If I were a coach paid to recruit athletes to play at a university in Mississippi, I’d wince every time I heard the words “according to a survey by Public Policy Polling”. Because my peers on the recruiting trail wouldn’t be exactly kind to me with data like this:
-In Mississippi no group of the electorate seems all that enthused about the North having won. Republicans, by a 38/21 margin, outright wish the South had won. Democrats (39/22) and independents (49/15) side with the North but compared to those voter groups in North Carolina and Georgia they’re pretty ambivalent. Overall just 34% of voters in the state are glad the Union prevailed to 27% who wish the rebels had been victorious.
A few weeks ago we released numbers showing that a plurality of Republicans in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal. Democrats there think it should be legal by a 68/18 margin and independents do so 56/21, making the overall numbers in the state 54% who think it should be legal to 28% who believe it should be illegal.
Add this to the arsenal, too, and you’ve pretty much got a negative recruiter’s field day.
Get The Picture 
Once had a professor who had worked in Mississippi and he said they were so far behind the rest of the US in everything, that in some things they were actually ahead. He was speaking about conjugal visits for the prisoners in the state. He was a criminology professor.
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Ten posts in one day, Senator. Impressive considering this is the “slow” season!
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Sometimes I surprise myself. 😉
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“In Mississippi no group of the electorate seems all that enthused about the North having won.”
And to cap off a Monday, they’re really bummed by this
et tu, Haley thing
http://www.governorbarbour.com/news/2011/apr/4.25barbourstatement.html
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I’d love to jump in and make fun, but sadly, I’m sure that we’d be embarrassed by how many Georgians also wish the south had won the Civil War, and would also love to outlaw interractial dating/marriage. I’d like to think that the percentages wouldn’t be as high as in the great state of Mississippi, though.
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If you click on the PPP link, you’ll find that Mississippi is in a class of its own.
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Indeed, it is not quite as embarrassing, but still, you have to wonder where these people come from. Georgia said 62-22 interracial marriage should be legal, and 53-23 that they’re glad the North won the war. 7% favor the KKK over the NAACP. 54% aren’t sure.
Click to access PPP_Release_GAMSNC_0421.pdf
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There are to many northern plants to get a really accurate reading . If those polled actually grew up in the south the numbers would be just the opposite. After all the Civil War by many southerners is know as the War of Northern Aggression.
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Do people really call it the War of Northern Aggression?
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Usually only ironically. War Between the States is used more often, but most call it the Civil War.
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Thanks for the info. The northern equivalent (The War of Southern Secession) is used ironically too.
I don’t know the exact Bible verse, but it’s something like “the sins of the father fall on the children to the third and fourth generation.” My great-great-great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, which makes me the sixth generation, and if I have a child, he or she will be the seventh. This is insane.
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I remember when Miss’ippi held a referendum on changing the flag that the new flag was voted down in a landslide and, I believe, the majority of black people voted against.
Go figure.
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Sherman burned through the wrong state.
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The numbers regarding the desired outcome of the Civil War are the most interesting to me. I feel like they speak most strongly toward how effective those who support the “Lost Cause”* view of the war have been. I’d wager that a decent chunk of the 30ish percent of Mississippians who say they wish the South would have won, are not racist, but have just been taught a bastardized version of history. I know this is an ultra loaded subject, but from all my studies of that time period, the best summary of the War is the old saying: “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.” I’d encourage all Southerners, especially Dawg fans since he is a UGA prof, to read Dr. Inscoe’s work on the massive amount of Southerner’s in Appalachia who stood up to the confederacy.
*basically, that the Confederates were noble and stood up valiantly for an honorable cause but ultimately fell short
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And when you’re thinking Mississippi, who can’t help but remember again the winning entry in the 15th annual Faux Faulkner parody contest, “As I Lay Kvetching,” David Sheffield’s answer to the literary question: What if William Faulkner had written a script for the Three Stooges?
“As I Lay Kvetching, by William Faulkner — Stooges Episode .1632; Revisions by Mort Freberg, Abe Shineman, Paul DeMarco,
Curtis Ney; Eighth Draft, August 12, 1941.”
By David Sheffield
FADE IN:
INTERIOR: THE COMPSON HOUSE — DAY
She (the old woman, Mrs. Compson) had spent the better part of the morning waiting for them (the workmen) to arrive, yet they had not come; and when at length they drew the wagon into the yard and tied the mules beneath the scattershot shade of the water oak and climbed down amid the dust and moiling dogs to survey the house, she perceived to her dismay that they were stooges: two of whom were brothers (Moe and Curly Howard) and a third (Larry Fine) who claimed no part of their lineage but who was nonetheless of their ilk; come to wait, slack-jawed and splayfooted, before the great stair which led to the room where she (the old woman, Mrs. Compson) had retired; come with paints and pots of glue and damask wallpaper to cover them (the walls) afresh, while she (the old woman, Mrs. Compson) could only pray that they (the stooges) could refurbish and thereby sanctify it (the foyer) which now suspired with the age-old effluvia of honor and sacrifice and obduracy, still redolent with the wretched sweet scent of inviolability which they (her father and her father’s brothers, whose boots these stooges were unworthy to suck even so much as the laces of) had impressed into the very grain of the cypress balustrade upon which he, Moe, the eldest, now knocks — not obeisantly, not malevolently either, but indolently. Hearing no response, they break into something resembling song:
MOE: Helloooo…
LARRY: Helloooo ….
CURLY: Hellooooo …
ALL THREE: Hello!
CURLY: Nobody’s home. Let’s break for lunch. Nyuh, nuyk, nyuk.
MOE: Ix-nay! Put that away, numbskull!
Then Moe, aiming his extended fore and middle fingers, thrusting them into Curly’s eye sockets, heedless of the pain or even the surcease of sight this might inflict.
LARRY: Hey! He didn’t do nothin’!
MOE: Oh, yeah? Sez who? (This is not for you to judge or even acknowledge, this grievance between Curly and me, but is an old blood enmity which only we Howards can comprehend, while you, being a Fine, cant begin to plumb the depths of it. That is it. We are Howards and you are only a Fine, and being a Fine, you are not fit to regard us with anything more than sullen trepidation.) Now get going, lame brain. We got work to do.
CURLY: La dee, la dah …
At last it is Curly who picks up the plank, rough hewn and smelling of sweet gum, and — feeling the weight and heft and fiber of it — swings it innocently (bending to retrieve the tool, the ball-peen hammer dropped casually on Larry’s toe) and feeling the awful force of the blow as it (the plank) catches Moe upside his head and hearing the dreadful thunk of wood against bone and sinew, a sound the like of which he has not heard since his uncle (Irving) took them (Curly and Moe) to the park where he (the uncle, Irving) slapped with the blade of an oar the rotting rind of an overripe musk melon.
MOE: Spread out!
With his pliers Moe grasps his brother’s nose, twisting his nostrils inside out.
CURLY: Woob, woob, woob, woob, woob.
FADE OUT
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Dog in Fla. I love your stories. And you’ve watched you some 3 stooges.
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U.S. Senator Trent Lott spoke for many Mississippians when he said the United States would have avoided “all these problems” had Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.
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So are you saying that polar bears are off limits for the new mascot?
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Lost in all the BS rhetoric are some really thorny issues about the Civil War (a misnomer as a civil war is a struggle for control of a government and the southern states were just trying to get away from a government that they perceived as a tyrant). If you read up on the secession issue it was made perfectly clear at the Constitutional Convention that any state that became unhappy with being part of the United States had an absolute right to withdraw from the union. Representatives of several states, some in the north, specifically asked about that and stated that their state would not enter the union if they could not get out later. They were told that they could leave anytime they wanted. Also, before secession each state that seceded held a state election on that question and the secession referendum passed by a vote in excess of 80% or more in every state that seceded. The President at that time, James Buchanan, while he personally opposed secession of the southern states, took no action to try to stop the secessionists saying that they had a right to do so. It was only when Lincoln took over as President that the official position of the Federal government changed to one of use of military force to stop the states from leaving. In the late 1980s the Soviets were having trouble with certain countries that were previously independent, but which had been forced to join the Soviet Union, wanting to leave. Those parts of the Soviet Union were invaded by the Soviet military. The official position of the US government was that those people had a right to secede from the Soviet Union because of fundamental principles of democracy. Where were those principles in 1865 on the North American continent? Can you imagine the reaction of the present day UN and the military powers of the 21st century, including the United States if a government invaded its own territory and killed its own citizens because they had voted to separate from that country? The institution of slavery was a terrible thing but could have been resolved without the necessity of 1,000,000 American men, women and in some cases children being killed. That war is the greatest abomination that ever soiled the United States of America. How about a negotiated resolution to the slavery question with the Federal government buying all the slaves and then freeing them? Never even considered. The point is that a negotiated resolution could have been reached but for the failure of leadership in Washington. That old saying is true: The winners write the history books. If Pickett’s Charge had been successful slavery would have disappeared anyway by 1900 and people on this blog would be posting about how evil Lincoln was to start the war. The United States government we have today would not be the bloated imperial bureaucracy it is now, taxing everything it can grab and passing laws telling every citizen how to live even the most personal aspects of their lives. When the southern states lost, every state and the American people lost the ability to oppose the supreme Federal government now matter how bad it became. Just think about that.
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not to disagree with your thoughtful post, but the federal govt became a bloated turkey the day LBJ’s congress instituted the great society. At that point, the inability of this country to demand personal accountability, dignity, and self-reliance from all of its citizens ceased to exist.
I know, unrelated to the civil war but related to your closing statement. Now, so many are unable to oppose the federal govt b/c they are indeed slaves to it.
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Agreed on LBJ. But the seeds that grew to become the Great Society were planted at Appomattox. Everything else has followed as a natural consequence.
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While I appreciate the thought you have put into this, your logic fails at a couple of very important junctions.
1) You state “The institution of slavery was a terrible thing but could have been resolved without the necessity of 1,000,000 American men, women and in some cases children being killed. That war is the greatest abomination that ever soiled the United States of America. How about a negotiated resolution to the slavery question with the Federal government buying all the slaves and then freeing them? Never even considered. ”
The notion that the federal government did not work to compromise on slavery is simply historically untrue. From the founding of this country (3/5 compromise) to the Missouri Compromise through the many many compromises that occurred during the early half of the 1800s, this country tried to find a way. It couldn’t. Your statement that Lincoln did not consider buying the slaves and that buying the slaves and freeing them would have solved the issue is simply wrong. There is no evidence that the entirety of slave owners would ever have considered selling their slaves. There is no reason to believe a consensus of slave owners would ever accept the federal government’s offer to end slavery, despite being paid. Selling their slaves would mean the end of their way of life and livelihood, and the owners were not willing to compromise. The other option would be for the federal government to confiscate the slaves in something resembling eminent domain, however the federal government has no such ability to do so, nor did it then. Finally, if the position of the federal government was such that it believed people should not be considered property, how could it then turn around and buy people? Thus the solution you propose, while seemingly simple, was a historical impossibility.
2) You contention that “the seeds that grew to become the Great Society were planted at Appomattox. Everything else has followed as a natural consequence” is without any historical context or connection to the current time. The legislation you complain about (the New Deal and the Great Society legislation of the 1960s) occurred 80 and 110 years after the Civil War. Certainly the federal government could have expanded during the time preceding the enactment of the legislation, however the federal government did not do so and remained relatively constant in size. Instead, there is and always will be a direct correlation between the size of our federal government and the inter-relatedness of interstate commerce and communications. As the railroad, electricity, and the automobile expanded this country in the early 1900s, so too did the Federal Government expand. Further, the legislation you complain of has almost nothing in it which is a “state” issue worthy of secession. The WPA, the Voting Rights Act, and even medicare and medicaid are not issues that singularly affect a state or particular region. Instead, the two eras of legislation you complain about are federal in nature. The threat of secession has little applicability in a debate about the merits of those programs.
3) You state, “If Pickett’s Charge had been successful slavery would have disappeared anyway by 1900 and people on this blog would be posting about how evil Lincoln was to start the war. ” Wars have been been started for far less than the issue of slavery. Our own Revolutionary War was not over slavery but over taxation without representation, which we still consider a fundamental invasion of liberty. I have studied World War I, and I am not certain I can fully describe the cause of that war (approx 1,357,800 Americans died). WWII was fought to prevent us from becoming a nation of German slaves, to put it simply. Vietnam… enough said. I am uncertain why there is anything unnoble about fighting to end slavery in this country. That said, to state that slavery would have gone away by 1900 is misleading and speculative. First, there is nothing to guarantee that it would have gone away, and an analysis of Sharecropping in the South would suggest that slavery may well have continued well into the the middle of the 20th century had it not been abolished. Even accepting your argument as correct, waiting 35 years for an institution as vile as slavery to dissipate on its own seems cowardly to me. In stating that, I am not suggesting you or anyone that shares your view is a racist, and I understand your wish that the war did not occur and lives saved. However, as you state that Lincoln should have compromised to avoid the war, I struggle to understand how you fail to apply the same moral standard to the slave owners themselves. Even Robert E. Lee abhorred slavery, despite his efforts to justify it. If Lincoln is to blame for not reaching common ground with slave owners, the slave owners’ failure to abandon slavery makes them equally, if not more, worthy of blame for the blood shed in this country. My personal opinion is that the owners are more to blame, as I agree with you that the institution of slavery is “a terrible thing.”
Thank you for your thoughtful post, and I hope nothing in this post or my sarcastic comment earlier dissuades a civil discussion on the topic. I have absolutely no desire to discuss the merits of immigration or any current issues with you on this blog (nor will I waste your time with my opinions), but would gladly hear your thoughts over a beer at a tailgate.
Go Dawgs.
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My compliments to you sir on your thoughtful post. My suggestion that the Federal government purchase and then free the slaves was only intended to be an example of a possible solution not explored not an endorsement that such should have been done. Yes, you are right that we can never really know if the horrible institution of human slavery would have disappeared from the North American continent on its own by 1900 as I suggested had the South won the war. I do believe it would have simply because of the faith I have in the decency of southern people and that economic conditions would have changed making it feasible to no longer engage in that terrible practice. Regrettably, the war which so many in the South viewed as a second Revolutionary War will be forever tarnished because of its link to human bondage and I must say, rightly so.
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Given that the south was the bastion of liberalism and progressive government it is odd that the suggestion is that losing the war led to big government. You have to remember that the south was solid for fdr and JFK and lbj. It was only after republicans took advantage of the racism in the south did it become conservative region. Yes it was socially conservative always but politically it was not. We elected new deal democrats right up until integration. Then the south decided it was agin big gubmit.
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The Constitution provided for a system of checks and balances to prevent the Federal government from becoming too powerful, which is what the founding fathers feared would happen. One of those checks on Federal power was that the states could leave the Union. The threat of that happening was supposed to deter the Federal government from taking steps that the states would feel were encroaching on the powers of the states.That check was taken away by the successful invasion of the south by the Federal government. That is one reason that the federal government has grown to become the massive bureaucracy that it is today. The states cannot “check” its power. Witness the failure of the Feds to stop the influx of illegal aliens. Arizona is attempting to do something about that itself and the Feds are blocking that at every turn. Yes, the Solid South voted for Democratic candidates for over 100 years (” conservative Democrats,” remember) because of the hatred felt by southerners against the Republican Party for the war and also for Reconstruction, another illegal act perpetrated on the south. The South has always been a conservative region politically if you look at the issues, however.
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You are right. The civil war really did create a nation of slaves. And the Apollo missions prohibited us from reaching the moon.
If you can’t detect my sarcasm, you should, because I’m laying it on pretty thick.
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aren’t you smart Spence, going all Tommy Boy on us.
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I agree with Spence. Anyone who thinks that the southern states had a right to secede from the USA is a racist. I don’t know exactly why, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that from several sources, so it has to be true.
Sure, you could argue state’s rights and the 10th amendment and the ever-increasing power of a national government over every aspect of its citizens’ lives, but it all just equals racism, I guess.
Also, if you think Richt should be on the hot seat, you’re a racist. And if you prefer BBQ chips to salt & vinegar, racist.
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Who did I call a racist? Wtf?
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Oh don’t be crazy; we never went to the moon. Haven’t you seen “Capricorn I?”
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How about a negotiated resolution to the slavery question with the Federal government buying all the slaves and then freeing them?
A government bailout of Big Slavery, in other words?
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I suppose you prefer the 1,000,000 people being killed to the Federal government paying compensation to the slave owners for taking away their “property” (their word, not mine). After all, the constitution is supposed to protect against the government taking property from its citizens without just compensation.
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First Rule of Holes, dude.
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REL – I think you draw way too many unfounded assumptions as to where America would be today. It is simply unknowable.
However, I agree completely with the premise you offer WRT the states’ right to secede and the flimsy, hypocritical logic we use in condemning things like the Soviets invading their satellites to force them to remain loyal to the Union….of Soviet Socialist Republics.
I also agree that the North and the abject lack of leadership demonstrated by Lincoln and Buchanan get way too little blame for this horrid chapter in American history. That Lincoln, Grant and Sherman are celebrated so prominently in Washington makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.
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go dogs
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Mississippi: A land free of Yankee Interlopers!
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Look at the big brain on this Yankee
“After the war, the South embraced a mythology of victimhood. An important feature was the assertion that the war had been not about slavery at all but about state’s rights. The secessionists themselves were not so shy. In their various declarations, they announced they were leaving the Union to preserve slavery. Lee not only accepted the Lost Cause myth, he propagated it and came to embody it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dispelling-the-myth-of-robert-e-lee/2011/04/25/AFrXC1kE_story.html
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Post removed by administrator.
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Just so we’re clear on this, post crap like that again and you’ll be banned.
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Its sorta pointless to even get into these debates. The US is on a highway to disaster. Has been that way for a while and its getting worse at a fast clip …especially now. We have lost the identity of what this country was founded on. Past transgressions apply in every region in every country and every society going back in history. The Reagan era was the last time I had confidence in the direction of this country. Thank God for college football…
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PPP is a left-wing, Daily KOS funded hack polling group. The poll is bullshit.
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