RVHORN you are mistaken. The Civil War was about State right's versus National rights and which one would prevail. Calhoun's theory of nullification illusrtates the struggle. Slavery may have been an excuse to motivate Northern enlistment but most Confederate soldiers were fighting to protect their homeland not the institution of slavery.

Even if there was no slavery in the South, this war would still have been fought over what prevails, State Rights or National Rights. The Supremacy Clause had yet to be established.

RV Horn- History Owned

oh yea.. Gig'em Dixie.

I heard it too,but it sounded more like around the railroad. wait a sec, so does, that other school that thinks we are their rival.

Gig'em Aggies

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The University of Georgia - one of the most uniquely "Southern" states, which still has a state flag pattered after the Confederate Stars and Bars...uses as their fight song a tune written to honor Union Troops as they were "trampling" on the South.

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WRONG!!!

The tune was written, around 1855, by South Carolinian William Steffe. The lyrics at that time were alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and the song was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, taking on many sets of new lyrics.

Thomas Bishop, from Vermont, joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and wrote a popular set of lyrics, circa 1860, titled "John Brown's Body" which became one of his unit's walking songs. According to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about Civil War folksongs), the original lyrics were not about John Brown, the famed abolitionist, but a Scotsman of the same name who was a member of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment. An article by writer Mark Steyn maintains that the men of John Brown's unit had made up a song poking fun at him, and sang it widely.[citation needed] Though "Canaan's Happy Shore" has a verse and chorus of equal metrical length, "John Brown's Body" has a longer verse to accommodate the words packed into its line.

Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C. early in the Civil War, and Julia Ward Howe heard this song during a public review of the troops in Washington. Whatever the accuracy of Silber's and Steyn's accounts, the lyrics heard by Howe were about John Brown the abolitionist. Her companion at the review, the Reverend James Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song, and the current version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was born [1].

Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly of February 1862. The sixth verse written by Howe, which is less commonly sung, was not published at that time. The song was also published as a broadside in 1863 by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments in Philadelphia. In Howe's lyrics, the words of the verse are packed into a longer line, contrasted with the chorus's short refrain.

To say that there would have been a Civil War over something else had there not been slavery is idiotic. Please, do tell, what would we have fought over? There has been nothing before or since that we could not compromise on. States rights was merely an excuse to defend slavery, not the other way around. Without slavery, there would have been no fight. Either way, that song sucks

In fact, RV Horn, most of the rank and file soldiers of the south could never have afforded slaves and would have had zero motivation to fight for the right to own them. You have taken the very popular cheap-history route for evaluating the cause of the Civil War but it is highly inaccurate at best and disingenuous at worst.

Granted, the south was on the wrong side of the slavery issue. So were many Union slave owners. And its abolishment because the cause celebre AFTER the war was underway...but it was always a political after-the-fact justification for the war, not a premise to it.

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The Confederate battle flag was unfortunately co-opted by racist groups. It was not originally a racist symbol.
It never flew over slave quarters. It was a battle flag one identifying confederate troops fighting for State's rights not fighting for slavery.

The fight over State's rights versus National rights was the cause of the Civil War not slavery. If slavery had been totally eradicated in the South there still would have been a Civil War.

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What was the key "state's right" that the South wanted protected federally, and allowed to propagate into the West? Whether the individual soldier fought for that reason, is up to each man's conscience. There's no question what the Southern leaders in Congress were fighting about for 50 years. They immediately wrote the protection of the institution of Negro slavery into their Constitution. I could see why some might feel that the flag, regardless of the KKK's appropriation of it, is a reminder of some pretty ugly racism.

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The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution

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- Alexander Stephens

[This message has been edited by Clarke95 (edited 1/2/2008 3:30p).]

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To say that there would have been a Civil War over something else had there not been slavery is idiotic. Please, do tell, what would we have fought over?

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The major political struggles during the antebellum period focused on states’ rights. Southern states were dominated by “states’ righters”—those who believed that the individual states should have the final say in matters of interpreting the Constitution. Inspired by the old Democratic-Republicans, John C. Calhoun argued in his “South Carolina Exposition and Protest” essay that the states had the right to nullify laws that they deemed unconstitutional because the states themselves had created the Constitution. Others, such as President Andrew Jackson and Chief Justice John Marshall, believed that the federal government had authority over the states. The debate came to a head in the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833, which nearly touched off a civil war.

Sooner or later, the states' rights issue would have caused a Civil War. If it wasn't slavery, it would have been commerce or taxation or something else. This fight had been brewing for 50 years before the Civil War. Slavery was a part of the issue, but it is ignorant to say that it was the only/biggest reason for the Civil War.

What's this Civil War everyone keeps referring to...you mean the War of Northern Aggression!

Maybe if the dumbasses of the KKK would quit using the confederate flag, you proud to be southern boys to a fault could then talk about it not being used as a symbol for evil in the present day.

Until then it will always be associated with negative connotations around the world.

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"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women."



[This message has been edited by TxAginAz (edited 1/2/2008 3:58p).]

It IS ignorant to suggest that slavery was not an issue. But the Union didn't enter the fray to abolish slavery, its goal was to prevent the SPREAD of slavery into the new territories following the Mexican war of 1846-48, the Missouri Compromise and other expansionist acreage.

And even the great Emancipation Proclamation didn't call for the complete abolition of slavery, just that in the rebellious states. It was practicably unenforceable since those states remained in the hands of confederate leadership even after the war ended. The 13th Amendment ended slavery.

Tariffs played a HUGE role in the rebellion of the south - and S. Carolina was the first to secede right after the brutal Morill Act raised tariffs on northern goods being sent south. It was a whole-picture thing - southerners saw an attack at two fronts, both economic. Slavery, they surmised, was necessary to keep their cotton industry alive (it was the largest industry in the south). And now the north wanted to tax the bejesus out of their goods going south.

Slavery was always economic to the south - didn't make it right or moral, but that was the issue. It might have been solvable though peace had Lincoln and the new Republican Party not exacerbated the financial crisis with the tariffs.

Abolition is a good thing and the BEST result of the war, but it must also be understood in ITS context, not against our own views of history.