What side would you have taken?

[Gooeyswat]

Hi everyone, I think it would be interesting to know what side people would have taken during the war. I know this has been done before, and that most people would go with their state...but some would fight against their state. I know people from South would fight for North because of the whole slavery thing, but why would Northerners fight for the South. I'm not talking about back then, but everyones opinions now, and as if they lived back then. I am just interested to know what everyones opinions are.

[kepgeek]

I come from a mixed marriagge - my mother a fifth generation Texan and my father an Ohio yankee. I have thought of this question before. This Texan would go north.

[Natty]

"From North and fight for South"
"From North and fight for North"
"From South and fight for North"

Does your poll cover all the possibilities? Read it again very slowly and carefully. Did you leave one out?

[gettysburg man]

i chose from south and fight for north because i like warm weather but i would believe that slavery is wrong and that the sessecion crisis was stupid because it was the south who started the war. abraham lincoln even said that he would not declare war.

[dal1257]

Hi everyone, I think it would be interesting to know what side people would have taken during the war. I know this has been done before, and that most people would go with their state...but some would fight against their state. I know people from South would fight for North because of the whole slavery thing, but why would Northerners fight for the South. I'm not talking about back then, but everyones opinions now, and as if they lived back then. I am just interested to know what everyones opinions are.

I think alot would depend on how much I actually knew about what was going on. The basic line was "If you support slavery, fight for the South. Else, fight for the North." I think neither case is true.

But what would I have known then? It was a different time, and to many, north and south, the state, and the family were the priority, so I suspect that I probably would have joined a Northern Brigade.

[NuthinFancy91]

i chose from south and fight for north because i like warm weather but i would believe that slavery is wrong and that the sessecion crisis was stupid because it was the south who started the war. abraham lincoln even said that he would not declare war.


I think that most people, in a way get on their "high horse" when discussing slavery. I think that if you was raised in the South, during those times of Slavery that you more then likely wouldn't think it was wrong, because you would've be brought up in a time when it was accepted in alot of places. We have all been taught since the Civil War that Slavery was wrong. Some of America knew it during the time of the Civil War, but the war itself wasn't about Slavery. Ulysses S. Grant said himself "If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side". The war started because of Taxation, and because Lincoln won the election. The Northern states that were against Slavery wanted a tax put on Slaves. Just like America had the Boston Tea Party in the 1700's, the South and the North had the Civil War. If the Civil War was about slavery, then the Revolutionary War was about Tea. The North kept pushing and pushing, and the South took their weapons and took a stand on their beliefs.

The Secession was anything but stupid. If the South never fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War never happened, where do you think America would be now? Yeah the war was terrible and alot of good men died on both sides, but it had to happen to eventually shape "us" into the Country we became. Which looking at it now, maybe we shouldn't have fought because the views certainly have changed.

Nevertheless the South did something that they believed in, they fought the North and grabbed the bull by the horns and fought one heck of a fight. I would fight for the South because I think the South was right. The North had no right to control the South, and I would stay with my State and hopefully fight for Jackson and the 28th Regiment of Ga. The South may have lost but we put on one heck of a show. Who else can start their own Country with a Constitution, money, and a full government? Only the Confederate States of America :D

Lincoln said it best I believe, I'm sure he would take it back now but he said it and I think by saying this, the South was not wrong in their secession.

"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit."

[dvrmte]

i would fight for the south so i could shoot gettysburg man

[VolsnCards]

I think that you have to put this in the proper context. If you were alive in that time, you would have had beliefs similar to that time. If you are anti-slave today (who isn't) that doesn't necessarily mean that you would have been so then. Remember a lot of Union men were against fighting to free the slaves. A lot of people also don't know that there were anti-slave societies in the South before and during the war. So to think that the South were the big, bad, evil, prejudice bad guys that we always seem to be in the history books is ludicrous! That being said, I'm from Tennessee, if I had been born and raised in West Tennessee in the time of the war I probably would have been a "Johnny Reb".