How would we have felt if we were "occupied" during our Civil War?

[liberalitch]

Sure there was a distinct possibility of French and/or British involvement..... BUT we were allowed to hash it out for ourselves... for the better. The Union and the Constitution was strengthened and slavery was ended.

It has become obvious that Iraq is going to have a civil war..... don't they have the same right?

[JuniperLea]

1. How would we feel

if some other country decided GWB and his band of cronies were dangerous and needed to be removed from office forcibly?

And they had bombs and guns and soldiers...

and nukes?

[Qibing Zero]

2. There's much more of a case against this administration now too. nt

[mitchtv]

3. get out the flowers

and See's candies:sarcasm:

[morgan2]

4. i'd donate to the war effort?

[BringEmOn]

5. ...or if several foreign countries who have been financing Bush's

massive deficit warhardon spending, decided to remove the Crime Syndicate from office...without firing a shot?

[robcon]

6. "We" were occupied after the Civil War

The South was occupied by union troops during reconstruction.

[raccoon]

8. That crossed my mind too.

Somehow, I don't think the citizens of the former Confederate states were thrilled with the presence of an occupying army.

[Meeker Morgan]

12. The South was occupied by union troops during reconstruction.

Indeed. And the "reaction" was the KKK.

And yes, they were terrorists.

[liberalitch]

28. Reconstruction happened AFTER the war.

We need to give Iraq the privacy to have their war..... if they're gonna.

The reason why they say more Americans died in the Civil War than in any other is because ALL casualties were american.

Lincoln never saw the Confederacy as a separate nation.... only a section in rebellion

[Walt Starr]

7. There are a few reasons why the French and British did not get involved

1) The slavery issue was a major showstopper here. It alone did not stop the involvement, but the way events played out, it did contribute dramatically.

2) The Union was able to be victorious at Antietam. This battle sealed the fate of the South, and the success is directly attributable to the fact that the Order of Battle for the Army of Northern Virginia (R.E. Lee's Special Order 191) accidentally fell into McClellan's hands. Even an incompetent boob like McClellan could not lose with that information!

3) With a victory at Antietam, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation without it seeming to be political desperation.

Those three things stopped the British and the French from joining the war on the side of the South, thus insuring the South's defeat.

One simple piece of paper wrapped around three cigars altered the course of history.

Had the events of September 1862 unfolded differently, there would have been a very different outcome and foreign involvement would have been all but certain.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

9. Actually we were

It was called reconstruction.

Folks around here in the deep south are still sensitive about it!

I guess it depends on which side you were on.

Personally, although I live in the south my ancestors were union.

But you are correct that Europe stayed out of it. Kind of. I think the British sided with the South quite a bit, but they stayed home.

[Walt Starr]

11. Technically, no you weren't

As the troops stationed in the South were Union troops, you were not occupied by a foreign nation. Once the South surrendered, they were part of the Union.

Now I could make an argument that you were occupied by a foreign government from 1861 to 1865 seeing as how the Union won, that makes every bit of the South Union territory during the entire war, thus since the government of the Confederate States of America occupied that terrirotory during the Civil War, that terriroty was occupied by a foreign (i.e. non-Union) army.

:evilgrin:

[DrRang]

16. Whatever. My Mississippi uncles were still pounding the table,

getting red in the face and yelling about how much they hated all Yankees 115 years later. No, the losers don't get over it as fast as the winners.

[Walt Starr]

17. I'm sure they were

I'm just putting Yankee spin on it. I grew up hearing it called the War of Southern Treason.

[Charlie Brown]

19. The South was divided into military districts and denied civilian rule

That's still an occupation, whether it was part of the US or not.

[tx_dem41]

24. Technically not true either...

although I couldn't care less about refighting the Civil War, the Confederate states were readmitted into the United States between 1868 and 1870.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction

[Walt Starr]

31. Still Union territory

They may not have been states again yet, but the land itself was still part of the United States of America, and were actually part of it throughout the war.

[liberalitch]

29. You are correct sir!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

33. Well I'm okay

with your position, but I'm not telling the goober across the street with the huge pickup and Confederate flag!

[Walt Starr]

36. I don't blame you

When I was in BCT in the military, the Southern boys had a problem with me answering their "War of Northern Agression" rhetoric with, "oh, you mean the War of Southern Treason."

:evilgrin:

They didn't take too kindly to that.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. I always thought that British 'support' of the south was mere

self-interest.

As long as the south was tied up with the war, British cotton fields in Egypt and India increased in value. Otherwise, US cotton, grown by slave labor, would undercut the British product -- it was in Britain's best interest to end slavery in the US, and to keep US cotton out of the market as long as possible. Best way to do that was to give tacit support, but no material support, to the confederacy, prolonging the war by giving the rebels hope for British intervention.

That would be right in line with British imperial policy.

[KoKo]

35. They had ties to the big plantation owners in the large Southern Port

Cities. The wealthy sent their kids to school in England and most of them had ties there through family. So that was one factor, too.

[Mabus]

10. We were too busy being massacred & defending our freedoms to notice

Of course back then "us" terrorists were fighting Americans here, not over there.

In the spring of 1864, while the Cival (sic) War raged in the east, Chivington launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne and their allies, his troops attacking any and all Indians and razing their villages. The Cheyennes, joined by neighboring Arapahos, Sioux, Comanches, and Kiowas in both Colorado and Kansas, went on the defensive warpath.

*******
Black Kettle was a peace-seeking chief of a band of some 600 Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos that followed the buffalo along the Arkansas River of Colorado and Kansas. They reported to Fort Lyon and then camped on Sand Creek about 40 miles north.
Shortly afterward, Chivington led a force of about 700 men into Fort Lyon, and gave the garrison notice of his plans for an attack on the Indian encampment. Although he was informed that Black Kettle has already surrendered, Chivington pressed on with what he considered the perfect opportunity to further the cause for Indian extinction. On the morning of November 29, he led his troops, many of them drinking heavily, to Sand Creek and positioned them, along with their four howitzers, around the Indian village.

***(Black Kettle raised a white flag and Chivington ordered his men to attack.) ****

With cannons and rifles pounding them, the Indians scattered in panic. Then the crazed soldiers charged and killed anything that moved. A few warriors managed to fight back to allow some of the tribe to escape across the stream, including Black Kettle.

The colonel was as thourough as he was heartless. An interpreter living in the village testified, "THEY WERE SCALPED, THEIR BRAINS KNOCKED OUT; THE MEN USED THEIR KNIVES, RIPPED OPEN WOMEN, CLUBBED LITTLE CHILDREN, KNOCKED THEM IN THE HEAD WITH THEIR RIFLE BUTTS, BEAT THEIR BRAINS OUT, MUTILATED THEIR BODIES IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD." By the end of the one-sided battle as many as 200 Indians, more than half women and children, had been killed and mutilated.
http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/sandcreek.htm

[sweetheart]

14. "All war is civil war"

For a self-described global empire, all wars on the globe are civil
wars in the context of GWB's amurika. Iraq is externalizing the very
action these criminals would rather take at home, to invade and murder
people to erode womens rights and establish their dominance. This bush
of thinking is very similar to that of a rapist.

So we are in a global civil war, a global post cold-war time period,
where no nation can be seen to openly rebel against the hegemony. And
the one with his chin out the farthest got hit. Much like a rapist
will claim that the woman had it coming for the way she dresses, the
pathology of the white house is one of evil, and expect civil war and
weak cooperation as other world nations disengage from a model of
perpetual war making as the basis of civilization.

It is to be defined by the basest amongst us, the thuggs are our new
global representatives, loathsome and sickening as it is, so against
the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Oh would the sacred unity of existance heal the torn hearts, but i fear
the damage is so great from this busy horror story, that to be american
will be to die broken hearted forever knowing deep down what could
have been if this ugly bush chapter had never begun, and Al Gore was
president.

[melody]

15. a lot of the "US" is still occupied territory

Texas, for one state, never formally became part of the United States. The US just moved in and set up shop, as per usual.

[Xithras]

23. California's the same way.

Look up the history of the Bear Flag Revolt. The Bear Flaggers took over most of modern California and declared themselves an independent nation (the Bear Flag Republic or the California Republic...the matter was never quite settled). Shortly thereafter the US military rolled in and, under the threat of execution, forced the California militia to replace their flag with the stars and stripes, and then forced the one and only President of California, a guy named William Ide, to sign documents dissolving his government and accepting the U.S. as the legal authority over the region.

The Republic of California was an independent nation for 23 days, a fact that's practically forgotten in modern history books. To read the conventional history, California was "liberated" from the Mexicans by John C Fremont (the guy who forced the surrender).

[melody]

26. Yup, I live here, but Texas is a clearer case of them "settling in"

California's history is more ragged on that front.

In point of fact, California was stolen by the Americans from the Mexicans who stole it from the American Indians who themselves stole it from whomever came before, and etc. But the USA definitely moved-in and took over without any formal resolve.

[Xithras]

34. Yes and no.

Technically the Bear Flaggers didn't steal much from Mexico. "California", at that time, was pretty much defined as the land west of the Coast Range up to San Francisco. All of the other land was considered to be empty territory that was simply administered by Mexico. When a bunch of Americans wanted to set up camp in the middle of this empty territory, the Mexican governor gave them leave to do so. After all, the thought went, what harm can a bunch of white guys do with swamps and desert?

When the Bear Flag revolt happened, the Republic of California only included the coast north of San Francisco and the inland areas of the Central Valley...areas that Mexico only nominally controlled anyway. Except for a few small towns that straddled the borders between the two areas (like Vallejo), the Bear Flaggers were perfectly content to let the "Mexican" part of California remain in Mexico's hands.

When Fremont took over, he decided that all of California should belong to the United States. He not only usurped the legitimate Bear Flagger government, but he invaded parts of California that the rebels had no interest in. If not for Fremont, San Francisco and Los Angeles would be located in the Mexican state of Alta California today, while Sacramento and much of the Central Valley and Sierras belonged to the Republic of California.

[Charlie Brown]

18. the South was occupied for 12 years and ruled as military districts

Southerners were given no leeway on how their economy/political structure was rebuilt, and were subject to very demeaning detentions, confiscations, and conditions before Union troops left in 1877. And many vulnerable Southerners of both colors were prayed upon by opportunists and entrepreneurs from the North looking for profit.

That's the main reason the South was in Democrat hands until 1970s/1980s.

[Bridget Burke]

22. Maybe Reconstruction was not thorough enough....

Union troops only left because of a political "deal."

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. Reconstruction was what turned the republican party from being

the party of civil rights into the party of corporate looting.

They learned how to do it while looting the south, then turned their attention to the rest of the country.

[melody]

27. great post - exactly n/t

[tx_dem41]

20. During our "new" Civil War, such occupation is regularly called...

for by some DUers on here. Its usually met with lots of support.

[slackmaster]

21. The analogy doesn't work for me

In Iraq, the civil war is being precipitated by the occupation and the expulsion of the former federal power. The USA's Civil War was precipitated by actions of several states. The federal government stayed in power the whole time.

[liberalitch]

30. No analogy is ever exact, I was just posing the question that many..

Iraqis may be asking themselves right now......
If your hosts begin to argue..... try to be helpful, but excuse yourself and give them the room they need

[slackmaster]

32. The problem is innocent civilians are being targeted

Another difference between Iraq and MOST of the US Civil War (burning of Atlanta notwithstanding).

Iraq is tribal warfare, not civil war.