Thread: The US Civil War....Still Going On?

So in my writing class we are writing about the Civil War. As I was analyzing various quotes from different sources, and embedding them in my paper, I was intrigued by one of the sources I was using. The book is called Still Fighting the Civil War; The American South and Southern History by David Goldfield. For the record, he is a faculty member I believe at Louisiana State University. It was after all published by the Louisiana State University publishing.

In it, he writes about the Civil War from a Southern perspective (big surprise I know). What I was surprised about was how critical of the South he was in the post war years. One of the things he postulated was that in a matter of speaking, the Civil War is still occurring to this day. Instead of being fought on fields Bull Run (or Manassas like you Rebs call them ) it is instead being fought in ideology and ways of life.

My question is, do you agree with it? Why or why not? And what is being fought over.

I personally believe that the first opening salvo of this new style of war was fired at Dayton TN. The location of the Scopes; monkey trial for those of you who don't know. I don't want this to turn into a debate on the validity on religion but what I would like to see is a serious discussion over WHAT may be being fought over and why, but NOT THE VALIDITY of it. I hope you guys know what I am talking about.

Yes...I know Civil will probably be the first one in this thread...HI CIVIL!

to be the first and thus prove you wrong, i'll post (suck it civil)

To question it is a good question and do i think it still is being fought, on what level that i'm still not sure on. I would say though politically when looking at the two sides its seems many of the states from the North are now considered Blue States while many of the Southern States are now considered Red States. So i suppose you could argue to an extent that there is a battle between the two within political ideology.

I'll have to look at the charts (So to speak) to make sure i'm right on the red/blue thing though (pretty sure its fairly right however)

I think I might have to look into this...

Just look at OTS, and the last few elections, and you will see the nation is divided as we ever were, but now it is not geographic.

Damn it....Civil, you have failed me!

intuitively, I would agree on the red/blue aspect.

So then this begs the question of what was the Civil War fought over. Ideologies? States' Rights? Immoral/Inhumane Practices? Maintaining a collective Union? Are these issues still present in our country? I don't know cause I am a damned Yankee from NJ and think that Reconstruction ended in 1877 and that was that.

Everyone knows it was ALL about slavery, just ask Jinx.

by the way here is the map of the presidential election

[img width=700 height=427]http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/statemapredbluer1024.png[/img]

Originally Posted by Potemkine

Damn it....Civil, you have failed me!

intuitively, I would agree on the red/blue aspect.

So then this begs the question of what was the Civil War fought over. Ideologies? States' Rights? Immoral/Inhumane Practices? Maintaining a collective Union? Are these issues still present in our country? I don't know cause I am a damned Yankee from NJ and think that Reconstruction ended in 1877 and that was that.

I'd say its over states' rights and ideologies mostly. Seems as of recent its been between big or small government (i see small government as more of states' rights) and then over things like spend or save, Religious objections etc etc.

Originally Posted by Red_Lizard2

by the way here is the map of the presidential election

[img width=700 height=427]http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/statemapredbluer1024.png[/img]

And here's an election results map based on counties and population:

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/elect...ram--Party.htm

[img width=700 height=453]http://z.about.com/d/uspolitics/1/0/F/N/countycart_redblue_2008.png[/img]