CNN Poll: 4 in 10 white Southerners sympathize more with Confederacy than Union.

[copperfiend]

Interesting (but not surprising) polling on the 150th anniversary of the start of the US Civil War.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/civil-war-still-divides-americans/

Washington (CNN) - It has been 150 years since the Civil War began with the first shots at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and in some respects views of the Confederacy and the role that slavery played in the events of 1861 still divide the public, according to a new national poll.

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Tuesday, roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in ten among white Southerners.

When asked the reason behind the Civil War, whether it was fought over slavery or states' rights, 52 percent of all Americas said the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to keep slavery legal in their state, but a sizeable 42 percent minority said slavery was not the main reason why those states seceded.

"The results of that question show that there are still racial, political and geographic divisions over the Civil War that still exists a century and a half later," CNN Polling Director Holland Keating said.

When broken down by political party, most Democrats said southern states seceded over slavery, independents were split and most Republicans said slavery was not the main reason that Confederate states left the Union.

Republicans were also most likely to say they admired the leaders of the southern states during the Civil War, with eight in 10 Republicans expressing admiration for the leaders in the South, virtually identical to the 79 percent of Republicans who admired the northern leaders during the Civil War.

[dougskiles]

This question may be answered best by examining the Union's motives for fighting to keep the Confederate states from seceding.  Were that many people willing to die to end slavery?  Or to continue it?  Hard to believe that it wasn't about more than slavery.

I don't have the answer and will never pretend to.  But I also recognize that history books can be written in such a way to completely distort the truth and rarely present both sides of a conflict with equal consideration.

[Garden guy]

A poll was not needed to know this..the republican and democratic parties were completely different groups than they are now..some things change..some things dont.

[Doctor_K]

Check this out while you're at it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths-about-why-the-south-seceded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html

Pretty good read.

[Ocklawaha]

Unadulterated Bull Shit! I'd give us about 8 in 10. Did they do this poll in Memphis? Kentucky? both historically turn-coat locations weak in spine. Maryland or Missouri perhaps, two states held hostage by the Federal Government during the war? Maybe it was done in Oklahoma, where the benevolent Yankee's failing in their genocide of an entire race of native peoples (generally right after their benevolent rescue of the black race - if you believe the history books) decided to cram every available Indian within it's hard scrabble borders.

This country has been screwing the black man since it's founding, and hiding behind a virtual wall of misinformation and outright propaganda which has indoctrinated entire generations in a mythical history. The fact is within the Official Records of The War of The Rebellion, one reads a totally different story, and very little of that has anything to do with slavery. Slavery by the way was practiced by BLACK PLANTATION OWNERS as well as whites, and slaves were NOT BLACK, but from many races, as they had been for 10,000 years. If you believe the Federal Government approved histories, you'd have to ignore the million or so slaves held in northern states throughout the war, including General U.S (Useless) Grant. Yeah, the Grants themselves were slave owners. During the summer of 1861, the federal Congress passed resolutions saying that war would be fought only to “preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired.” And General Ulysses S. Grant, who accepted Lee’s surrender on behalf of the Union at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, once said that if he “thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side.”

Though I am not a trained historian (my doctorate is in theology), for many years I have researched the Civil Warâ€"or, more accurately, the War for Southern Independence (“Civil War” wrongly implies that the South was fighting to gain control of a central government). I have seen with my own eyes the vast amount of original documents that back up the illegality of the Northern invasion of the South. Yet even many Southerners who have a Confederate heritage hang their heads in shame because the government schools teach them to. In the documentary, “Africans in America,” an African-American woman put it best when she said, “Slavery was not a Southern problem; it was an American problem.” The South did not create slaveryâ€"Northern ship merchants did that.

I recently spent a day examining several widely-used high school history textbooks and discovered that in dealing with the South before 1865 they include numerous false assumptions. Liberals who spread emotional lies about the war and about the South often go so far as to equate the Confederate flag with the Nazi swastika. Historical revisionists who attack the legitimacy of the Confederacy and its causeâ€"and thus the right of Southerners to exist as a people with a unique culture and heritageâ€"usually base their attacks upon falsehoods. The premier myths are the following:

   *

     Antebellum Southern whites treated their slaves cruelly, and nearly every white Southerner had slaves.
   *

     Slavery was practiced only by white Southerners, and when practiced was a sin, which damned all Southern whites and their descendants forever.
   *

     The Southern states attempted to leave the Union only to perpetuate slavery.
   *

     The Southern states could not lawfully secede from the Union; therefore they were in rebellion against the Union.
   *

     The Southern states fought a civil war with the intent to overthrow the federal government in Washington, D.C.

But the most insidious myth is that of the “great and good” North marching into the “cruel and evil” South for the sole purpose of freeing the slaves. There are many quotes from Northern leaders (Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and others) that show clearly that the main purpose of the North was not the eradication of slavery but the subjugation of the Southern people. If you will take the time to study these commonly accepted myths, you will easily find them to be false and spread either accidentally, through ignorance, or else deliberately, with contempt towards Southerners.

Contrary to what most Americans are taught in school, Lincoln did not launch the war in order to make blacks equal with whites. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates he said, “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races, and I have never said anything on the contrary.” In a speech in Illinois in 1858 he said that he was not in favor of making voters or jurors of blacks, or qualifying them to hold office or to intermarry with white people. In his own words:

I will say, then, that I am not now, nor never have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now, nor never have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriage with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will forever forbid the two races living together in terms of social and political equality. Inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white man.
Doctor, David Alan Black

UNRECONSTRUCTED line up on the right! I'll bring the Rebel Yell!

OCKLAWAHA

[BrSpiritus]

Did they do this poll in Memphis? Kentucky? both historically turn-coat locations weak in spine. Maryland or Missouri perhaps, two states held hostage by the Federal Government during the war?

I come from Maryland and I'd vote for the Confederacy every day of the week and twice on Sunday. 

[Old Jim]

Amen, Ock!