The American Myth of the War for Slave Freedom
William Gilbert Goal. "To Hold the Line at All Costs", 1884
Bloody massacre
During the campaign of 1864, the Northern Union achieved decisive military victories over the Southern Confederacy. The Northerners were able to establish a naval blockade of the South, mobilize and use their advantage in manpower and economy. During the war, the North drafted 2,8 million people into the army with a population of 22 million, the South - about 1,1 million people with a population of 9 million. Fleet The North's strength increased from 90 ships in 1861 to 700 by the end of the war.
The most powerful blow to the Southerners was dealt as a result of the so-called "march to the sea" conducted by General Sherman's army. Advancing through Georgia to the sea, Sherman's troops occupied Atlanta on September 2, 1864, Savannah on December 21, and Columbia on February 18, 1865. On April 3, 1865, federal troops occupied the Confederate capital of Richmond.
On April 9, the remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
After this, other Confederate units began to surrender. Thus, on May 26, the Trans-Mississippi Department capitulated. This department included territories west of the Mississippi River: the states of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Indian Territory, and part of western Louisiana. The department's commander was General Edmund Kirby Smith, who signed the capitulation in Galveston on June 2.
The last Confederate general to surrender was Cherokee Chief and Brigadier General Stand Watie and his Indian troops on June 23.
The civil war became the bloodiest conflict in history. history USA. In total, between 620 and 750 people died (not counting civilians), hundreds of thousands went missing, and hundreds of thousands were wounded.
By the end of the war, most of the infrastructure of the South was destroyed and looted. A criminal revolution began, when hundreds of thousands of blacks received "freedom." According to the law, blacks received freedom, but de facto they remained dependent, as they were poor farm laborers. A period of racial segregation began, when wealthy white groups separated themselves from other racial communities with the help of property and educational barriers.
Source: Soviet Historical Encyclopedia. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ed. by E. M. Zhukov. 1973-1982.
The Myth of the War to Abolish Slavery
The main Western myth about the American Civil War is that it was a war over slavery. For the average person who knows anything about the war between the North and the South, it was a war to abolish slavery in the southern states, to free blacks. The South supported racism and slavery, and the progressive North, led by the noble Lincoln, believed in the equality of people and advocated the abolition of slavery.
This is a myth, an illusion, an information cover for the main reason for the war. The main cause of the conflict was the split in the elite, the weakness of the central government and the division of the country into two economically self-sufficient regions – the industrial North and the agrarian South.
There were virtually no weapons factories in the southern states, few foundries, textile or tanneries and factories. There was no shipbuilding industry that could build warships. Virtually all industry: factories and plants, shipyards and mines, weapons factories and coal mines were in the North.
As a result, the Americans fought for the future of the country: further centralization and industrialization, or decentralization, maintaining the division of the country into two different regions with two elite groups.
In the States, which were actively developing and expanding after liberation from the British metropolis (Why Slave-Owning America Rebelled Against Great Britain), two different elite groups were formed. Their interests contradicted each other. Their capitals and wealth were based on different spheres and branches of the economy.
A powerful industry and banking (financial) sector were created in the North. The Northern elite clans realized that the future was in the enslaving interest rate (finance) and the development of a powerful industry based on the exploitation of millions of "free" people (without chains, but beggars working for a piece of bread), migrants.
The agricultural sector, based on the use of both slave and farm labor, did not bring in such fabulous profits as banks and factories. The North needed to close its domestic market to the industrial leader of the time, the "workshop of the world" - England, with the help of high tariffs. The southern states, whose economy was oriented toward the export of agricultural raw materials ("cotton is king"), on the contrary, did not need to close their market.
Thomas Nast, General Lee Surrendering to General Grant, 1865
Predators vs. Aliens
This was a conflict between two technological structures and elites that were parasitizing on the population, both in the North and in the South. The capitalist economy of the northern states required an expansion of the labor and sales market, new millions of disenfranchised workers who would work in enterprises and become new consumers. The capitalist system in the North had reached the limit of growth. Further on, there would only be crisis and destruction. The only way out was to expand the controlled zone and to wage war, which would destroy the old order and allow the creation of a new one.
The Northern masters needed, on the one hand, to close their market to the more developed British economy, and on the other hand, to expand their zone at the expense of the southern states. The Northern elite needed new millions of workers, poor, landless and without means of subsistence, who would work for a meager salary, and new consumers. Slaves in agriculture could be replaced by thousands of agricultural machines, increasing the profitability of the agricultural sector.
It was also necessary to break the resistance of the southern elite in order to create a single centralized power that could soon claim hegemony throughout the world.
The owners of the industrial North needed to expand their system, otherwise there would be crisis and destruction.
Herein lie the answers to the causes of all world wars. The Western world, the capitalist system periodically approaches the limit of growth. To survive, it is necessary to defeat and rob competitors, seize their labor and raw materials, sales markets. Thus, the North defeated the South, created a single country and economic system. Before the start of the Civil War, the United States was in fourth place in terms of industrial production.
At the same time, the methods in industry were not much different from slavery. There was a sweatshop system, a form of production that allowed the most brutal methods of exploitation of workers. Workers were driven to death or made cripples, chronically ill people in a fairly short period of time. They worked from early childhood, and most often by the age of 30 people turned into ruins. Few lived to old age. At the same time, representatives of the elite lived as on average people do today - 70 years and more.
The power of plutocrats (rich people), bankers and oligarchs. A small group of rich people, bankers, owners of factories, newspapers and steamships became fabulously rich under such a predatory parasitic system.
To achieve this, they drove the white American poor to death, the white immigrants – Irish, Scots, Germans, Poles, Swedes, Italians and others. In essence, they were white slaves. Formally free, but de facto – “two-legged tools”. Without money, rights (the entire system of government, courts and press – under the control of the rich), normal housing, tools of production.
White slaves were not spared, fleeing poverty in their homeland, in pursuit of the American dream, more and more migrants came to America. The wave of white poverty from Europe was followed by the Chinese, who lived practically as slaves to the masters of the American empire.
The war itself fabulously enriched the financial and industrial clans. It was during the Civil War that the foundations for the enormous fortunes of the largest financial magnates of the USA – Rockefeller, Morgan, and others – were laid.
Homer Winslow. "Prisoners from the Front", 1866
The inevitability of war
The masters of the North needed the whole country and in the future - the first place in the world. The States were one of the leading projects of the Western world. The "Founding Fathers" were Masons, representatives of closed elite lodges and clubs. Even in modern history, almost the entire elite of the United States are descendants of clubs and organizations hidden from ordinary people. Representatives of the political, financial, and industrial elite became members of such clubs. Descendants of the richest and most influential families in the United States.
For example, Skull and Bones is the oldest secret society of Yale students. Among the patriarchs of this lodge were the Taft, the Rockefellers, the Bushes, etc. In such lodges and clubs, representatives of the American elite receive a certain upbringing. It is there that future governors, senators, ministers and presidents are determined. The game of "democracy" is an illusion of choice for millions of ordinary Americans. As you know, elections in the United States are always won by the wealthiest candidate who has received the support of most of the financial and industrial elite.
In the 19th century, the United States was just moving towards world leadership. Northern families needed control over the South so that the United States could enter the world arena. In the middle of the century, the richest gold deposits were discovered in California. This allowed the extraction of more than a third of the world's production of this precious metal. Thanks to gold and the brutal exploitation of white slaves, the United States began building a huge network of railroads. But to become the leader of the West, and then the entire world, the Northerners needed to solve the problem of the South.
The Southern states were actually self-sufficient. Southerners were content with what they had. They didn't care what the Northerners wanted. The Southern elite was quite different from the Northern elite. Southerners had no grandiose plans to conquer the world. These plans were based on the Northern Protestant ethic, which had an Old Testament origin. With the division of people into "God's chosen ones", marked by wealth, and the poor losers. Accordingly, the "chosen ones" were supposed to rule the world.
There was ample labor available for agriculture, the backbone of the southern economy. The main crops were cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and rice. Agricultural raw materials went to northern factories and were exported to other countries, mainly Britain. The southern elite was satisfied with the established order.
Interestingly, the slave-owning (Northerners also owned slaves) southern elite was in some ways even more humane to representatives of other races, nations and religions. The Spanish lived in Florida, the French in Louisiana, and the Mexicans in Texas. Only Anglo-Saxon Protestants could get into the northern elite. As an exception, the Dutch or Germans. Catholics were discriminated against. In the South, they were treated tolerantly. The southern elite included Catholics of Spanish and French origin. It is understandable why the southerners did not want to put up with the plans of the Northern masters. They preferred to rebel and create their own state.
"Freedom" from slavery
In the South, Negroes, as in the North, were "two-legged weapons", property, they could be sold, lost at cards or even killed. But in the southern states, Negroes were valuable property, they received food, had housing, their own plots of land. Often this was "patriarchal slavery," when slaves were considered practically family members. What did "freedom" bring to the blacks? They were “freed” from subsistence work, housing, plots of land, established everyday life and traditional life. They were expelled from the plantations, deprived of all that little that they had.
At the same time, laws on vagrancy were passed. Earlier in England, they dealt with the peasantry in a similar way. The owners needed land to arrange pastures for sheep. The wool went to the manufactories. Only a few farm laborers and shepherds remained. The rest of the peasants became superfluous. As they used to say: "The sheep ate the peasants." The peasants, deprived of their means of subsistence, went to work in the manufactories, where the living conditions were much worse and more terrible. Into slavery.
Those who did not want to became vagabonds, filling the city's bottom. "Bloody legislation" was used against vagabonds, beggars were branded, sent to factories, executed if caught again. Tens of thousands of people were killed. Others were thrown into prison, sent as white slaves to the colonies. The English peasantry was simply destroyed for the sake of "primitive accumulation of capital."
The blacks were deprived of all support in life, driven out of plantations, out of their homes. They got a wild rampage of "black crime". In response, whites began to create people's militias (like the Ku Klux Klan). A wave of lynchings began. An atmosphere of mutual hatred and fear was created. Society fell under the control of the plutocracy.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a fairly large contingent of blacks, both slaves and free, fought for the southerners. Already in the initial period of the war, large detachments of blacks (up to several thousand fighters) fought on the side of the Confederate army. According to various sources, from 30 to 100 thousand blacks fought on the side of the southerners. True, mainly in non-combat positions - carpenters, builders, cooks, orderlies, etc. In the state militias, blacks served in combat units from the very beginning of the war. Often blacks fought for their masters, were their bodyguards.
In the Confederate army, unlike the Northerners, there was no racial discrimination. The Confederates also had mixed units – white, black, Mexican and Indian. In the North, blacks were not allowed to serve with whites. Separate Negro regiments were formed, and their officers were white.
Most Indian tribes supported the South. This should not be surprising. The Yankees (the inhabitants of the northern states) had the principle: "A good Indian is a dead Indian." They did not consider them people at all. The southerners were more flexible. Thus, the Cherokee tribes became part of the southern world even before the war. They had their own government, court, and even slaves. After the war, they were promised access to Congress.
The Split between Elite and Society in the Modern United States
Overall, it was a terrible split between the elite and society in the United States. It was the cause of the war, not the war for the freedom of slaves.
This page in US history still has a strong influence on the country. At the beginning of the 21st century, they tried to rewrite it. To erase the heroism of the Confederate southerners, to forget the real reasons for the war in favor of political correctness, tolerance, and multiculturalism.
The United States is currently approaching a similar civil conflict. The elite, the states and society are divided over the future of the United States. Globalization or "America First" (Trump's Global Project).
Information