Luis G said:
In the spirit of learning some, I have a few questions.
The south wanted to separate from the then Union, why?
Did the french supported the south/north?
Why the north didn't want the south to leave?
When did the conflict started and when and how did it end? (I'm guessing 1800s...)
Dixie, is that a person, place, movement??
I'll do my best to keep the vitriol out of it, but no promises.
1. Take your pick. Unfair tarriffs designed to line the New England industrial pockets while keeping the Southern states poor. States' rights, particularly over the issue of slavery but over many other bones of contention as well. Unfair representation in a central government that no longer represented Southern economic interests. Lack of railroad/industrial development. And there is one more key reason, which I hesitate to go into in open forum, but can provide more than ample documentation of its validity. I will mention it in passing and wait for Gonz to chime in, but never for one second discount the reality of it: The north hated the South, always had, and to this day still does. It's cultural, and goes back to Europe. There. I said it.
2. The French as well as the British verbally supported the Confederacy, but wanted slavery abolished first. The Confederacy ran out of time.
3. See answer 1. They didn't want to kill the cash cow. You can't grow cotton in Vermont ya know. As long as they got their raw goods cheaper than importing them, they weren't about to let us go. But they got greedy...or rather, had always BEEN greedy, and wanted to tax the Southern goods also. They wanted the money from both ends. Luckily for them, their bought and paid for president, the only dictator in the history of this nation, a wormy slimy little despot with a cute hat gave them everything they wanted and sacrificed the citizens of the Southern states as fodder for the northern industrial furnaces. Some hero.
4. The first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, but the conflict began years earlier. Some argue that it began as soon as the settlers got off the boat. New England and Dixie are settled by two distinctly different groups of immigrants who hated each other for generations. You do the math.
5. Dixie is a name, a place, and an attitude. It is a term used to refer to the Old South. We still use it as a means of defiance and identification. I can say I'm from Tennessee all day long, and 100 people will have 100 different interpretations of that. I say I'm from Dixie, and 98 of them get the same message.
Anything further, PM me. I'll give you more info than you want, and links to prove any of it you want.
