The price of Freedom

[Straight Arrow]

The following statement is based on the 1860 census figures for the Lower and Upper South.



For every six slaves freed, the price was one Northern causality.

One life for six.



Is this remembered or honored today?



Lay your body down.

[DrPostman]

There is evidence that former slaves who buried the body of Union
soldiers who died as POWs in Charleston in 1865 was the beginnings
of our observance of Memorial Day.
http://www.snopes.com/military/memorialday.asp

[ERISS]

The goal was to ruin the South economy, and it was more paying for the North to free the South slaves than to kill them to remove the south work force. Slaves have been lucky about this.

[Keeler]

To read the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Monument at Petersburg, to walk through the Cornfield at Antietam, to look into Camp Sumter from Andersonville's star fort, is to feel small indeed.

If you ever have the chance to visit a Civil War battlefield, take some time to visit the nearby National Cemetery. I was walking through Antietam National Cemetery in 2010 and saw a grave with fresh flowers: a service member had been killed in Afghanistan and had recently been laid to rest. To this day I wonder how many of the Union soldiers buried alongside him had ever heard of Afghanistan, or could locate it on a map. I wonder how many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, wives and sweethearts, had ever heard of Antietam, or could locate Sharpsburg on a map. I wonder how many doubted the value of their beloved's sacrifice and the worthiness of the cause which had taken so much from them.

The names and places change, but the cost of liberty and freedom remain the same.

[Mickey3D]

For every six slaves freed, the price was one Northern causality.

One life for six.

1860 censusshows nearly 4'000'000 slaves and northern casualities were around 360'000. the ratio is closer to 1:11.

Whatever the ratio, it removes nothing to their deeds.

[BattleVonWar]

The Civil War is one of the many Wars that was a bloody hell that we as a people should not have needed. I think the war aims was the freeing of the slave but ultimately if you read up that was not really accomplished. Slavery is alive and well today right under your nose when you enter a Brothel, strip club, escort agency, etc... etc... etc... Outsources to places in Canada/Africa/Asia/etc...

So we outsourced our slavery and washed our dirty hands. Plus the people that were previously on paper slaves remained in a sort of limbo after the war. So I think our hearts were in the right places but slavery has been here since the beginning of time and will be here for a lot longer than most of us. Merely not as blatantly disgusting object destroying African American lives as it was.

The Civil War is merely part of an ongoing struggle for humanity to come to terms with itself.

Afghanistan was something I was really behind at the beginning but at this point. I feel we shouldn't give a drop of American blood to any Country anymore. Our people are worth more than this and after examining the terrain and fighting techniques of our opponent there.... a victory is impossible without us committing long term or to an all out war. Which we will not do... All of our lives are precious, I have become opposed to America fighting in any War that does not threaten her directly.

[DrPostman]

Afghanistan is called the "land where empires go to die" for a good reason. I can name
at least a dozen empires that have crumbled that tried to conquer Afghanistan.

[ERISS]

the cost of liberty and freedom remain the same.

Yup, cost of liberty and freedom of the riches is the blood of the poors.

[Gray Fox]

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

A writer on CSPAN related that a woman named Mary visited the Memorial at Normandy where her father had died when she was one year old. She said that as she looked at his grave, she couldn't help but cry from happiness and sorrow. She cried for all the words she had never said to or heard from a father she had never known. She cried and cried and cried.

Multiply this times 600,000 for the Civil war or 60,000,000 for WW II. It's always the same result.

[Straight Arrow]

1860 censusshows nearly 4'000'000 slaves and northern casualities were around 360'000. the ratio is closer to 1:11.

Whatever the ratio, it removes nothing to their deeds.

Your right, numbers from this time are fuzzy at best. How I arrived at 6 to 1.


The Civil War Trust site, gives the Northern casualties: killed, wounded and captured as 596,670.

http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html


A map of the 1860 census created in 1861 gives the total Southern slave count as 3,950,343.


Thus, for each 6 slaves freed - 1 solider killed, crippled or scarred.

[Captain_Orso]

The Civil War is one of the many Wars that was a bloody hell that we as a people should not have needed. I think the war aims was the freeing of the slave but ultimately if you read up that was not really accomplished. Slavery is alive and well today right under your nose when you enter a Brothel, strip club, escort agency, etc... etc... etc... Outsources to places in Canada/Africa/Asia/etc...

So we outsourced our slavery and washed our dirty hands. Plus the people that were previously on paper slaves remained in a sort of limbo after the war. So I think our hearts were in the right places but slavery has been here since the beginning of time and will be here for a lot longer than most of us. Merely not as blatantly disgusting object destroying African American lives as it was.

The Civil War is merely part of an ongoing struggle for humanity to come to terms with itself.

Afghanistan was something I was really behind at the beginning but at this point. I feel we shouldn't give a drop of American blood to any Country anymore. Our people are worth more than this and after examining the terrain and fighting techniques of our opponent there.... a victory is impossible without us committing long term or to an all out war. Which we will not do... All of our lives are precious, I have become opposed to America fighting in any War that does not threaten her directly.

Honestly BattleVonWar, I have no idea what you are talking about. Slavery in the antebellum was not a business model. It was a way of life. The South was a Slave Culture and the South was not about make a sudden 180° turn away from one of its predominant cultural characteristics for no reason at all. In fact, the South deemed it necessary to attempt to secede from the United States and fight the bloodiest war Americans have ever waged to protect that culture.

De facto slavery still exists in the world, but firstly, the Civil War was never intended to end slavery throughout the world; only on US soil.

Girls 'sold' to textile mills in India and Bangladesh are de facto slaves. They must work in the mills per contracts their parents signed while the girls were minors, and for which their parents were paid, until the mill has extracted the contractual amount of labor from them, often 10 years.

Prostitution and stripping are not slavery, unless you consider pimps, who in the underground coerce women to work for them as prostitutes. This situation is cause by the legislatures refusing to legalize and regulate prostitution. In two counties in Nevada prostitution is legal and regulated and there are absolutely no reports of any women being forced into working in the brothels there. In fact there has been at least one BBC documentary made about one of the brothels in which many of the prostitutes are openly interviewed and none of them showed any signs of coercion. Many spoke openly of how they enjoyed some of the advantages of the work they were doing.

In Germany, Switzerland and Holland prostitution is legal and regulated. There are still however occasional cases of women being held as sex-slaves. These are women who enter the country illegally, being tricked by some mafia group--of which there are many in Europe--that they will work in a bar as waitresses or some other unskilled job. When they arrive their passports are taken from and they are forced into prostitution, for which they receive no payment.

I read an article a couple of years ago about several women who where held as slaves in France. Not as sex-slaves nor as prostitutes, but as household slaves. Of the one I remember that she had been held in an apartment at the time of her discovery by the police for about 3 years. The women/girls had gone to France illegally. They were offered help to sneak into the country and told that they would work as household help and maids and earn a normal wage. When the arrived their passports were taken from them and they were locked in the apartments where they worked, never being left without supervision or a chance of escape.

But these types of slavery are far different from the slavery organized in the slave states of the US. Once you were a slave in that system, unless your 'owner' freed you, you would never be free nor any of your children. And after the 1857 Dred Scott vs Sanford supreme court decision and the laws passed forcing free-states to persecute escaped slaves everywhere within the US, not even if a slave escaped and fled to a free-state would he or she be free. This made it legally to bring and hold slaves in any state of the Union so long as their sale and purchase occurred elsewhere. Free-states became state where only the trade of slaves was illegal. Under the law slaves were not persons and had no rights. They were not slaves through force and violence of their 'owners' but through the force and authority of the state and federal governments.

--

The US did not invade Afghanistan to 'free' its people other than if such freedom would allow them to prevent such terroristic organizations as al-Qaeda from operating there and these "freed" citizens were willing and able to do so. The US gave not a single drop of blood to their country. Our actions were self-serving.

Not only are "all our lives" precious, but all lives.

[Keeler]

I didn't intend to turn this into a debate about Afghanistan. My point was the irony of the situation, and how costs and doubts (or self-reflection, or whatever one wishes to call it) about the worthiness of those costs continue with on us, as they always have and will.

[BattleVonWar]

Capt. Orso, my point was that slavery wasn't abolished in America even after a war. As there are people's civil rights and freedoms being trampled on today. In this country, perhaps not with the same Mask as Antebellum Slavery. Modern Slavery doesn't wear the same Mask. When a Chinese girl is in jail at 15, making laptops and if she doesn't she gets less food for the day. She is not free. Plus we buy them... Of course I am a hypocrite, I would rather the cheaper laptop, wouldn't you?

Many children are trafficked and Governments are looking the other way. I know of many such stories. I'm sure that the numbers would shock you. You can find that type of information out if you wish. They do not have any Rights...If the Nation of which they're shipped would disagree strong enough, it would not happen. One of those nations happens to be ours. Of course when they grow up and live in Brothels and Strip Clubs, plus are illiterate they regain their Freedoms and Civil Rights. Perhaps some are lucky enough to marry an American man who is decent and have kids that will be totally free.

~~

Afghanistan was a symbol I believe, because of one man. We all know him. Now that he is gone, that symbol is gone, and we are gone, there... To me, Americans wanted revenge and to fix the problem. Problem is now, you don't require that one base to perform terror operations. Any nation will do just about. Our enemy has adapted and now could be training in Wyoming. Unfortunately this problem is bigger than I think anyone understands. It's hate. Both sides too...

[plasticpanzers]

I would not ever believe that those men died in vain. An entire people were freed. Its true that their freedom too far to long to be complete because so much of the South went back to controlling folks for so many years but the weight of history says they are free. Slavery, either induvidual or institutional, and for many reasons has been a problem since the beginning of time. It is a curse that require ceaseless effort to destroy. I will not take the pain and virtue of those who have died in the civil war, or since, fighting for freedom as wasted. I have walked Lookout Mountain, Shilo, Cairo, Stones River, Vicksburg. I have stood in the Illinios monument building and spoke the words on the brass plaque there while standing alone. I heard the words boom off the walls and I felt the hands of thousands touch my shoulders in thanks. My family shall never forget their sacrifice. The flag of the Union 1st Corps of Gettysburg flies over our home under the Stars and Stripes. The South was not evil but they were wrong. They fought too hard and too well for a cause that was not worthy of them. The North fought for many reasons but could hold to their hearts for all of time that in the end they set a nation free.

[Captain_Orso]

I didn't intend to turn this into a debate about Afghanistan. My point was the irony of the situation, and how costs and doubts (or self-reflection, or whatever one wishes to call it) about the worthiness of those costs continue with on us, as they always have and will.

My point is that there is not time when the US risked anything to bring about freedom in any country. Even after WWII the main reasons for rebuilding Germany and Japan was to bind them as allies and so that discontentment and unrest would not follow the end of fighting and allow radicals to find a foothold again.

On the contrary, the US has caused elected democracies to be overthrown and replaced by tyrants---freedom be damned! for those people---both purposefully and by accident. The millions of dead from the 'Killing Fields' in Cambodia bare witness to only one example.

The US started supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan only to be a thorn in the Soviet's side. They originally never dreamed that the Afghanis would actually force the USSR out. But as soon as the Soviets were gone, all support stopped; no help in rebuilding the countries infrastructure, no help in creating a democracy. In that power vacuum the Taliban was born from feuding Mujahideen clans, just about the worst thing that could have come from that conflict.

Almost the exact same thing happened with Iraq. The US once supported Hussein and his Bathist Party. Now after the second invasion the Bathists who were removed from their positions in the military are now in the leadership of IS(IS) a far more radical organization than Hussein or anybody ever thought might exist in the modern world. But 90% of Americans have no idea of Sunis and Shias and why they hate each other, even in the US government, and what huge role that plays in all conflicts in the region.

Once the fighting started in Syria many war-hawk conservatives screamed to support the rebels and give them weapons, even air support, and from some of those rebels they wanted to support, ISIS was born. One decision any informed person knows Obama got right, but they still call him weak because he didn't make such a stupid move.

I'm not complaining that the US is not altruistic and sacrifices its blood and money to free other peoples. But it's the pinnacle of disgusting speech when we crow out about how our intentions are only to bring democracy, while murdering those peoples, raping their land, leaving it in ruins and viewing their brown-skinned population as sub-human scum, not even worthy of shifting the aim while pulling the trigger.

[Captain_Orso]

I would not ever believe that those men died in vain. An entire people were freed. Its true that their freedom too far to long to be complete because so much of the South went back to controlling folks for so many years but the weight of history says they are free. Slavery, either induvidual or institutional, and for many reasons has been a problem since the beginning of time. It is a curse that require ceaseless effort to destroy. I will not take the pain and virtue of those who have died in the civil war, or since, fighting for freedom as wasted. I have walked Lookout Mountain, Shilo, Cairo, Stones River, Vicksburg. I have stood in the Illinios monument building and spoke the words on the brass plaque there while standing alone. I heard the words boom off the walls and I felt the hands of thousands touch my shoulders in thanks. My family shall never forget their sacrifice. The flag of the Union 1st Corps of Gettysburg flies over our home under the Stars and Stripes. The South was not evil but they were wrong. They fought too hard and too well for a cause that was not worthy of them. The North fought for many reasons but could hold to their hearts for all of time that in the end they set a nation free.

This is the one thing I think Lincoln completely failed to understand. He acted as if slavery were simply a business proposition to the South, not understanding the radicals or recognizing their difference from the moderates. It's hard to understand, but there was no mass media at the time. The written word and word of mouth were the only ways to discover what was going on in other parts. People who lived in the South understood what it was about. Sherman knew the southern men and knew they would not 'grow tired' of rebellion, for it was not a passing fancy over which they were willing to fight and die.

If Lincoln were not murdered in April '65, who knows what would have happened. I imagine he would have recognized the radicals in the South, but what would he do? How quickly could he have learned just how radical some factions in the South were? He'd have probably found out just how racially bias his northern brethren were as well.

Nobody goes to fight a war carrying a token which tells them if they are one of the many who are destined to be wounded, maimed or killed. You fight on for as long as you can praying to not hold the bloody-token. And as a nation you fight on until you win, spend your token or both sides decide to put the carnival to rest.

The most evil thing in the war was not all the killing. The most evil thing was how everybody was fighting for an ideal spew from radical mouthes so loud that man could not see it for what it was, pure hatred on both sides, and mostly just fear of the fictions they read in the papers. It brought brother to kill brother thinking they were doing the right thing and never knowing the truth of their actions. Lest we learn to ban the radicals from the halls of our land we will forever be killing our brothers.

[plasticpanzers]

We look back with the brillance we think is hindsight. We think we can see all that was wrong and all that would have been fixes 'if just'
someone did this or that. hindsight is a dangerous thing to use. You have to immerse yourself in the times and before those times to
understand that the US was not a real nation but a federation of nations. States rights were important to all states, North and South.

Absolueism existied everywhere and if you remember the 'no nothings' groups of the period (striking in resemblence to current thinking
by some) you will see the Lincoln really did understand the problem but the solution that would work had to be forged over time due to the
terrible differences not only in the nation and each state but in counties and towns. That he wove the thread of his will thru this to come
to what he did without destroying the nation is nothing less than amazing. His understanding of people, North and South, was spectactular.

To understand 'in the time' rather than in our time is to truely understand what happened and what continues to echo down from those times.
Men were not fools, they knew what they died for. Then, just as now, men die for each other. Killing is evil? Certainly, but to die standing
in a line 100 yards from another line trying to kill you yet not running because you belive in something greater than yourself is certainly something
God understands. You can kill hate by killing all the haters but you cannot stop hate by just defeating it. It takes time and effort for hearts
and minds to understand one another. Those who still try and divide us are still fighting a war long lost. We are still walking that long road to
a future of true understanding and the true death of hate. There will still be those who fight the truth but we must be patient and teach them
that hate leads nowhere then and nowhere now.

[BattleVonWar]

Very interesting perspective from both Panzer and Orso. The burying of hatred and the enlightenment of people. People tell me so much good comes from war. Like inventions that wouldn't otherwise be there. I say... What if everyone came together and innovated. Plus all the great minds that die in it. Rarely is war a profit for the greater good.

Also who can doubt the Theatrics of The ACW. Books and Movies will be made of it for thousands of years. I wonder if like actors and actresses we do not simply play the part we are given a little too much..a little too well.. If we could separate from place and time we could see the forest for the trees.

Like our Game, we play ...

[ERISS]

People tell me so much good comes from war. Like inventions that wouldn't otherwise be there. I say... What if everyone came together and innovated. Plus all the great minds that die in it. Rarely is war a profit for the greater good.

Those war so-lovers won't run to her once she calls them.
The true lovers of War know nothing good come from her, despite the freedom civilisation-free in the civil eye-of-her-storm, but she's their doomed way-of-life and can't do without her.