I don't know why anyone would find Kevin Hardwick's statements
controversial. One can see exactly the same process he describes going on
today with the resistance of old energy interests to the transition to
non-petroleum decentralized energy, most notably in the disinformation
campaigns against climate change. The rich of the South understood, quite
correctly -- my own family's documents make state it clearly -- that they
would be beggared if slavery were ended. Motivated by that fear they
manipulated and enflamed the mass, in the same way we see it happening
today, with pseudo-think tanks like Heartland Institute and its propaganda
against climate change. Whether it is 12 April 1861 or 12 May 2012, the
underlying human motivations are much the same.

-- Stephan


On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> To ask why individual soldiers chose to fight, as opposed to why
> republican polities chose to take their citizens to war, is to pose two
> distinct questions.  We should take care not to confuse the one with the
> other.
>
> Confederate soldier's correspondence does support the commonly heard
> assertion (as here represented by Mr. Southmayd's comment) that many
> Confederate soldiers signed up primarily to defend their homes and
> families.  Such an assertion, of course, by no means rebuts the argument
> that many of them *also* fought to defend slavery.
>
> But even if it was the case that EVERY Confederate soldier fought for the
> sole and only purpose of defending hearth and home from "Northern
> Aggression," that is irrelevant to the argument advanced by Paul Finkelman,
> Henry Wiencek, and others in this thread.  When it comes to the question of
> why the South chose to secede, elected representatvies from every single
> one of the Southern States, in written proclamations on behalf of the State
> governments, made it quite clear that their primary purpose in doing so was
> to protect the institution of slavery.  Unless we have strong reason not to
> do so, we should assume that they meant what they said.  Southern
> politicians chose to break the Union--a Union that earlier generations of
> American statesmen had proclaimed to be inviolable and perpetual--because
> they perceived such radical action to be necessary in order to preserve
> slavery.
>
> ___________________________
> Kevin R. Hardwick
> Associate Professor
> Department of History, MSC 8001
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [
> [log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jeff Southmayd [
> [log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 12:29 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of
> The Civil War
>
> "We often ask why so many southern white men, who did not own slaves and
> whose economic picture was negatively impacted by the competition from
> slavery, fought in 1861 to uphold an institution that did not evidently
> benefit them..."Pretty obvious they fought largely because their homes were
> being invaded by an enemy army.  Or as one Southern soldier in Virginia
> reportedly responded to a Northern soldier's question "Reb, why are you
> fighting" with "I reckon because your here."
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-- 
*Stephan A. Schwartz
Senior Samueli Fellow for Brain, Mind and Healing
email:
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