I already directed a neighbor, who is a college admissions officer, to that page.  I hope she e-mails the link to others in her profession.  I encourage further dissemination of the contents and the malcontents on that page to any and all sources of consequences.

They think it is just about them, and they can’t even manage to pin their discontent on the real source of it: idiot bigot administrators.  They prefer a scapegoat who now has vastly more options than their lame high school and pathetic community can ever provide.  It will be interesting to see what happens if we push their tantrums into places which will yield a backlash.

Common sense would tell you that celebrating a war conducted so white people could own black people is straight up racist, but of course, the way white Southerners get around this is by pretending that the South just seceded for the hell of it.

Slavery isn’t the only reason the South seceded and fought in the Civil War - tariffs, trade, structural differences, differences in the levels of industrialization and development all entered in, and may have been more important than Slavery, which they had managed to protect under the old system.  To say this with such decisiveness is revisionist and minimizes the complexity of the politics involved, and makes it even more difficult to understand the entire cultural package of what motivates these jerks to the present day.

Photos of the prom Constance wasn’t invited to:  Straight girls kissing = approved. Girls wearing jeans to prom = approved. But an outspoken lesbian wants to bring a date and wear a tux? OMG EVERYONE PANIC IT’S TEH GAY.

I’ve known those jerks all my life.  They don’t know shit about tariffs.  However, they do like the idea of being the idle rich whose wealth is built on slave labor.  It’s the Southern version of imagining yourself European royalty.

I’m still stuck on Prom in early April. Isn’t Prom supposed to be an end-of-the-schoolyear thing?

You can’t just exclude people from an open school function because they might bring drama. That’s bullshit. I mean, what about that classic example of Greg leaving Lisa for Mandy and Lisa coming to the prom with Greg’s best friend? No one sends Greg and Mandy to a separate prom. Waaaayyyyy more drama than Lisa going to the prom with Mandy.

Mighty Ponygirl, my senior prom was on April 1, and it was freezing cold.

Ten years ago. In North Carolina. And same-gender couples were a total non-issue.

Again, I am forced to quote Get Your War On: “Are we fucking moving backwards in time?”

God, this is gross. That’s the only word I can think of. Their attitude is just foul.

Slavery isn’t the only reason the South seceded and fought in the Civil War

Right, and George Wallace wasn’t only a segregationist—he was really all about a principled belief in the separation of powers…

Seriously.

Sorry to disagree Ms. Kate but while those other things were contributing factors, sans slavery, they likee would have been resolved legislatively.  It took an emotional issue, like slavery (and race) to get people to fight and die over. 

Look at the difference in the wingnut reaction to Obama and Clinton.  With Clinton, they did their work using a judicial process and were content with Ken Starr as their proxy - they accepted they had to go through a legal process to get him removed from office and there was at least a semblance of respect for that office. (though the trashing of Hilary was abysmal.) 

With Obama, we’re seeing physical altercation and a barely held in check urge to individual and mob violence. ANd a total lack of respect fro the office. 

Yeah, it’s been over a hundred years, but human nature hasn’t changed that much.

Ah, but snowmentality, that was NC, which is maybe a decade behind the times. This is Mississippi, which is stuck in proximately 1935. Here’s to Constance getting the hell out of Dodge.

Come to New York, Constance!! :D

Never mind that there’s nothing whinier than saying that the prom is supposed to be the best night of your life and that no one should interrupt that with their demands to be treated like a human being.

“Well I am a woman every single day
I deal with this shit every single day
So sorry if you felt uncomfortable for a single day”
- Garmonbozia, “Breaking the Silence”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1QN7R3rYcw

I think she will, lee.  She was offered an internship to a non-profit charity and I think it’s NYC-based.  And that’s what happens. This sort of bigotry is creating a real brain drain on the South and in the Midwest.

“**Open Minded Readers Only**”

In the conservative up-is-down, black-is-white, right-is-wrong, world, you are only open minded if you open your mind to bigotry and hate.

I note that more and more of the links posted to the “Constance, Quit Yer Crying” Facebook page are supportive of her and/or are pro-gay. It might wind up getting taken down anyway since pages negatively targeting an individual are clear TOS violations, but it’s heartening to see this sort of net-roots action.

According to the Christian Bible, Jesus went out of his way to say, “...your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5: 45-45, NIV).

If the people who did this to Constance McMillen are Christians, I’m King of the Flying Aardvarks.

Bravo, Amanda.  Bravo.

Heck, a female classmate of mine in high school wore a white tuxedo to prom, and she was just considered to be expressing an eccentric affectation, not giving a reason to throw the entire school into a panic.

Amanda has it right—if the school wanted as little drama and controversy as possible, they would have acceded to Constance’s request and left it at that.

When people slap the Confederate Flag on the backs of their ‘74 Chevy pickups, they aren’t celebrating a strong opposition to import tariffs against industrialized England.

I’d take the argument that this was about ‘states’ rights’ more seriously if all the Confederate Flag people I ever met (in Montreal, to be fair, so maybe there’s some self-selection taking place) didn’t “just happen” to randomly be fans of Skrewdriver or Burzum.

Also, if you want to get an idea of how these vast wastelands devoid of adulthood and tolerance for diversity were formed, you might want to add James W. Loewen’s “Sundown Towns” to your reading list.

I would be ashamed to go to the “secret” prom if I knew that was the purpose of it. I wonder if there were ANY students who were out of the loop enough not to know that Constance was being left out? Probably not. Or if there were any students who stayed home because they didn’t want to be part of that? What about the other 5 students who went to the official prom, who were they? I’ve heard a few of them were “learning disabled” and “had the time of their lives”, but what about the other 3? And for all 5 of them, were they left out on purpose, or did they decide to go to the prom with Constance?

I also wonder how many of these kids will be ashamed of this 10 years down the road, or how many will become even more hardcore bigoted to avoid having to admit they did something wrong?

I wonder if they actually feel they are standing up for “values” or some bullshit like that—it’s not that they thought no one would find out about the fake prom, it’s not that they thought people would understand their “need” to have a fake prom and think they had a point. I suspect they don’t care what the rest of the world thinks, or even know the rest of the world thinks ill of them but to them that just proves the depravity of the rest of the world.

I mean, it’s one thing if the parents did this, and the kids had nothing to do with it. But if the kids supported her, you’d think someone would have said “oh, by the way, the real prom is the next town over.” It’s disturbing, since I really don’t think homophobia is natural, so their parents must have been indoctrinating them.

Here’s to Constance getting the hell out of Dodge.
Comment 9—Roivas

Dammit, no! I don’t know how she (otherwise) feels about Mississippi, and the area where she, after all, grew up, but if she (otherwise) likes the plac she should not not not be forced to choose between living openly as herself and living the lifestyle she wants. I’m a het in a progressive area and I can live how I like where I like. If she and I have equal rights—and I’d certainly say we do, or at least shoud—she needs to be able to also. I don’t have to move or hide and she shouldn’t have to either. “Getting the hell out” is not the solution.

Nor should she have to expend her energy on changing, since it’s everyone else who’s wrong.

Ms. Kate, repeat after me: slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery.  Thank you.

And let’s not forget the learning-disabled kids. This really turned into a way for the straight (and closeted gay) kids and their parents to showcase their absolute worst behavior. In a few weeks, if anyone keeps following the story, word will start coming out about the enforcement mechanisms used to keep doubters in line.

In late 1860 and early 1861 he Confederate states were often pretty explicit as to WHY they felt oppressed and were leaving the Union—the North and West had elected a “sectional candidate” (Lincoln) who represented a party that was a threat to slavery.  The “it wasn’t slavery, it was states rights, and tariffs!” excuses became popular in the South sometime around April 1865…

As South Carolina noted in their declaration in December 1860:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

I think I’ve come up with a term to describe smart people leaving the rural south to go to liberal cities:

“Bright flight.”

It’s like white flight, except the opposite.

I have to disagree, Ms. Kate. While the other issues you raise are important and serious, they caused tension throughout the preceding 80-odd years, and had never induced secession before. There’s no need to look any further than the declarations passed by the state legislatures when they voted to secede. They are very explicit about the causes of secession. The Southern states felt (rightly so) that the institution of slavery was under grave threat, and they seceded in order to defend that institution.

Ms. Kate, every state legislature had to pass some kind of ordinance or statement of secession.  There was exactly one issue which was mentioned in all of those ordinances.

Sometimes, the simple explanation is the true one, especially when it comes to conservatives.  It was about slavery.

You misread me Hershele. I see no reason for Constance to hang around such swine. I imagine that as a het progressive, you wouldn’t of had to much of a fun time their either in high school. Constance doesn’t need to change, I was just hoping that she’ll get away from the cretins.

Crap, edit button. There, not “their.” Doh!

This reminds me of the mean girls thing. That was the first thing I thought about when I read about this story, how these people (especially the adults) seemed to take such delight in excluding this girl and deliberately hurting her.

Anyway, I am just always confused by this right-wing insistence on jerkiness. I mean, yeah, you have every “right” to be an asshole, arrange a secret party with your friends to alienate the gay girl and make it clear she’s not welcome - but why do you want to do that? Why do you want to be an asshole?

I already directed a neighbor, who is a college admissions officer, to that page.

The one girl’s Facebook profile is linked (actually, I find that a bit problematic) and as of yesterday her wall was visible.  One of her recent status updates indicated that she wasn’t going to be able to go away as a private-school student—IIRC, she wanted to attend Syracuse, Webster, or Ole Miss (disclosure: I’m an Ole Miss alum & have links to the other two)—which leads me to suspect that she wasn’t admitted to the first two.  So her provincialism will remain mostly undisturbed, I suppose.

**Open Minded Readers Only** is going to be the head of all of my posts from now on, just in case I say something stupid and I need to accuse you of bigotry when you call me on it.

@ Woodrow 27 is, by the way, correct. The “uh, it was, um, tariffs” was an ideological concession made to Southerners during the worst post-slavery period in American race relations, post-Reconstruction to the mid 1930’s. It was included in textbooks because those textbooks had to be approved by Southern school boards. It has largely been jettisoned from high school textbooks today, but many of us learned it when we were in high school. There is an excellent treatment of this in Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, which, if anyone has accidentally missed it, is a detailed discussion of the deficits of American high school history textbooks (90’s era).

Why, antiope?

Why are Mickey Mouse’s ears so big? Why do baked loaves of bread develop cracks along their length? Why are Germans so blunt? Why is the Marianas trench so friggin’ deep?

Imponderables.

To me, this seems like a problem we’ve seen before of people who get way too wrapped up in the lives of their kids and basically go back to high school themselves.  It’s like the woman who got pissed off that her neighbor’s daughter was somehow disrespectful to her own daughter, so she drove the girl to suicide using Facebook.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise that it happened in a small Southern town.

Texas’s declaration is similar, although they also complain about not getting enough military support against native americans.

Why was Texas briefly a republic before they joined (and then seceded from) the United States?  Because Mexico banned slavery.

My daughter’s prom was nearly a decade ago now.  She went with a big group of girls and as a couple were not seniors they went as another girl’s date.  There were also several actual GLB couples in attendance.  No big drama in any of that from anyone. 
When I skipped my Jr prom, most of those going were straight couples, but a few groups of both boys and girls attended with just their friends.  As far as I know, they were just friend groups (I was new to town myself and not big on that kind of HS crap, I like other HS crap), but if they weren’t, I don’t think many people would have cared too much.  This was ID, you know a really red state of the inland west type, in the very early 80s.

The south is fucked. This is just MORE proof. We already have enough. Can’t we cut the hillbillies loose & let them have their own fucked up country filled with stupid?

It’s kind of cool that the person claiming that the civil war was not about slavery is the one accusing others of revisionism.

Ms. Kate, at the very least, you ought to recognize that “agreeing with the mainstream historical interpretation of events” is not revisionism.

The old story that the Civil War was about everything but slavery is a persistent apologist myth that needs to die.  Personally, I like the phrase - “Treason in defense of slavery” to describe both secession and confederate support.  (Not that I believe Ms. Kate is a southern apologist - I think she is remembering the dominant pro-southern apologist story that was popular for decades and decades in this country and yes, was written into school history texts and taught by teachers, well-meaning and not, for generations.)

In any case, if you want to read some declarations of secession for yourself, the Yale Law School Avalon Project, which is a vast and always growing online library of documents in law, history and diplomacy has four of them easily accessible, along with the Confederate Constitution.  (Linked above, but like I said, this is too important not to hammer at).

Georgia
Mississippi
South Carolina
Texas

and

Confederate Constitution

Slavery was the reason for secession and secession was the cause of the war. The secessionists of 1861 were quite clear that they were seceding to protect their right to own black people.  In some ways, I think to make up a whole host of other - “complicated” - reasons for them is to insult them.  They knew what they were doing and why, and they said so in plain langauge.

Agreeing with mainstream interpretations of events isn’t necessarily the entire truth, either.  Just because wikipedia says so ... you see?

You guys do realize that Slavery was practiced and legal in Massachusetts for longer than it was in Georgia, don’t you?  There is a colonial era plantation house and slave quarters in my neighborhood!

Oh, and Nell and others?  I never said that it didn’t involve slavery - I said that slavery wasn’t the ONLY reason the Civil War was fought!  To persist in the idea that it either was slavery ONLY or people are just lying/being mean/misinformed/racist is foolish and dangerous.  Slavery was part of a larger package of economic, social, and governmental institutions that the South fought to protect - just as it does to this day.

An intership to a non-profit will help Constance get experience, but it won’t pay the bills.
Has anyone experience with setting up a trust fund or scholarships so she can survive until she can find a paying job?

I’d be willing to donate.

I’d also mention that, while it’s true that there were economic tensions between North and South prior to the Civil War, those tensions were mostly due… to the South holding onto an increasingly archaic and inefficient form of economic structure with a death grip.  The South loved holding human beings as property so much that they refused to join the rest of the country in a post-Industrial Revolution world, preferring instead to remain what we’d recognize today as a third-world country.  Because holding black people as property was that damn important to them.

A question for those of you talking about the causes of the Civil War—

There’s something I never quite understood about the outbreak of the war.  Lincoln quite clearly stated that he was not going to disturb slavery if it meant dissolving the union, and arguably the South could have preserved slavery if it had agreed to rejoin the union prior to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

So why was Lincoln’s presidency the trigger for secession?  Was the South overreacting to Lincoln’s election?  That makes it sound as if secession was the result of a big misunderstanding.

Helen, my prom was open to singles and couples.  Couples got a discount, but you could form a couple with anybody you wanted - your brother or sister, friend, gay partner, etc.  My yearbook features several girls wearing tuxes. Nobody cared!  This was 1983 and 1984. 

They started the singles bids when my older brother was a senior, and kept the idea because the prom became larger and less expensive when they stopped limiting it to couples only, not to mention more fun! They still kept frosh and sophomores out, though.

Slavery was part of a larger package of economic, social, and governmental institutions that the South fought to protect - just as it does to this day.

But all of those economic, social and governmental institutions are rooted in slavery.  They formed the way they did because of slavery.  Jim Crow came about because Southerners wanted to keep black people in the same politically powerless position that they were in while they were slaves.  Pretending otherwise is just silly.

The South loved holding human beings as property so much that they refused to join the rest of the country in a post-Industrial Revolution world,

One reason for this was investment in large-scale slavery.  The other was a lack of certain types of natural features (such as water power resources near sources of transport) and infrastructure that pushed the north into the Industrial Revolution and out of slaveholding plantations most of a century after England.

It wasn’t until after large-scale exploitation of coal, a transportable and often Southern energy resource, that the mills moved south on a large scale.

Can’t we cut the hillbillies loose & let them have their own fucked up country filled with stupid?

Then they would constantly try to start wars with us to collect either reparations money or aid money to keep their nukes at home, to make up for all the handouts they would lose from Northern federal tax money.  They would probably sell weapons to the Taliban as well, denying/not knowing who they were really dealing with.

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

she should not not not be forced to choose between living openly as herself and living the lifestyle she wants

I absolutely agree, Hershele, but what you’re suggesting is that, instead of finding a place to make a life for herself, she stick around and fight, all by her own self, against the entrenched bigotry of an entire state’s worth of people, more or less a few. That’s a hell of a note, don’t you think? I don’t disagree that she should not be forced to the choice; having grown up three counties west of where she did, and having been forced to make a similar choice of my own, I don’t disagree one damn bit—some days I miss my home a hell of a lot, and some days only a little. Unfortunately, there’s a big damn difference in Mississippi between what should be and what is.

#49

Lincoln quite clearly stated that he was not going to disturb slavery if it meant dissolving the union, and arguably the South could have preserved slavery if it had agreed to rejoin the union prior to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

So why was Lincoln’s presidency the trigger for secession?

Oh, it was probably because he said he supported the status quo, but in their hearts they knew he was really just a Kenyan marxist muslim… I mean an abolitionist agent.

The south is fucked. This is just MORE proof. We already have enough. Can’t we cut the hillbillies loose & let them have their own fucked up country filled with stupid?

No, because the heirs of Martin Luther King are just as much a part of the modern south as the hillbillies and rednecks.

Why does nearly everyone on the internet think secession will solve problems?

Seriously, I don’t get it.

** FOR OPENMINDED READERS ONLY **

Lets have another Civil War. Seriously, it’ll be great!

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

False, and irrelevant.  People support institutions that don’t benefit them all the time.  Look at how many Teabaggers are violently supporting the right of health insurance companies to deny them benefits and drive them into bankruptcy if they get sick.

She was offered an internship to a non-profit charity and I think it’s NYC-based.  And that’s what happens. This sort of bigotry is creating a real brain drain on the South and in the Midwest.

More from small towns that aren’t centred around colleges. And I’m glad—their narrow-minded residents don’t deserve the benefits that come with diversity and creative class.

I don’t know how she (otherwise) feels about Mississippi, and the area where she, after all, grew up, but if she (otherwise) likes the plac she should not not not be forced to choose between living openly as herself and living the lifestyle she wants.

In a perfect world that would be nice. However, this isn’t about equal rights or the law, this is about an extremely screwed-up local culture that does everything it can to undermine and circumvent the law (all the while referring to itself as the source of “real patriotism”).

Let them wallow in their ignorance and bigotry. We may not be able to get rid of them politically (balkanisation is a bad thing), we may have to put up with their percentage of the vote, but they’re becoming less and less relevant as the rest of the nation leaves them behind.

Agreeing with mainstream interpretations of events isn’t necessarily the entire truth, either.  Just because wikipedia says so ... you see?
Comment #45: Ms Kate

In any case, if you want to read some declarations of secession for yourself, the Yale Law School Avalon Project, which is a vast and always growing online library of documents in law, history and diplomacy has four of them easily accessible, along with the Confederate Constitution.
Comment #44: nell

Ms Kate, your defenses of apologencia of the southern states treason are flimsy at best.  Rather than admitting that your argument of wanting a broader reason for the war is incorrect you bring in strawmen arguments.  Yale Law School isn’t Wikipedia. 

And even if people were citing wiki, just because it’s popular doesn’t make it wrong.  Wiki editors are geeks and take great pride in self and peer review.  If a Wiki article is wrong contributor’s peers won’t allow it to slide and will correct it with links and citations.

Now if people were citing www.statsoutofmyass.com ...

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

FALSE & A Straw-Argument!

Just as dumbfuck Rethuglicans oppose taxes on the wealthy, even though they themselves would benefit, people in love with dominance will vote for systems that perpetuate their fantasies. The majority of white, males may not have owned slaves, but they sure liked the idea that they could—and that they were somehow superior. Today, white males still think that they’ll all be rich someday, so better keep those taxes on the wealthy low! They like their fantasies more than reality…or morality!

You know, if this somehow wasn’t bigotry, if this was simply a matter of playing a nasty prank on the unpopular kids . . .

. . . it would still be pretty evil.

Last comment before I’m late for work:  one of the biggest problems with the United States is that we tend to turn our economic systems into religions.  Slavery is one example; the current example is laissez-faire capitalism.  People support these economic systems well beyond their usefulness to the general population because they become their own religions.

Non-slaveholding Southerners didn’t go to war because they wanted to defend their homeland.  They went to war because the plutocrats had essentially made slaveholding into a religion and defending slavery was the same as going on a Crusade to defend Christianity.  Southerners fought and died to defend slavery even though most of them didn’t own slaves because slavery had moved from being an economic system that could be discarded when it was no longer useful into a religion that had to be defended at all costs, even when it was hurting most people economically.

Ms. Kate, Gov. Bob McDonnell reinstated Confederate History Month in Virginia after it had been abolished by Gov. Mark Warner. What do you think his motivation for doing so was? What message is that intended to convey?

McDonnell claims: “There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Do you believe him?

Also:

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

True or false: the majority of the entire population of Confederate Virginia were slaves?

Why does nearly everyone on the internet think secession will solve problems?

I consider it a pipe dream grounded in prejudice myself. Even long before I moved South, it was clear to me that the South was a convenient scapegoat for ignoring the crippling racism in my own back yard.

At any rate, secession was a stupid idea in the 18th century when the south was economically dependent on exports to the Northern States and England, both of which dried up during the Civil War. It’s not going to happen today given how many people are strongly vested in civil-rights battles here, the increased economic interdependence on multinational industry and agriculture, and the messy fact that urban/suburban/rural cultural divides now trump regional ones.

MsKate:

No, the majority of Confederate citizens were not slaveholders. But slavery was the fundamental reason behind the creation of the CSA, and anything else involved traced back to it. It’s hard to really dispute that when people have put the actual secession papers in front of you.

Can’t we cut the hillbillies loose & let them have their own fucked up country filled with stupid?

It’s been a tempting thought for a long time, but it would mean abandoning all of the Constance McMillens to the whims of their bigoted neighbors, not to mention outposts of civilization like Austin.  Jim Crow was only brought down 45 years ago; imagine how much worse things might be in the South today without the federal muscle behind integration.  There are a lot of decent people south of the Mason-Dixon line who would suffer horribly if the rest of the country turned its back.

Ach, well, seems that would be false. That’ll teach me me to trust Yglesias’s math.

[Citing the percentage of slave-holders is still a straw man argument, of course.]

Slavery isn’t the only reason the South seceded and fought in the Civil War

I agree that it wasn’t a simple matter of “we’re fighting to keep our slaves,” especially since many of those who volunteered to fight didn’t own any slaves at all.

However, slavery was at the heart of what led the South to secede.  At the time, the question of whether slave states or free states would dominate the national government was _the_ hot topic, and the election of someone from a political party unfriendly to slavery was the trigger for secession.

Had there been no threat to slavery as an institution, there would never have been a war.

I state this without any qualification, speaking as someone who grew up in the South and grew up with all the explanations as to why The War wasn’t just about slavery.

The South had an economy that was based on slavery and a degree of wealth that would have been impossible without it.  Even those whites who didn’t own slaves benefitted from slavery—or thought they did.  Even if they didn’t get material benefits and were in fact worse off because of slavery, they felt proud of being part of a society in which the Fine Folks were so fine, unlike those honorless Yankees.  Moreover, even those who might not have cared all that much about slavery got upset at the idea of “outsiders” telling them how to run their affairs—an attitude that was very much alive 100 years later, during the Civil Rights era.  It helped that the slave owners (cf. Jefferson, Lee, Davis, etc.) were the leaders and opinion-makers in Southern society (as their descendants are today), and it’s obvious what they would say.

If this makes the non-slave-owning pro-secession Southerners sound a lot like modern Tea-Partiers—well, to quote Heinrich Böll, “similarities ... are neither accidental nor intentional, but unavoidable.”

So why was Lincoln’s presidency the trigger for secession?  Was the South overreacting to Lincoln’s election?

The South wanted to expand slavery into new territories (see, e.g., the Missouri Compromise, the annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas/Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott . . .).  Lincoln was opposed to that, and moreover, it was clear that the South didn’t have enough votes in Congress to pull expansion off. 

The South in particular was looking for enough new slave states to keep a balance of power in the Senate.

I already directed a neighbor, who is a college admissions officer, to that page.  I hope she e-mails the link to others in her profession.  I encourage further dissemination of the contents and the malcontents on that page to any and all sources of consequences.

The idea that most of the kids that participated in all this are going to college, or that virtually ANY of them are going to big elite schools in the Northeast where participating in something like this would shed a bad light, is laughable.

I’d guess, if Fulton, MS, is anything like the town I grew up in (which it seems to be, if Matt T’s description in the previous thread is accurate), about 30% of the kids at this school are headed for college in the fall.  And the vast majority of them are probably going to minor universities within Mississippi.  A lucky few will be attending Ole Miss, or maybe LSU, Georgia State, or Texas A&M;*.  There might be one or two kids going to a college that is not part of the land grant system, or not in the deep south.  Maybe the richest kid in school is going to Duke or Tulane, or somebody got a freak scholarship to one of the big midwestern state schools. 

And, sure, maybe the 2 or 3 kids going to schools with more rigorous admissions standards than “are you reasonably literate?” will get slaps on the wrist for this, if the schools they’re going to have a liberal bent or feel that their acceptance of this student could be be bad PR.  But the vast majority of these kids are going to face zero consequences, which is why they’re so comfortable shouting it to the world on facebook.  Most of these kids are going to spend their whole lives in communities which will APPLAUD THEM for this behavior.

*In all seriousness, my goal, as an extremely bright student with exceptional achievements under my belt, attending one of the top rated high schools in Louisiana, was “to go to college out of state”.  And this was considered sort of cocky by other students in my same situation.  And outrageously beyond belief arrogant by people not in the ivory tower of gifted programs and magnet schools.

Ms. Kate, whether or not the majority of the Southern electorate owned slaves is important, but not as important as how many among the electorate were involved in the slave economy and slavery-based white supremacist culture.  Thanks to that culture and that economy—which also served to maintain inequities among Southern whites—a white Southerner who owned no slaves (and may even have been illiterate and poor) was still freer and could imagine himself better than any Southern negro.  Indeed, his livelihood may well have been dependent on the slave economy, even as that economy and the associated caste system served to oppress him.  All that may not have been enough to fight and die for on its own, but it represented a very powerful and sturdy conceptualization upon which other rationalizations and reasons could be supported.

I’m not sure why Ms. Kate and a handful of others are mixing it up on slavery.  I don’t hear you saying radically different things.  Ms. Kate is saying the causes of the Civil War are complex and involve more than just slavery.  Mnemonsyne, amongst others, is saying several dynamics were are play, and that because of the pervasive nature of the slave system all of them were rooted in or related to slavery.

These don’t seem to be contradictory.

Eh, people say states rights, states rights, but it was more don’t tell us we can’t have slaves. *Then again, maybe I am mixing up the sort of current attitude I sometimes see ‘Don’t tell us what to do, even if what you said makes sense!” and history. Anyway, I’m probably just offended at folks who say the mighty MS can’t power things…*siiigh*

Ach, well, seems that would be false. That’ll teach me me to trust Yglesias’s math.

No, you were correct. Remember that after the 1860 census, Virginia split into Confederate Virginia and West Virginia. Confederate Virginia was majority slave, once the whites of west Virginia joined up with the Union.

There is a big difference between the casues of the war, and the reasons individuals participated in the war.  Many Southerners, basically decent people, went to war because their neighbors did, or because they were conscripted, or because those people from up there were down here burning houses.  But the war was about slavery.

If a Wiki article is wrong contributor’s peers won’t allow it to slide and will correct it with links and citations.

Not to disagree with your larger point, but this isn’t necessarily true.  It really depends very strongly on the article.  I’d say, though, that articles that arouse strong feelings among large numbers of English-speakers, this is generally true.  Articles on subjects geeks like (sci-fi, video games, etc.) tend to be really detailed, but often lacking in critical discussion.  Articles on subjects few people are interested in (especially in history and the humanities) will often be pretty bare bones, and sometimes contain inaccuracies just because nobody’s gotten around to removing them.  Articles on subjects that arouse strong feelings among large numbers of non-English speakers are probably the worst - it becomes difficult to even work out what the truth is in obscure Balkan nationalist disputes, so the articles often become filled with propaganda from one side or the other (or, in some cases, from both sides).

Wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool, but you have to be aware of how to use it.  Articles on the American Civil War should generally be pretty good, though.  And Ms. Kate is certainly wrong.  I don’t think any historian of the last 50 or 60 years has given much credibility to the “it was the tariff!” business.  Because it absolutely wasn’t the tariff, or, really, any other issue unrelated to slavery.

Thanks Linnaeus.  That’s a good explanation.

Oh, it was probably because he said he supported the status quo, but in their hearts they knew he was really just a Kenyan marxist muslim… I mean an abolitionist agent.

That is, essentially, the right answer (according to Bruce Catton’s history).  They believed that Lincoln was too susceptible to suasion by the Radical (“Black”) Republicans, despite his centrist and conciliatory rhetoric, and would eventually capitulate to their efforts to constrain and confine and ultimately abolish slavery.  The secessionist leadership felt that the cultural gulf between themselves and the Radical Republicans was too wide to be bridged; the abolition of slavery would mean the end of their way of life.  And really, they were right in that.  Every step along the path to secession was practically preordained because of the intransigence of the Southern aristocracy.

Reading Catton’s work, it’s unnerving to note the similarities between the actions of the secessionists of 1860 and the Tea Partiers today.  And it’s similarly eerie to note the headlong way the South careened towards secession, practically heedless of the consequences and the implications of trying to establish an independent nation; there was much in common with how the Bush Administration and the neocons leapt headlong into invasion and nation-building in Iraq.

Can’t we cut the hillbillies loose & let them have their own fucked up country filled with stupid?

Hillbillies? You mean like in Kentucky and West Virginia? You mean the people in East Tennessee who elected Andrew Johnson, a Republican, as senator and left him in Washington when the flatlander fucks in the west of the state seceded? Hillbillies are from Appalachia and Appalachia remained steadfastly loyal to the Union. Ain’t no god damed plantations in the fucking hills.

As for the redneck crackers in the lowland south, cutting them lose also entails cutting lose 54% of the black population in America. Not sure we want to go there.

Or, what rea said much more succinctly than I did.

Or, what Linnaeus said better and in more detail than I did. 

So why was Lincoln’s presidency the trigger for secession?  Was the South overreacting to Lincoln’s election?  That makes it sound as if secession was the result of a big misunderstanding.

Lincoln was opposed to the spread of slavery into the recently acquired western territories and states.  His opposition to the Mexican-American War as a Congressman was based on his belief that the purpose of the war was to expand slavery (he had some justification for believing this).  Slave owning interests, on the other hand, believed that slavery had to keep expanding in order to continue to exist—again, with some justification, since the disproportion presence of slave states in the Senate was viewed as one of the main bulwarks against abolition. 

Also, I think there was a healthy dose of paranoia on the part of the southerners, who were convinced that Lincoln was coming to take their <strike>guns</strike> <strike>bibles</strike> slaves at any minute.  He was sort of the Obama of his time in that sense.

There’s something I never quite understood about the outbreak of the war.  Lincoln quite clearly stated that he was not going to disturb slavery if it meant dissolving the union, and arguably the South could have preserved slavery if it had agreed to rejoin the union prior to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Many people Amanda refers to in her post don’t merely want you to accept their lifestyles, they demand that you validate and show respect for them by participating in the same things. In some communities, it’s not enough that you accept that your neighbors like to hunt, you need to hunt too, otherwise it must be that you look down on then.

Likewise with slavery: the South ultimately felt that it wasn’t enough for slavery to be accepted in their states—they felt that the rest of the country needed to endorse and spread that economic way of life.

Why does nearly everyone on the internet think secession will solve problems?

Secession is treason.  When you have people who claim they are “real Americans” and “true Patriot” screaming for treason, what you have is adults having a temper tantrum.

The general response to children having temper tantrums and screaming ridiculous things is to tell them to go ahead and do it.  Because it’s not even remotely possible, and if they try—be it running away forever! or seceding—it won’t remotely be the paradise they imagine.

They cannot secede.  We fought a war proving that.  If they try, we will again kick the ever loving shit out of them.

We really need to reinvest in education.  With Fox beaming current nonsense into their bubble and the schoolbooks telling them Phyllis Schlafley is more important that Thomas Jefferson, it’s no wonder that they think stupid shit.  They scream that the government is doing illegal things b/c their side lost.

When you live in a democratic republic, and when more people from the other party elect officials, *you don’t get to have your way*.  That’s not illegal scheming.  That’s how the system is designed to work.  If you don’t like it, you really are unamerican.

Which leads us back to the double proms.  Constance won her court case, with the understanding, though not spelled out in the ruling, that she would be allowed to attend the prom.  The juvenile assholes masquerading as adults threw a double-secret prom that put their bigotry on parade for everyone to see.

These are the people who will scream for secession and birth certificates.  They are stupid as fuck.  They are racists.  They are homophobic.  They are sexist.  Those are just the facts.

We need to deal with it and we need to start dealing with it now, or we will see more and more Hutaree nonsense.  They are 23% of the population, and they are IGNORANT AS SHIT.

—Oh, and regardless of whatever other slavery-related matters were involved, the MAIN reason for the Civil War was secession, and the main reason for the secession was slavery.  And the dumbfucks with their Confederate flags today know NOTHING of the other slavery-related matters: the Confederate flag is a racist symbol.

Plain and simple.  There is no separating it from its treasonous, racist roots.  Any asshole with a Confederate Flag on his/her truck is a racist, regardless of any “black friends” they pretend to have.

Confederacy Day is being celebrated again because there’s a n*gger in the White House, who dares to think b/c he won the election by an overwhelming margin and was given an overwhelming supportive Congress that he’s entitled to enact policies he campaigned on.  As if he were white!

However, slavery was at the heart of what led the South to secede.

It’s the unifying theme, whether you’re talking about the economic motivation, the political/legal one (i.e. states’ rights), the demographic one, or the moral one. You cannot escape it.

As for the redneck crackers in the lowland south, cutting them lose also entails cutting lose 54% of the black population in America. Not sure we want to go there.

Well yes, the “cut them loose” crowd seems to be blithely buying into the claim that “The South” is an exclusively white culture and history.

Re: Secession

This is a fantasy along the same lines of the Rapture—We get to go and leave all of those horrible, liberal, baby killers behind. That’s why “Left Behind” is a bestseller on the same level as Harry Potter, it gives folks who talk about secession and the Rapture a fantasy world in which to dwell where they are the victors. Unlike the real world where they are actually the ones being left behind.

#66
one of the biggest problems with the United States is that we tend to turn our economic systems into religions.  Slavery is one example; the current example is laissez-faire capitalism.

Excellent point.

Slightly off-topic;

(Women are assumed to have no motivations besides being looked at,

Exactly, Amanda.  Which is why we have the “Smurfette” trope, i.e. men are expected to have all sorts of different personalities, but the other 51% of the population is usually represented by only one character, who is usually obsessed with clothes, jewelry, make-up, hair, etc.  So we get movies, tv, books, etc. where 99% of the characters are men who represent the spectrum of human behavior, and (of course) one woman, whose only concern is looking fabulous.

Sorry to get off-topic, but that trope really bugs me.

“Well yes, the “cut them loose” crowd seems to be blithely buying into the claim that “The South” is an exclusively white culture and history.”

Being born & raised in the south (and fortunate enough to have gotten the fuck out), I see the people there as backwards ass ignorant fucks.

Obviously, this is an over generalization and giving them their own country is a pipe dream that would cause suffering among the smart, reasonable non-assholes that live there, but the thought does make me smile at times.

Last comment before I’m late for work:  one of the biggest problems with the United States is that we tend to turn our economic systems into religions.
Comment #66: Mnemosyne

This is what I wish more people would understand.  Economics has no scientific method that can be applied to it.  There are no control groups, no double blind tests, no ways to isolate specific causes or vectors, etc…

Economics is a philosophy.

Getting back to the topic at hand, does anybody else think that some students were threatened into not telling Constance about the other prom?  I realize that most the students were bad apples who hated her, but all it would have taken was one person to tell and she would have known.  I bet it will come out that a student wanted to tell her and the others, but was threatened with violence if they said anything.

I think the “cut them loose” thing also comes from exasperation that the states that cry the loudest about wanting to secede are the ones that get the most money from the federal government.  It’s a bit of a feeling of, “Fine, if you don’t want to be supported with my filthy Northern money, I’ll take it back.”

I haven’t read all of the comments but:

whole lot of people from a whole lot of conservative small towns can tell you stories about getting the fuck out of Dodge as soon as they could. 

ME.

Right now I’m getting my high school alumni trying to get me to come back for our high school reunion, which ain’t gonna happen.

First of all, can we please stop using “Hillbillies” and “Rednecks” as insults?  These started as classist slurs, and we don’t need to perpetuate them, especially because there are so many legitimate criticisms against that students and parents who were involved in this horrible scheme.

Second, we shouldn’t want to kick out any states, or just give up on hateful groups of people.  Constance may very well get out of there, but certainly more homosexual people will be born in that group over the years to come.  We should have a “love it or leave it” attitude.  Instead we should love it and therefore want to improve it.  I doubt that anybody is actually serious, but just letting a bunch of hateful people stew in their own hatred is the easy way out, and it does more harm than good.  Can we please try to be more constructive?

Third, the Civil War was about more than just slavery.  Of course slavery was a big (biggest?) part of it, but just like nearly everything else, it’s a little more complicated than that.  It’s a straw man to pretend that Ms Kate claimed that slavery had nothing to do with it.  Can’t we try a little harder in intelligent discussions?  You may disagree with her, but it’s really ridiculous to accuse her of making claims that she didn’t make.

Someone way upthread was concerned about Constance’s financial future and asked if anyone had donated to her.  Ellen gave her a scholarship (I believe $30K, which may or may not cover college tuition depending on whether she goes to a state school or a private school).  I have a feeling she’s also getting donations from others who are moved by her story.

I’ve been saddened to see how the mainstream press has largely been covering this story.  As per usual, the ACLU is portrayed as a laughable PC organization that trods roughshod over everything.  And the prom fakeout story isn’t even being covered at all.  I was really tempted to email the Ellen show to see if they would do a followup story, because then “mainstream America” would see it.

People in the majority forget that it takes a lot of guts to stand up for your principles and say when something is wrong.  A lot of people honestly have no clue that this was about far more than just being able to go to prom.  Public institutions do not have the right to simply decide that certain people are “non-entities.”  This kid is so incredibly brave yet most of the chatter I hear about this story on the news and various podcasts I listen to mock her for being uppity.

</blockquote>Getting back to the topic at hand, does anybody else think that some students were threatened into not telling Constance about the other prom? </blockquote>

They probably weren’t threatened outright, but they (rightfully) assumed that they would be ostracized and snubbed just like Constance was if anyone found out that they had told her about the other prom.

I think the “cut them loose” thing also comes from exasperation that the states that cry the loudest about wanting to secede are the ones that get the most money from the federal government.

I wasn’t aware the arbitrary political entities that include millions of people could “cry.”

Regionalism is a strategy that was proven to be bad for progressives in the last election where the Obama administration out-funded and out-organized Republicans and forced them to fight for districts and states that had not been contested for decades. It baffles me to still see it pop up.

In all fairness, plenty of the black/non-white people in the South are *also* bigoted assholes (albeit of a different flavor than racist) and I can certainly see the temptation to kick the whole South out and then set up a nice immigration policy for the few decent people that get stuck down there.

prom is supposed to be the best night of your life

This is the best revenge for those evil fucks in high school, as far as I’m concerned. Prom really is the best night of their lives, and everything else is downhill from there. Once everyone else moves on to the joys of adulthood they are stuck pathetically reminiscing about how popular they were for that brief time.

Can’t we all pitch in and buy Constance one-way ticket out of town? “Just a small town girl, she took the midnight train goin’ a-ny-where…”

Oh, and regardless of whatever other slavery-related matters were involved, the MAIN reason for the Civil War was secession, and the main reason for the secession was slavery.  And the dumbfucks with their Confederate flags today know NOTHING of the other slavery-related matters: the Confederate flag is a racist symbol.

To pile on the evidence, one need only look at the interest of Southern leaders prior to the Civil War of expanding U.S. territory into Latin America.  There were proposals to purchase the island of Cuba from Spain to make it a slave state, as well as William Walker’s filibustering activities in Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.

I have a travel book on Belize, and in the history section, there is mention of Confederates after the Civil War trying to settle in Belize to recreate their plantation lifestyle, but alas they could not get the local blacks to work for them.

CB—the secession stuff has also been fueled by Southern politicians pandering to it in places like Texas.  It’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to respond to Rick Perry’s jerkwaddery by saying, “Well, go ahead, then.  If you’re gonna export Bush 43, we can work without you.”

It’s not a long-term viable way of doing things, but rather an ongoing expression at frustration at being tethered to what amount to a bunch of developing countries which would rather be poor than decent.  If the Dixiecrats didn’t currently run one of our two major political Parties, things would be different, but our Democratic leadership, devoted as it is to failure, refuses to engage in game-changing activities such as massive voter registration or DC statehood.

I wasn’t aware the arbitrary political entities that include millions of people could “cry.”

Really?  Take a look at Rick Perry’s crocodile tears about how the big, bad federal government was just forcing him to talk about secession and then look at how much federal money Texas accepts every year.

Or are you trying to deny that the reddest states receive the most federal aid?  It’s a pretty well-known phenomenon.  Eight of the top 10 voted for McCain.

If the phrase “War of Northern Aggression” is whipped out, I’m shutting this thread down.

I feel incredibly sorry for the closeted gay kids at that school. At least Constance seems like a confident, positive young person, capable of bouncing back emotionally even in a really crap situation ... but what about kids who won’t get that confidence until they’re older (or might never get it)?
I remember spending most of high school being terrified of everyone ... Luckily I went to a really open-minded and liberal school, but obviously bullying still happened. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to attend Constance’s school, and I doubt I would have been as brave as she is—if anything, I probably would have regressed into my shell even further and been even more depressed and scared of other people.
I’m guessing a lot of the other kids just ... aren’t very brave, especially in a toxic environment like this that’s getting perpetuated by the In-Crowd & their parents (who in this case happen to be extremist conservatives). I don’t know if we should fault kids who are just keeping their heads down and trying not to get noticed/insulted/ostracized.

The post about Phoebe Prince wasn’t long ago, so I know the other commenters here experienced bullying in high school. Some of these kids just might not have the emotional chops to confront the issue and be as brave as Constance. I feel sorry for those kids, and I hope that when they get a little older, they do learn some of that bravery. I didn’t get more confident until halfway through college, personally.

The idea that most of the kids that participated in all this are going to college, or that virtually ANY of them are going to big elite schools in the Northeast where participating in something like this would shed a bad light, is laughable.

I’d guess, if Fulton, MS, is anything like the town I grew up in (which it seems to be, if Matt T’s description in the previous thread is accurate), about 30% of the kids at this school are headed for college in the fall.  And the vast majority of them are probably going to minor universities within Mississippi.  A lucky few will be attending Ole Miss, or maybe LSU, Georgia State, or Texas A&M;*.  There might be one or two kids going to a college that is not part of the land grant system, or not in the deep south.  Maybe the richest kid in school is going to Duke or Tulane, or somebody got a freak scholarship to one of the big midwestern state schools.

Sounds like your town and possibly Fulton are like many rural and working/middle class suburban high schools in the US.  Quite a few friends from those regions…including some in the Northeast have mentioned similar rates of college matriculation from their graduating classes. 

One friend and I had a long series of conversations comparing notes because the rural high school he attended was such that more than half ended up working dead-end service jobs/odd jobs and that anyone attending college was considered special and someone to be envied whereas my high school with its 99%+ college attendance rate with around 25% ultimately graduating from Ivy/Ivy-level institutions…..not being able to gain admission to schools of MIT/Caltech, HYP, or Stanford meant you’re regarded as little better than a non-entity by the popular kids and many teachers/admins. 

And, sure, maybe the 2 or 3 kids going to schools with more rigorous admissions standards than “are you reasonably literate?” will get slaps on the wrist for this, if the schools they’re going to have a liberal bent or feel that their acceptance of this student could be be bad PR.

Many colleges, including many prominent ones in the Northeast no longer have that requirement in practice IME. 

At several colleges in the Boston area, especially before the mid-1990s, if a prospective student/the parents had the money and the colleges were desperate enough, they’d be more than happy to take someone who can’t write a coherent sentence and/or who struggle with multiplying fractions…..concepts usually covered in early elementary school.  I’ve also seen some atrociously written essays by Ivy students who were angrily wondering why they received that overgenerous C/C+ grade instead of the B+ or even A they “deserved”.....amusing considering such atrociously written papers would have been marked with an F by my 9th grade English teacher. 

Consequently, I wouldn’t be surprised if a far greater number than what you mentioned above are able to gain admission to more prestigious/supposedly more rigorous out-of-state schools…being reasonably literate doesn’t seem to be the standard anymore….

UM @ 102:
My spouse would be another.  Appearently members of his class are getting together for a river raft event in Boise and he was invited.  As the invite came via his cousin-in-law, with whom he really was friends in hs, he was polite about it instead of saying no way in hell.  Something about if the rain didn’t stop soon he wouldn’t need to travel to have the white water experience/be washed away.

Third, the Civil War was about more than just slavery.  Of course slavery was a big (biggest?) part of it, but just like nearly everything else, it’s a little more complicated than that.

I can’t speak for others, but the reason I’m pushing back so hard is that apologists have been pretending for decades that slavery was solely a moral problem when it was actually an economic system that underwrote the entire economy and culture of the antebellum South.  It comes from Northern apologists as well, by the way—Lincoln didn’t declare war because slavery was immoral, he declared it because it had become a major economic and political problem for the whole country that needed to be resolved.  It was a major drag on the industrial North, not just the agricultural South.

There is no underlying cause of the Civil War that does not trace back to the fact that the South’s economy was based on slavery.  Not a single one.

Regionalism is a strategy that was proven to be bad for progressives in the last election where the Obama administration out-funded and out-organized Republicans and forced them to fight for districts and states that had not been contested for decades. It baffles me to still see it pop up.

Same here. The 50-state strategy worked, mainly because it wasn’t focused on the ideal of trying to capture every vote in each state, but rather identifying and marketing to those who’d be more likely to vote for Obama (e.g. urbanites, residents of college towns, minority demographics) and not wasting resources or energy on the kind of moron of used to vote for Prince Bush (i.e. the kind of bigots who run this podunk school board).

To be clear, the morons who were ignored by the campaign were just as likely to be living in the suburban Mass. town where that poor girl was bullied to the point of suicide as they were in rural Mississippi. Red state/Blue state is an outmoded way of thinking—if the Electoral College system were reformed, no-one would be discussing it any more.

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

Wrong question.  Here’s the correct one:

What percentage of Southerners at the time of the civil war were slaves or slaveowners?

Answer: Half.

White Southerners like myself have a special duty to cast off the lies fed to us as children springing the South of its responsibility for perpetuating slavery even after most of the Western world had decided, correctly, it was an abomination.  People who defend the treason in defense of slavery or make excuses for it need to cut it out.

So why was Lincoln’s presidency the trigger for secession?  Was the South overreacting to Lincoln’s election?

For the same reason the ideological heirs of the Confederacy are positive that Obama’s about to take their guns.

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

Irrelevant.  The reasons why individuals go to war and fight often have nothing to do why groups or nations (or states) go to war.

People go to war to seek adventure, due to peer pressure, for personal gain, for loyalty, for ideals…and sometimes they might actually enlist for the reason that the state went to war.  But most often they don’t.  Most of the English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, didn’t give a rat’s ass that the reason for the war was the Plantagenet claim to the French throne, just as most of the troops on the Confederate side didn’t own slaves.  But that doesn’t change the fact the Hundred Years War was due to the Plantagenets wanting the French crown, nor that the Confederate states attempted secession and the war eventually fought over slavery.

The other thing to bear in mind, of course, is that two sides can get into the same war for entirely different reasons.  The South went into the Civil War (or as it should be called, the Slavers’ Rebellion) in order to defend the institution of slavery).  The Union went to war in order to defend the United States against rebels (WHO SHOT FIRST) not to eliminate slavery.  That doesn’t change the fact the war was about slavery.

Incidentally, it always amuses me that the people who shot first get upset that as a result of shooting first they got stomped on.  Sherman, when he was the head of Louisiana’s military academy in 1860, explicitly predicted that starting a war with an industrial powerhouse—when your own little group of states couldn’t even produce their own shoes—was going to ultimately be a disaster for the idiots who thought martial prowess and bravery was all that would be needed.  To defend slavery.

Lincoln didn’t declare war <strike>because slavery was immoral, he declared it because it had become a major economic and political problem for the whole country that needed to be resolved</strike>, the south declared war.

There, fixed it for you.

Seriously, the point needs to be driven home again and again: If anything, it was a war of Southern aggression.

White Southerners like myself have a special duty to cast off the lies fed to us as children springing the South of its responsibility for perpetuating slavery even after most of the Western world had decided, correctly, it was an abomination.  People who defend the treason in defense of slavery or make excuses for it need to cut it out.

Word.

In other news, growing up in the Real America, (the South), I recall very distinctly the local reaction to the creation of the MLK holiday. Typically, people would say some version of:

“God dammit, all the banks are closed. Why don’t we just kill another four n*gg*rs so we can get the whole week off.”

See? it’s heritage, people, nothing more than heritage.

Heh, Ms. Kate already got thoroughly thrashed so pointing out every thing she mentioned was important to the southerners but ultimately revolved around slavery.  The Tariffs, trade imbalances, and lack of development were caused by the slavery & trade that surrounded it.  As for somebody mentioning secession has to be passed by a state legislature, yes they did but by no means did it actually seceded from the union.  The constitution allows no provision for the states to leave the union.  In fact the constitution technically binds the state’s ownership to the US & the state is an administrator at best.  When one tries to secede they go into rebellion & then become a non-state control which must be destroyed and a new legislature rebuilt.  But that’s my diatribe on the civil war. 

As for blaming Constance, why?  Does anybody really think that Constance for wanting to wear a tux is really that disturbing and should have caused a state court battle over a prom?  I think we’ve been debating this in court for the last two decades and each time the state says they can.  They should know by now just to let it drop and move along.  It didn’t have to be drama until the parent’s of these children and the school district decided to try and fight a trend that is much greater than they are. 

Acceptance is the fastest way to peace in these cases.  But this is less about Constance’s sexuality and more about their social dominance over this area.  It comes down to these children need to maintain social hegemony or else they’ll realize that the world doesn’t revolve around them.  Blaming Constance is just a convenient way of deflecting the national hate developing around them and the forced breaking of their psychological construct.  These kids are now going to have this follow them for the next decade.  The internet is a cruel mistress but sometimes gets it right.

It is possible to realize that the Civil War was slightly more complex than just slavery while simultaneously realizing that both slavery and the attempted secession were bad things that the South shouldn’t have done.  Pointing out complexity is certainly not the same as defending the South or trying to minimize the slavery aspect of it.

But this is less about Constance’s sexuality and more about their social dominance over this area. 

Precisely. It is really pretty clear from the defenders of the secret prom that this was more about their desire to put Constance in her place than about anything else. The big problem seems to be that she acted “out of line” instead of with due deference to those who believe themselves to be at the top of the hierarchy.

catgirl, the problem of slavery was slightly more complex that “the North wanted to abolish it and the South revolted”, but as has been amply demonstrated here, all roads lead back to slavery with the Civil War.

And it’s irrelevant to this discussion.  The Confederate flag is a fuck you to black people in the modern context.  That’s why it’s worn, flown, and defended.  It’s like modern people flying Nazi regalia as a white power symbol, except for some buttfuck reason, it’s considered more socially acceptable.  Probably in part because people try to claim the South had some *other* reason to secede besides defending slavery, which they did not.

Or are you trying to deny that the reddest states receive the most federal aid?

No, I’m objecting to the claim that the likes of Perry deserve more consideration than my neighbors, who apparently become invisible non-entites whenever a Republican gets 50%+1 vote.

Seriously, the point needs to be driven home again and again: If anything, it was a war of Southern aggression.

And we’re still having to fight the goddamned war more than 100 years later for the exact reason that Lincoln said in the Cooper Union speech:

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only; cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly—done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas’s new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that Slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State Constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of all taint of opposition to Slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. So long as we call Slavery wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that he ran because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off. Whenever a master cuts his slaves with the lash, and they cry out under it, he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist.

They were wrong over 100 years ago, and they still cannot admit it, and the only thing that will make them happy is to not only say they were right all along, but to change all of our laws back again to prove that we mean it.

Look up the history of the flag of Georgia sometime.

Prior to the civil war, the Georgia flag was a field of blue with an emblem of the militiamen. For decades, the state flag was some variation of the union jack: red and white stripes with a field of blue. 

Then, suddenly, in 1956, a huge confederate battle flag appeared on the Georgia state flag. Massive.

Now, what could possibly been happening at that time that this suddenly became important? Hint: It wasn’t a second secession.

It is possible to realize that the Civil War was slightly more complex than just slavery while simultaneously realizing that both slavery and the attempted secession were bad things that the South shouldn’t have done.

For some reason, your “complexity” requires that we ignore the plain fact that the entire economy of the South was built on slavery and that economy collapsed without slavery.

If your argument requires that you leave out relevant facts, it’s not much of an argument.

No, I’m objecting to the claim that the likes of Perry deserve more consideration than my neighbors, who apparently become invisible non-entites whenever a Republican gets 50%+1 vote.

If I’m isunderstanding you, I apologize in advance. Here’s the thing: Liberals didn’t make that claim. You don’t like being an invisible non-entity? Not our fault. It isn’t like liberals are conspiring to ensure that people who don’t suck aren’t allowed to run things down south. For some mysterious reason, people who don’t suck seem to have exactly zero ability to actually effect anything resembling positive change in the south. Therefore, whenever the subject of how much the south objectively fucking sucks, their special fees fees are irrelevant.

The south, despite the number of residents who clearly don’t suck, is with very few exceptions run exclusively by, and for, people who really, really fucking suck. No amount of BUBUBUBUB NOT EVERYONEZ HERE IS LIKE THAT can change that.

Eventually, people who don’t suck get really goddamned tired of their vote mattering exactly zip, get tired of being surrpounded by prideful assholes, and they move someplace where they don’t have to pretend the earth is 6,000 years old in order to win elected office, or simply to have their vote actually count for something. It’s why the south remains a cultural, economic and moral sewer.

Here’s the thing: Liberals didn’t make that claim.

That’s funny, because you then proceed to make that exact claim.

No, I’m objecting to the claim that the likes of Perry deserve more consideration than my neighbors, who apparently become invisible non-entites whenever a Republican gets 50%+1 vote.

Do your neighbors complain about the federal government taking all of their money even though they actually get more money from the federal government than people in other states?  If not, then we’re not talking about your neighbors, are we?

I get tired of how many typos I have.

That’s funny, because you then proceed to make that exact claim.

That’s funny because you’re willfully refusing to show some reading-fucking-comprehension.

For some reason, your “complexity” requires that we ignore the plain fact that the entire economy of the South was built on slavery and that economy collapsed without slavery.

No, it doesn’t.

Random comment, but I’m really loving Constance’s name right now. She got one of those conservative-sounding good-lil-Christian-girl names and then showed people what it really fucking means. “Steadfast” for the win. :D

No, it doesn’t.

Please explain, then.  My claim is that slavery was at the base of the Civil War, not because of the moral reasons (though those fed into it) but because it was the basis of the entire economic system of the South.  What is your claim?

Oh, I’m sorry, I started talking about the thread topic right in the middle of a bout of “Yuh-huh!” “Nuh-uh!” -ing. So rude of me! :p

Do your neighbors complain about the federal government taking all of their money even though they actually get more money from the federal government than people in other states?  If not, then we’re not talking about your neighbors, are we?

Who exactly are you talking about when you say a state cries or The South cries? My point is that when you attribute political motives and statements to entire regions, you obfuscate the fact that many of these issues are not matters of consensus, but highly-contested activism and debate.

Ta-Nehisi Coates for the win (via Balloon-Juice):

This is who they are—the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn’t “have had all these problems,” this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.

Oh, I’m sorry, I started talking about the thread topic right in the middle of a bout of “Yuh-huh!” “Nuh-uh!” -ing. So rude of me! :p

Silly rabbit!  Don’t you know that re-fighting the Civil War is much more important?

That’s funny because you’re willfully refusing to show some reading-fucking-comprehension.

I comprehend you. However, you’re still wrong and disingenuous in your denial of marginalizing other people.

The fall of the Roman Empire was a complex interplay of social and economic problems.  Pinning it on any one factor falls apart with some thought, although obviously some are stronger than others.

The south’s secession was because of slavery.  It’s very simple, relative to other major cultural events, and attempts to argue it was more complex than that are not good ones.  But for slavery, the south would not have seceded.  There is not other but-for cause of secession.

And secession, obviously, was the cause of the Civil War.

Side note: I don’t even get *why* my fellow southerners like to call it the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression.  “Civil war” is a pretty culturally rich phrase, and not all traitors are viewed poorly by history.  I guess if it’s treason in support of slavery, rather than in support of liberty, you have to gussy it up.

Jesus effing Christ—even Wikipedia begins its article on “Origins of the American Civil War” starts it off with this sentence: “The main explanation for the origins of the American Civil War is slavery, especially Southern anger at the attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories.” Article can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War

The bald-faced lie that slavery was *not* the primary cause of the American Civil is perhaps the most successful piece of bullshit ever manufactured by the Confederacy and its defenders. Obviously, “Ms. Kate” is profoundly ignorant about the historiography of the Civil War, and how the unrepentant slavery apologists very quickly gained the upper hand in the interpretation of that war, and how they smeared the attempt at Reconstruction and the brave efforts of the Reconstructionists to ensure that former slaves and other African Americans enjoyed true legal and civic equality, and the full protection of the Constitution.

For a very long, the Southern racist reactionaries’ interpretation of the Civil War held sway, not only in American popular culture (see: Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind), but also in American historiography as well. Beginning pretty much in the 1950s, historians such as C. Vann Woodward began to take strong exception of this view, and by the 1970s, amongst academic historians, the Southern apologists were a distinct minority.  They had not a leg to stand on, in terms of history.

It’s sad to see that the racist, pro-slavery Confederacy *still* has its defenders. And on Pandagon, of all places!

My point is that when you attribute political motives and statements to entire regions, you obfuscate the fact that many of these issues are not matters of consensus, but highly-contested activism and debate.

The people who you elect to represent your state are the people making the claim that the federal government is oppressing them while accepting federal money with the other.  Are we supposed to take their votes away from them because a minority of people in their state (yes, that would be you) disagree with them?  Or are we supposed to assume that they represent the majority of the people in that state or district since the people of that state or district are the ones who put them in office?

Right now, California is represented by the frickin’ Terminator.  Did I vote for him?  No.  Is he still the main representative of my state in the eyes of the world?  Yes, he is.  Denying that California is going down the toilet because of our elected representatives just because I personally didn’t vote for them would be insane.

I wasn’t aware the arbitrary political entities that include millions of people could “cry.”

yay, pedantry

Here’s me being an pain-the-ass grammar nerd, but . . . #18, “Bravo!” is *not* an appropriate response if your intention is to praise Amanda, or any other female. “Bravo(s)/Brava(s)” are adjectives, and therefore, if you’re rooting for a chick, you say “Brava!” and if you’re cheering for a dude, you say “Bravo!”

This goes back to the early days of Italian opera, where cries of “Brava!” would greet the sopranos and contraltos, and “Bravo!” would be reserved for the tenors, baritones, and basses.

End of pedantic lecture.

Err is it OK to mention the War of Western Aggression? (yanno, Massachusetts et all vs poor King George III)?

Lol, at first I thought you meant, like, Portland as the aggressor or something. That would be hilarious—a bunch of pretty relaxed* people on bikes on the rampage.

Though more seriously, couldn’t that be a decent name for all that fucking around the US (and bits ‘o Europe) is doing in the Middle East? Kind of Crusades-sounding.

*euphemism, natch.

Poor Constance. It’s awful being from Bumblefuck, USA. I don’t care how long it’s been or how far you’ve moved away, there will be Christmases and Thanksgivings in which you have to see these assholes again, and there they’ll be, suspended in a state of perpetual adolescent anger, just as mean as they’ve always been. People from my hometown are still completely shitty to me when I go home to visit. Of course, it helps that I don’t give a fuck, but it’s still weird. In my hometown, they hate people who move to the city with a white hot hatred that’s kind of hard to believe. They say that we go away and then think that we’re better than them. Well, yeah, we do.

I don’t even get *why* my fellow southerners like to call it the War Between the States

Because calling it a “Civil War” emphasizes that we are, and always were, all one country; calling it “the War Between the States” assumes that the Union was simply a league of seperate soveriegn states.

Actually, Constance knew about the other dance, but like the dignified and mature person she is, she refused to go where she was so clearly not wanted.

Boo to those cruel, bigoted dickbags.

And also, I know a lot of people who do this thing where they say that the civil war wasn’t about slavery, but states’ rights. I think those people generally think that common knowledge is that it was all about slavery, but the real secret hidden truth is that it wasn’t that at all, but states’ rights and tariffs and so on. I used to say shit like that, too. I’m not sure who corrected me or why or when I dropped that idea, but it’s probably something someone taught me during my upbringing in a racist, insular community. Anyway, I hear it all the time now and I’m always struck by its wrong-headedness.

OT: in the illustration (crying toddler), WTH is going on w/that kid’s ear???  I’d be crying too.

Jenny Dreadful, before & besides moving away, did you commit any “offenses”?  Or is moving away adequate to their hatred?

Distillation: if all the reasonable, sane, progressive, and mature folk leave these small towns, don’t they just get MORE conservative and bagger-esque?

No, it doesn’t.

If the complexity all leads to slavery, then it’s not actually complex.  You saying it is doesn’t do much to add to the conversation, and resembles excuse-making to minimize slavery.

It’s like someone saying, “Oh, this piece of music is entirely made up of notes!”  and you saying, “But it’s a very complex piece of music, ” and them saying, “Yes, the notes interact in complex ways, but still all notes at the end of the day,” and you saying, “We can accept there are notes in the music, but it’s still complex!”, and so on and so forth.  At a certain point, people will wonder why confuse the issue.

I think those people generally think that common knowledge is that it was all about slavery, but the real secret hidden truth is that it wasn’t that at all, but states’ rights and tariffs and so on.

Like 90% of conservative beliefs are this.

It’s all “you think being an asshole is being an asshole, but the REAL TRUTH is that not being an asshole is being an asshole, and being an asshole actually makes you a wonderful person!”

And then you get away from your stupid church or stupid family or stupid school or whatever and actually learn anything about anything and it’s like oh hey naw being an asshole really is being an asshole, whoda thunk?

The western territories, aside from the stolen capital in Arizona (stolen by Texans) actually didn’t want to be slave states anyhow.  California voted and said no; Oregon banned black people from entering; Washington said no; Deseret already had white slaves so didn’t need slave laws; the area that became New Mexico was filled with Mexican loyalists (who were anti-slave) and the areas that became Colorado, Wyoming and north were uninhabitable by plantation types.

So they were pretty much stuck, Lincoln or no.

The people who you elect to represent your state are the people making the claim that the federal government is oppressing them while accepting federal money with the other. Are we supposed to take their votes away from them because a minority of people in their state (yes, that would be you) disagree with them?

You’re not talking about representatives, governors, or senators. You’re talking about states and regions in a way that parrots the “Real American” myth. You can certainly critique the actions of elected official without making your neighbors invisible as participants in the politics and culture of your community.

Which is what the whole McDonnell thing is all about. It’s about asserting that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are legitimate subjects of Southern culture and history, while MLK and Rosa Parks are not.

Factors other than slavery may have existed but were minor. ONe more proof of this. Lincoln offered to concede on every issue NOT related to slavery and on plenty of issues related to slavery between his election and his inaugeration. He offered to fully concede on tariffs. Heck he even offered to enforce the fugitive slave law, but he would not concede on the North’s right to determine whether warrants under this law were actually valid a right than no one disputed on other types of extradition. But the South refused to stay in the Union without Douglas’s anti-sedition law that supressed free speech by the anti-slavery side, and without concessions that would have given the pro-slavery side a majority in the Senate. In short, the pro-slavery majority had ruled the U.S. and that had changed. Slavery could not survive in the long run in a U.S. where slaveholders were not in charge. So basically the Souths position was “if I can’t rule you then you are too arrogant to live with I will temporarily withdraw, until I re-unify by force with me in charge”. Look at the Southern published post-seccesions plans if you think that was not part of the deal. So the South seceded not over an immediate threat to slavery, but over the creation of an environment where slave states could not push free states around, which they saw as essential to their survival.

And also, I know a lot of people who do this thing where they say that the civil war wasn’t about slavery, but states’ rights.

And that point falls really quickly when you notice there was exactly one state’s right the Confederacy really cared about enough to secede over…but yet they had no problem bitching when other states decided that they would not recognize slavery within their borders, or assist in the capture of escaped slaves.  The Fugitive Slave Act quite clearly was the federal government limiting the rights of states regarding how they close to deal with people in their jurisdiction, and it was something the future Confederacy was all in favour of.

PS, this video of all the known photographs of Lincoln is awesome.

I think being an outspoken queer ally or anti-racist is enough to get you pegged for ostracism or bullying in certain Bumblefuck towns. After going to college I’m sure I became more outspoken on those issues than I was in high school. I’m pretty confident that the same will happen to some of Constance’s peers, and a lot of them will be deeply ashamed for not having spoken up for her at the time. Either that, or they’ll do that thing people do where they act like they were always Constance’s best friends in the world.

Thanks to everyone who responded about why folks talk about secession. You all had different points, which were all good! It jumps out at me, for some reason.

Err is it OK to mention the War of Western Aggression? (yanno, Massachusetts et all vs poor King George III)?

Sure, although John Paul Jones’ raids on St. Mary’s Island (where he looted all of one silver plate) and Whitehaven (more of a pub-crawl-in-force than a military action) were pretty lame examples of aggression.

I ended up reading the entire thread on Firedoglake last night, mainly, I guess, because the two girls’ self-righteous defense of their bigotry and petty meanness was so painfully familiar.  Those photos!  They even have mean-girl hair!

My husband commented, “Doesn’t that school have a nice popular girl?  There should’ve been one nice popular girl who would make a big point of going to the decoy prom to show how open-minded she was.”  Well, in this case there wasn’t.  This is what happens when the nice has been beaten out of everyone in town.

I gleaned two things from the girls’ comments:

1. The homophobia is just a tiny part of a vast, general terror of nonconformity.  If one person is doing something different or wearing something weird or saying something the group doesn’t agree with, it RUINS OUR ENTIRE SENIOR YEAR OMG.  They can’t just let her do her weird thing.  They have to crush her.

2. Constance is the only kid at that school who might be capable of surviving outside their mean, snotty, boring little town after graduation, and all her classmates know it and hate her for it.

Factors other than slavery may have existed but were minor. ONe more proof of this. Lincoln offered to concede on every issue NOT related to slavery and on plenty of issues related to slavery between his election and his inaugeration. He offered to fully concede on tariffs. Heck he even offered to enforce the fugitive slave law, but he would not concede on the North’s right to determine whether warrants under this law were actually valid a right than no one disputed on other types of extradition. But the South refused to stay in the Union without Douglas’s anti-sedition law that supressed free speech by the anti-slavery side, and without concessions that would have given the pro-slavery side a majority in the Senate. In short, the pro-slavery majority had ruled the U.S. and that had changed. Slavery could not survive in the long run in a U.S. where slaveholders were not in charge. So basically the Souths position was “if I can’t rule you then you are too arrogant to live with I will temporarily withdraw, until I re-unify by force with me in charge”. Look at the Southern published post-seccesions plans if you think that was not part of the deal. So the South seceded not over an immediate threat to slavery, but over the creation of an environment where slave states could not push free states around, which they saw as essential to their survival.

They just wanted a drama-free country.

It was all those Northern states and their crazy-reckless need for attention.

People act all the time like there’s such a huge difference between the coasts and the Midwest, or the North and the South, but the biggest schism in the US is an urban vs. rural one. Progressive small towns are a rarity. I’m not sure why it is. I’m from rural Southern California, and I’m telling you, it was like growing up in Oklahoma.

Hmm. I’ve been watching this conversation with interest, because the view that was pounded into me about the Civil War being about “more complex than just slavery” during my elementary and high school education is about what Ms Kate has been posting, and my education was neither before 1970 or in the South. In fact, the last time I studied the Civil War was my junior year of high school, 1993-1994, in Chicago.

I recalled being exposed to similar interpretations around the same time period in high school.  Fortunately, most of my high school classmates were already clued in….and those who weren’t were immediately clued in by the US history/govt teachers.  However, I must concede that a large part of this is due to the fact I was born and raised in NYC.

Unfortunately, the Gone With The Wind school of Southern Historiography is still alive and well in this country…...even in the Northeast…..and especially in the suburbs. 

Hmm. I’ve been watching this conversation with interest, because the view that was pounded into me about the Civil War being about “more complex than just slavery” during my elementary and high school education is about what Ms Kate has been posting, and my education was neither before 1970 or in the South. In fact, the last time I studied the Civil War was my junior year of high school, 1993-1994, in Chicago.

A more modern (i.e., the past 20-30 years or so) trend in the field of U.S. History has been reasserting the primacy of slavery as a cause of the Civil War.  This trend has probably not, even now, trickled down to the level of secondary education—mostly due to the reactionary nature of history as it is required to be taught in most public high schools and junior highs (c.f., recent Texas textbook controversies).  Also most high school and jr. high teachers’ history education ends whenever they finish school, so the history they teach is likely to be the history they learned while they were in college—as opposed to college professors, who generally have to keep current if they want to get tenure.

/history major in the late 80s, FWIW.

I’ve been watching this conversation with interest, because the view that was pounded into me about the Civil War being about “more complex than just slavery” during my elementary and high school education is about what Ms Kate has been posting, and my education was neither before 1970 or in the South. In fact, the last time I studied the Civil War was my junior year of high school, 1993-1994, in Chicago.

That’s the view I was fed, too, but since I’m an amateur history buff, I ended up reading enough outside of school to realize that it was bunk and all roads really did end up leading back to slavery.

Yes, I am one of those annoying history nerds that people hate watching historical films with because I critique everything.

Actually, Constance knew about the other dance, but like the dignified and mature person she is, she refused to go where she was so clearly not wanted.

I think I read (and I hope I read it wrong) that her parents have not been supportive of her during this whole thing.  If so, that’s really sad, because they clearly raised a great kid with a good head on her shoulders.  Maybe Ellen and Portia will adopt her. 

At least we’ve established that the War Which Occurred on the North American Continent Between the Years 1860 and 1865 is no longer controversial in any way. 

Now that it’s 145-some odd years later, it’s obvious that the lingering wounds from that conflict have healed about as well as The Kenyan Usurper’s election to POTUS has eliminated racism in the USA…

Distillation: if all the reasonable, sane, progressive, and mature folk leave these small towns, don’t they just get MORE conservative and bagger-esque?

Yes, but they also become smaller towns. And not only because the folk you describe leave, but because there are fewer and fewer job opportunities for those who remain behind.

There are abandoned towns all over the U.S. that went through what Detroit is going through now at a highly accelerated rate over the course of the 20th century.

Progressive small towns are a rarity. I’m not sure why it is.

Provincialism, mainly. Reality-based liberalism doesn’t exactly thrive in an atmosphere that features fear and suspicion of outsiders, firmly entrenched grandees running the town, limited consumer options, and desperate boosterism.

Once in a while you’ll find a town that’s been taken over by progressive types (one of my relatives lived in a primarily lesbian town in Mass.), and the college town is a category unto itself with its own special “town vs. gown” tensions. But for the most part, there’s are real reasons why progressive towns (and exurbs, for that matter) are so rare—if you want celebrations of diversity and anti-conformism, they aren’t the place to be.

I’m pretty confident that the same will happen to some of Constance’s peers, and a lot of them will be deeply ashamed for not having spoken up for her at the time. Either that, or they’ll do that thing people do where they act like they were always Constance’s best friends in the world.

A third option is that some of them (who go to college elsewhere) will “turn out” to be homosexual themselves.

I’ve been watching this conversation with interest, because the view that was pounded into me about the Civil War being about “more complex than just slavery” during my elementary and high school education is about what Ms Kate has been posting

As I said above, slavery is the inescapable theme no matter what perspective you take. I suspect Ms Kate is reacting in good faith to the old elementary school myth that the Civil War was about Lincoln embarking on a moral military crusade to “free the slaves” (a view that fits nicely into the Know-Nothings “War of Northern Aggression” narrative), when in fact it was about a complex web of economic, social, political and moral issues arising from the toxic morass of slavery.

As others here have noted, Lincoln—recognising that complexity—was willing to compromise.  But the entitled aristocrats who ran the Old South wanted more than compromise over their corrosive and unsustainable “peculiar institution”—they wanted acceptance and expansion, and they (not Lincoln) were willing to start a war over it. I won’t belabour the parallels with the mindset of modern conservatives.

Yes, I am one of those annoying history nerds that people hate watching historical films with because I critique everything.

I’m enough of a history geek to have gone to grad school over it, and understand where you’re coming from. However, at least on small nit-picks about anachronisms I notice (e.g. the IBM Selectric typewriters in Mad Men), I’ve reconciled myself to them with the conceit that all these films actually present alternate realities that vary from ours only to the degree of the film-maker’s history-geekiness.

Well, can we call the events of 1861-65 “The Late Unpleasantness.”  ??

So, if non-slave owners wouldn’t make an effort to protect slavery does that mean men don’t care about abortion because we can’t have one? 

What no body has yet mentioned is how by the 1850s there was a very vocal group of southerners who were arguing that slavery was, in fact, a very good thing and should be expanded.  They were moving away from “yes slavery is bad but we’re stuck with it and it’ll eventually fade, mumble, mumble, mumble ” to a Gordon Geckoish “SLAVERY IS GOOD.”

I adore small towns that progressives have gone in and taken over. Bisbee, Arizona, for example. That town has me by the heart. My hometown is so horribly bigoted and awful though. Christ. My cousin, who’s the same age as me, married a guy who says the N-word all the time, at Christmas, even, and even worse, he teaches racist jokes to their six-year-old daughter, who recites them to my delighted family. It’s fucking despicable. My little brother was randomly assaulted at the Circle K by some douchebag who yelled homophobic slurs at him before he started throwing punches. He was probably enraged by my brother wearing a fitted shirt, or loafers or something else. Just like a bull charging the red cape!

So, yes, my heart goes out to Constance. High school is bad enough, but high school in an insular little teeny town is almost unbearable. The utter, utter loneliness coupled with the constant refrain that these are somehow the best years of your life can really beat you down. I hope she goes to New York City on the internship Ellen offered her and has the time of her life.

And also, since I attended a private college prep school that made us buy our textbooks each year (I learned about the horror of yearly textbook purchases before college) we were always using recent versions of textbooks from national publishers.  I never studied US history at a college level; for the history credits I needed there, I took a 19th century British course and a 20th century Russian course.

One of the great things many of us unwashed public school students learned early in life and school was how textbooks are not to be taken as gospel, but as “what the authors know” and “what miserly school districts were willing to pay for”.  Something good to have as a college student or adult…especially when I still see far too many undergrads…or supposedly college or better educated adults still accepting whatever is fed to them uncritically. 

Moreover, going to a private college prep school is no guarantee one received a rigorous education of the standard needed to excel in college-level work…especially at the Ivy/ivy-level colleges.  If that was the case, I would not have made a financial killing tutoring dozens of college classmates who attended private prep schools and many more would not have been struggling/floundering through intro and intermediate courses that were manageable or even on the easy side.  Moreover, you’d be surprised at how many respectable private college prep school curricula would be considered a complete joke by those of us who attended our urban public high school….such as one particular school only requiring 2 years of “rocks for jocks” type science without lab, another only requiring three years of history/government and English, and many others where submitting papers longer than 8-10 pages was considered “too arduous”......sad considering everyone at my school were required to submit a 20 page English thesis on top of the regular workload as a basic graduation requirement. 

It is really sad when socio-economically privileged second and third year econ majors at a certain Ivy were begging me, a C level public high school student to tutor them in Stats 101 because they’re worried about actually flunking the class and they think I’m “smart” because I felt they were overreacting.  Did I mention that math was one of my weakest subjects in high school…. 

So, yes, my heart goes out to Constance. High school is bad enough, but high school in an insular little teeny town is almost unbearable. The utter, utter loneliness coupled with the constant refrain that these are somehow the best years of your life can really beat you down. I hope she goes to New York City on the internship Ellen offered her and has the time of her life.

Same here.  Fortunately for most IME, the best years were not in high school, but college and beyond.  Frankly, if high school happens to be the best years of one’s life…..that is a very limited and pathetic life, to be quite frank…..especially considering most people have several decades of life ahead of them.

What no body has yet mentioned is how by the 1850s there was a very vocal group of southerners who were arguing that slavery was, in fact, a very good thing and should be expanded.  They were moving away from “yes slavery is bad but we’re stuck with it and it’ll eventually fade, mumble, mumble, mumble” to a Gordon Geckoish “SLAVERY IS GOOD.”

Good point.  The interesting part was that they started coming up with those rationalizations when industrialization got into full swing in the North and it was more and more apparent that slavery was just not economically viable anymore, so they had to start coming up with other, non-economic reasons to support it.

...when in fact it was about a complex web of economic, social, political and moral issues arising from the toxic morass of slavery. [et al from a variety of posters, emphasis mine]

This. I’ve posted here about this before, but it’s something that needn’t be up for much argument. Reading the political history of the times, as written by the people living it, you can’t escape the obvious: The balance of power between slave and free states was considered one of the founding principles of the Republic, up there with the three branches of government, the House’s control of the pursestrings, and the authority of states to choose their Senators. The “3/5 of a person” wasn’t in the Constitution in order to insult blacks, but to maintain this specific balance.

When that balance was at last seriously threatened, the South bolted. We are living with the echoes of the loss of this old “check” in these symbolic mini-secessions and threats of same today.

The 2010 Census may well throw pink people into a mere plurality of the population of the United States, a minority among other minorities. Such are ever the wages of empire. The self-important will still whine and spin over their newfound condition. But the last handfuls of dirt will finally be tamped on the grave of the old “balance” between slavery and freedom.

BTW: those folks in that town were douches to a trans student too:

http://blogout.justout.com/?p=16043

(As for the lecture about the quality of my high school education or not—I attended Northwestern and DePaul, and both my undergrad and grad work was mostly a breeze in comparison to my high school. *shrug* I was not a straight-A student in high school; I was in college.)

Off-topic, but I think this is actually true for a lot of type-A people.  First, high school is 40 freaking hours a week.  What the hell.  There’s no reason, other than the need to keep minors occupied during the work week, to make high school 40 hours a week.

Second, high school students can usually self-select into relatively tough classes, and it’s their first time writing papers longer than a couple pages.  They (hopefully) become much better writers from 9th to 12th grades, and good writing is no longer a terrifying impossibility once they enter college.  There’s not as much self-selection in college - all courses are for the general population, except for “honors college” intro courses.

And if you hate science, you get off easy getting a liberal arts degree, relative to high school.  Two semesters and you’re done with your science requirement, in most graduation requirements I’ve seen.

Re the whole Civil War controversy: I just keep coming back to Bleeding Kansas.  As most of you know, it was a flat-out mini-civil war, less than ten years before the actual one—a rehearsal for the main event, as it were.  And it was entirely about slavery.  So was Harper’s Ferry.  Prior to the Civil War white people weren’t killing each other over the tariff, or over some abstract conflict between agrarian and industrial societies.  They were killing each other over slavery.  Full stop. 

Other issues definitely played a role, but they were secondary.  Even though South Carolina threatened to secede in the 1830s over the tariff issue, none of the other southern states would back them.  To the South, the tariff wasn’t worth fighting a war over; slavery was.  Gross oversimplification, to be sure, but one that is fundamentally accurate.  Slavery had to spread to survive, and Lincoln was opposed to its spread.  Thus, secession.

I am hoping one of those schools (at least one that I recall) in California that invited Constance still has their prom coming up, and I hope she goes.

I’m from rural Southern California, and I’m telling you, it was like growing up in Oklahoma.

I promise you are wrong about this. For instance, guaranteed you had good Mexican food before the mid 90s.

There are a lot of documents relating to the origins of the Civil War at James Epperson’s site.  Reading through the secession declarations and the various compromise proposals to resolve the crisis (including one by Jefferson Davis) makes it amply clear that long-term preservation of slavery was the main concern of the Confederate leaders leading up to secession, as explained in their own words.  Certainly too, most of the remaining issues in some way come back to slavery.

Yet it does occur to me that a similar analysis of public documents leading up to the Iraq war would lead one to conclude that the war was all about preempting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  Which is true, in terms of the public case, but minimizes other issues such as the geopolitics of oil.  So there could be additional issues leading up to the civil war that were not as openly discussed at the time.

“Yet it does occur to me that a similar analysis of public documents leading up to the Iraq war would lead one to conclude that the war was all about preempting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  Which is true, in terms of the public case, but minimizes other issues such as the geopolitics of oil.”

True on the American side, but in the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis are more like the South in our Civil War, defying our will, flouting our demands, etc.  From their point of view there were ideas like autonomy and sovereignty that were their primary motivators for resisting American desires.

“So there could be additional issues leading up to the civil war that were not as openly discussed at the time.”

There have been arguments, regarding the American Civil War, about who did what and why ever since the war started and they continue to this day.  Every possible point of view has already been discussed and argued over and over again.  Countless books have been produced, and are still being produced, there are periodicals devoted to the Civil War, movies, plays, maybe even TV…

Considering how many people died (a total still larger than all other American war losses combined), it’s interesting (sad) that Civil War Reenactments are a hobby for a lot of Americans.

Ever hear of regular organized reenactments involving thousands in homage to the Vietnam War, or Korea?  How about WWI?...

I come from a small Southern town, and as bigoted as individuals could be, there is no chance in Hell that something like that could have happened, even 20 years ago when I was in high school. There were at least two or three teachers who would have said something, and I know me and my friends would have supported Constance McMillen and her date, and that prom would have been at least a few dozen strong, even though our graduating class was less than 160 people.

Knowing where I come from, and how much better we were even back then, it is clear that this town is sick and twisted beyond any understanding or repair.

The Confederate flag is a fuck you to black people in the modern context.  That’s why it’s worn, flown, and defended.  It’s like modern people flying Nazi regalia as a white power symbol, except for some buttfuck reason, it’s considered more socially acceptable.

I see these things in Ohio all the time, most generally on pickup trucks, and there’s really only that interpretation.  In a state where I didn’t see the phrase “War of Northern Aggression” until the internet begat the blog, there is no ‘state’s rights’ message conveyed by a Confederate flag.  If people in the South want it to have those connotations, they’d best get some better PR.  (PS: I mean, better than the drivers of those trucks, of course)

It’s also at least half the time accompanied by one of those urinating Calvin decals, as though you really need “I’m a racist” and “I’m a douchebag” to be conveyed in two separate messages.  In this case, the former sort of implies the latter.

I see these things in Ohio all the time, most generally on pickup trucks, and there’s really only that interpretation.  In a state where I didn’t see the phrase “War of Northern Aggression” until the internet begat the blog, there is no ‘state’s rights’ message conveyed by a Confederate flag.  If people in the South want it to have those connotations, they’d best get some better PR.  (PS: I mean, better than the drivers of those trucks, of course)

Not too surprising considering how racist some townies in my rural Ohio undergrad town were to the point they openly stared at interracial couples and yelled racial epithets at POC students.  Heck, one car-borne racist who shouted racist epithets almost came out of his car to attack me after I gave him the finger until a sudden appearance of a cop car caused him to reconsider and scoot off. 

Also, one county in Ohio had the highest concentration of KKK members in the US during their early 20th century heyday according to: http://ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=913&nm=Ku-Klux-Klan

But the north fought it over things like preserving the union and not wanting to loose the income.

Perhaps some in the north did, but the few records my family has of my Calvinist ancestors fighting for the union (letters home, mostly) strongly suggests that the unifying theme was slavery.  Not that they were amazing racial progressives - there was a belief that after beating sense into these Southerners, the US could ship all blacks back to Africa and make a more equal society by making it all white.

My ancestors (well, some of them - the ones from North Carolina didn’t leave paper records that we know of detailing their reasons) fought motivated by the same basic desires that would later lead to such wonderful things as the Boston Watch and Ward Society and the law that was overturned in Griswold v. Connecticut. The strength of the desire to make other people stop sinning should not be underestimated.

Oh, for fuck’s sake already.  Saying this:

Mnemosyne, true or false: the majority of the electorate of the Confederacy owned slaves.

is EXACTLY like saying because most men aren’t rapists that we don’t have a fuckin’ rape culture. Goddamn. I hate it when the intellectuals start masturbating all over a fucking topic. Doesn’t matter how simple it is, everybody’s got to show off, and the simple matter at the heart of it gets buried.

There’s a whole fuck of a lot of men who sympathize, support, and enable a rape culture because they get something out of it. Slavery is the rape of humanity. This was during the days when women didn’t have rights, so exactly what fucking hope did slaves have?!

Slavery is life or death. Slave owners could rape and torture and kill their slaves, even if they were brothers, parents, or children. Whine, bitch, moan about tariffs and all that shit, but slavery is all about legal sadism and murder, so just fuckin’ deal with it. No wonder these assholes are going after Constance. They’re looking for a new victim.

As others here have noted, Lincoln—recognising that complexity—was willing to compromise.  But the entitled aristocrats who ran the Old South wanted more than compromise over their corrosive and unsustainable “peculiar institution”—they wanted acceptance and expansion, and they (not Lincoln) were willing to start a war over it. I won’t belabour the parallels with the mindset of modern conservatives.

This is an old tradiiton of the American South.

Go back a war or two to 1812.  What Americans will typically read in history books is that the main cause was the Royal Navy impressing sailors and the British supporting raids on settlers by various tribes.  Well, the impressment actually stopped as policy after the US complained loudly enough, before the war started (no doubt individual incidents happened, but that always happened), and in the case of the Indians the British were assisting allies who were being pushed back out of their lands, so that one is a wash.

The proximate cause of the war was that Southern politicians thought that while the British were tied up with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the US could stroll into Upper and Lower Canada in a blatant land grab in a cakewalk.  Seriously, there were even speeches about how they’d be welcomed, apparently forgetting that the French-speaking colonists had already fought back in a previous “liberation” attempt, and that most of the English-speaking colonists were people who’d been driven from their homes in the 13 Colonies during the Revolution.

By and large the New England states, the ones who actually would have been impacted by the impressment issue bcause of their ocean trade, had no real interest in a war, to the point that by 1813 there were rumblings about them seceding from the United States.  They saw that this wasn’t the easy victory promised, that despite the sterling efforts of the fledgling US Navy the Royal Navy was still the dominant navel power and if they had a chance to lift their blockade of France, what there was of the US fleet would get curb-stomped, and if the British really decided to put an effort into the war, their trade, fishing and whaling fleets would suffer, creating a mess for their economies.  And if the British sent a real force of their battle-hardened forces to defend Canada, instead of the skeleton force that had nonetheless kept a stalemate, they might decide that a little more security in terms of space might be required around the St. Lawrence River and the settlements in Lower Canada, which risked losing territory of the northestern states.

But the Copperheads were all about martial glory and naked ambition.  And that happened again in the Mexican War, and later the Civil War, and continues today with conservative, and largely southermn, politicians.

I absolutely agree, Hershele, but what you’re suggesting is that, instead of finding a place to make a life for herself, she stick around and fight, all by her own self, against the entrenched bigotry of an entire state’s worth of people, more or less a few.
Comment 55—Aaron

Not intentionally. My point was attitudes have to change. It’s not good enough that there exist places that are “tolerant”; injustice anywhere etc. There should not be no-goareas for any human beings. The existance of Harlem did not make sundown towns all right.

Getting back to the topic at hand, does anybody else think that some students were threatened into not telling Constance about the other prom?  I realize that most the students were bad apples who hated her, but all it would have taken was one person to tell and she would have known.  I bet it will come out that a student wanted to tell her and the others, but was threatened with violence if they said anything.
Comment 100—Albert Cirrus

I suspect the students (aside from the victims) are in three groups:
1) Homophobes, who didn’t want her there. Especially once they realized she and her girlfriend didn’t intend to perform for them.
2) People who bought into the idea that her being there would cause drama and misleading her would not.
3) People who fell prey to peer pressure and the bystander effect. What Linneus said at 105, or they figured “someone will tell her.”