important aspect of the civil war? To my knowledge no respected scholars argue that slavery wasn't the reason; the real debate is over how exactly it caused it (i.e. did it kill the party system, fights over the expansion of slavery, created unbridgeable cultural differences, etc etc). Or at least, that hasn't been the case in academic studies of the subject in decades.

That doesn't mean that's what the sign at a Civil War battle site says, though. I am not familiar with the Nashville site but even if it is official run by the National Park Service, all sorts of other factors could influence the description of the battle.

And rs2excelsior, again, you are entirely mistaken about this. Much of that 12:18 post is either incorrect or misleading. The South went to war over slavery (although that may not be the immediate reason why most soldiers fought, since most soldiers in most wars don't fight, at least for long, for purely ideological reasons). Slavery was the defining feature of life for most southerners, whether or not they owned slaves. The North went to war to protect the Union and the ideal of republican government. That's not what the core of the Civil War was, although it's true that the South's behavior did lead to a strong central government in both the Confederacy and the Union during and after the war. I can point you to a dozen of academic studies if you are interested in more proof.

From my reading, I believe that many northern soldiers were fighting for the Union first, though there were undoubtedly abolitionists among them who saw it as a crusade against slavery. Over time, the anti-slavery cause may have gained a larger role, but I don't think it was ever primary.

On the southern side, I definitely think that the primary cause was to "resist northern aggression" and preserve their way of life. However, that way of life was overwhelmingly defined by the slave economy. While I believe the average southern soldier was fighting to keep those damn Yankees from telling him how to live, I hold the southern elite responsible for tearing the country apart to preserve their status as slaveholders.

@ 2WL - I think that a lot of historical sites merely pander to the lowest common denominator. Discussing the bravery and devotion of the soldiers on both sides is pretty safe ground for a two-paragraph plaque commemorating a battlesite. Sophisticated reflection on race, religion, etc., where there might be differing opinions, is usually avoided by the Parks Service.

@ rs2 - I guess we've been over this before, but I'll come back to it briefly. *Why* was there conflict between state and federal power? Sure, there were economic issues. But people weren't arguing over whether new states should be "tarrif or non-tarrif states", they were arguing over whether they should be "free or slave". "Bloody Kansas" wasn't bloody over tarrifs, it was bloody over slavery. John Brown didn't raid Harper's Ferry to seize duty-free goods. Dred Scott wasn't over tarrifs. There were several slave states that stayed in the Union, but there were no free states that went with the Confederacy, although I'm sure that several western states probably suffered under the same economic disadvantages the the southern states did (anyone know for sure about that? I'm guessing on that one). And if we're talking about cultural differences - which may well have been very important - the predominant cultural feature of the south was the landed *slave owning* plantation owner.

So yes, state vs. federal power was at stake, and honestly I think we went in a bad direction post-bellum. But the imbalance of power was only as inflammatory as the most heated issue, and that was without a doubt slavery.