A Confederacy of Denial:
January 29, 2001 3:22 PM   Subscribe

A Confederacy of Denial: in which David Blight reveals the origin of the myth of the moral Confederacy.
posted by sudama (8 comments total)
 
After reading Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore, I had a better understanding of the importance to the Conferacy of states' rights. But the, later, I came to recognize through a book on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that Pres. Lincoln had essentially shifted the nation from the rights of individuaol states to the notion of a federal government and that the Civil War had in fact made the point--through the Northern victory--that we had entered a new understanding and that Lincoln first and foremost wanted to preserve the states as one nation.
Should we now revert?
posted by Postroad at 3:49 PM on January 29, 2001


After reading Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore, I had a better understanding of the importance to the Confederacy of states' rights. But then, later, I came to recognize through a book on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that Pres. Lincoln had essentially shifted the nation from the rights of individual states to the notion of a federal government and that the Civil War had in fact made the point--through the Northern victory--that we had entered a new understanding , and that Lincoln first and foremost wanted to preserve the states as one nation.
Should we now revert?
posted by Postroad at 3:51 PM on January 29, 2001


Good article, Adam, thanks.

In Australia which is also a federation of states too, we hear an awful lot (always from the right) about this magnificent thing called state's rights.

It just seems to me to be just an excuse for yet another layer of government and an excuse for some local vested interests to run things badly.

Personally, I'm far less interested in the rights of states than I am in the rights of people.

posted by lagado at 10:58 PM on January 29, 2001


Strikes me that this article is an underhanded attempt at an ad hominem attack on states rights by raising the ugly specter of slavery. Yes, slavery is wrong, I will not argue that. But to imply a direct association between that and the doctrine of states rights, as this article comes just short of doing, is equally wrong.

I firmly believe in states rights; I believe that our founders felt that the only way to keep government efficient was to keep it small, and therefore created a limited federal government with the majority of power directed to the states. But I do not support slavery of any form -- be it to a plantation holder, or to an IRS agent.

When dealing with states rights versus federal rights, you're looking at two different power concepts; states rights encourage all power to flow downhill, to the citizens, the people from whom all authority for power comes from. Once you institute a strong federal government, the power starts flowing uphill and collects in the hands of only a few, leaving the citizens out in the cold.
posted by jammer at 11:44 AM on January 30, 2001


I don't think it's underhanded, and I don't think it's ad hominem. I think the article is a direct attack on the lie that states rights in the context of the U.S. Civil War did/does not mean slavery.

And a successful one, at that.

There's nothing wrong with considering different structures of government. There is everything wrong with considering the Confederacy a noble cause.
posted by sudama at 3:25 PM on January 30, 2001


or so the theory goes.
posted by lagado at 3:35 PM on January 30, 2001


ahem, I meant that in response to jammer's comment:

states rights encourage all power to flow downhill, to the citizens, the people from whom all authority for power comes from. Once you institute a strong federal government, the power starts flowing uphill and collects in the hands of only a few, leaving the citizens out in the cold.
posted by lagado at 4:34 PM on January 30, 2001


trickle-down power? like trickle-down economics? sounds GREAT.
posted by palegirl at 7:07 PM on January 30, 2001


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