Am I getting what you say correctly? You are saying "in spite of their beliefs" about Union navy men? So what you are saying basically is that they were on the wrong side ideologically? Really???

no randy, what the Lieutenant Colonel is saying is that the Confederate soldiers, sailors, fighting men, were all extreamly brave and patriotic men. dispite the reason of the war, the Confederates are Americans and show the same gutsy desire for freedom.

I can’t help but disagree with you on the point about them being fighting men of the United States. If you asked them they would not consider themselves to be men of the United States. They would have considered themselves to be fighting men of their individual states serving under the colors of the Confederate States of America. As such we should honor their bravery as Americans that is not the same as saying they are fighting men of the United States. The men on the U.S.S. Housatonic where fighting men of the United States.

Agreed. They actually called it "The War of Northern Agression." I don't think that they were interested in being in a 'united' country at all. They were seceding.

I'm not proud of every aspect of the South's history, but I am a proud Southerner. As such, I truly appreciate the kindness and wisdom in LTC Rattus's post.

I see this submarine as an amazing bit of history - U.S. history, Confederate history, it's all the same at this point.

Regarding the men who fought as confederate soldiers in the Civil War, I would suggest that you read up about how Mr. Lincoln and others felt about these men.

They were americans. On the wrong side of history, perhaps, but still americans. They were seen by many as brothers, fellow citizens, and many steps were taken not to outlaw and denigrate them.

Regarding the Hunley...the technological feat of building an actual working submarine in the 1860s was a triumph of engineering. The men who crewed this first attack submarine were brave and courageous beyond the measure of ordinary men, every one a volunteer, and every one knowing full well the risks entailed in doing what they did.

Outstanding, these men, in spite of what they fought for.

Outstanding.

Chaos said it right.. To actually build & use this technology in the 1860's is amazing. Having been in submarines for ten years, I'm in awe of the soldiers who manned this sub.

Dolphin twelve bravo

Steama.

Sailors must have known they were entering their coffin" According to what I have researched on the Hunley, the crew that perished after the attack on the Houstoinic, was the second...if not, the third crew of that ill fated sub. The earlier crew(s) drowned on what would be a, "shake down" cruise. IF <~~ big if, that be the case, then that last crew had to be aware that they did not sign on for a pleasure cruise. North or South, they were all a bunch of dedicated hero's.....God bless them one and all.

They had a candle that was lit and when it started to go out they knew they needed to resurface for fresh air. I agree though, huge cajones.

There were no system for oxygen supply. They counted with the oxygen capacity the sub had, so they had to move forward over the surface until being at shoot or the enemy sight and, then, proceed with the immersion to reach the target.

You must be kidding vicj. I thought we all voted on laws today. Besides we would be a separate country. Possibly but not probably still with slavery. Maybe that we would have had a slave revolt with all whites fleeing north. You dream on but I think it may have been a nightmare. I prefer a society where I can be friends with anyone I want to be friends with.

vicy, the cleaners called, your sheet is ready.

Union labor built the sub

could someone please explain the purpose of the candle they carried with them inside the hull?

chortle.

The candle was an oxygen indicator.

If the flame started to die it meant that the O2 levels were too low to breathe.

If this went out, they knew it was time to surface for new air.

The Hunley did not carry air in any form.

She did however have a snorkel up top which used atmospheric differential to refill the sub with breathable air.

It is speculated that in a panic they opened the hatches in high seas and she sank.

Another theory is gunshot holes around one of the hatches caused her to sink.

oh darn...now I see this

please excuse my sarcasm...I majored in it while in college

chortle2.

Ohio you are full of it.

There were confederate black soldier too.

The battle of the Confederacy was NOT about slavery much as some uneducated people think.

Even your beloved Lincoln owned slaves.

The war was more based on economics at the time.

Slavery was factored in, but was used as a weapon of propaganda more than an actual cause of war.

The South formed a country called the confederate states of America so the Huntley crew was fighting for a country. They fought because they thought the North was infringing on states’ rights by designating new territories non slave states. Slavery surly was wrong but back then it was the engine of agrarian manufacturing in the south and acceptable at that time. Just like the hiporcritical North who exploited the Irish in their factories with deplorable working conditions, company stores and factory owned housing. It was more about representation in congress and thus states rights. Lincoln was the one that brought up the slavery thing as a standard to bear for northern armies. Typical politician if you ask me. The North was getting it’s clock cleaned on the battlefield by Lee’s army of North Virginia and wanted a rallying cry so produced the Emancipation Proclamation after the blood bath called Antietam. Why does everything posted on MSN have to go racial it gets so tiring. What a way to ruin a good story about brave Americans and brilliant American engineers. I live in what would be considered the North, New Hampshire and my fore fathers came from Sweden so we never owned “slaves” nor discriminated against anyone. So go offend someone else. There are many political threads you can spill your hatred on please leave this thread to folks that want to talk about the amazing artifact that we as Americans now have to cherish.

Viewer_Ready and others:

1. Slavery was the key issue motivating the "Civil" War, the Southern States left the Union, as allowed under the constitution, because they disagreed with the way the North was going with respect to Slavery and other issues, but Slavery was the principle issue. The war started when the South fired on Federal property, until that time the Southern States were acting in a constitutional manner.

2. Lincoln NEVER owned slaves, he loathed the idea of slavery. Illnois did not allow the ownership of slaves by the way.

3. The concept of slaves fighting for their owners has always been thrown about, but in reality, the slaves could not be trusted with weapons. The confusion is usually from the process of dressing slaves in uniforms and then forcing them to do work on engineering articles (walls, redoubts, etc.), drayage (moving items), but generally all slaves who got a chance went over to the Union. Bear in mind that once the slaves went over to the Union, there was a death sentence if they were captured. I think that there was no slave that had any kind of positive feeling for their masters, old movies aside, slavery was an evil, evil thing, beyond any understanding that we have in modern times. Put guns in the hands of the slaves and they would simply kill thier hated masters.

4. The Emanicipation Proclaimation was directed to freeing the slaves in the border states like Maryland, and to act to block a possible freeing of slaves by the South (The Union thought that this was a possibility, it would never happen).

5. As to the Irish being exploited, they seemed to have risen above that pretty well, so as a Irish-Scott-Hillbilly, I take offense at the remark that my forebears were exploited. We did what it took to survive and did it quite well. So lay off trying to turn our history into one of victimization. Now I will go get my moring "Irish" coffee.

And the Confederate Submarine is a remarkable historical object, but really they were the bad guys, but heroic bad guys.

This is wonderful, my husband and I are CIVIL READERS, our history. I wonder will they put the sub out for display. If they ever do, we sure would like to come and see it.

Sandy S

Ok, lets get a few facts straight. The North and the South were divided by slavery. The North did not want the slaves freed! They were more concerned with this form of economic model infriging on the free labor they were developing, the one were they pay 1 cent per day and no benefits. The slaves did considerably better than that and most were considered part of the family. Then we have the fact that several thousand freed blacks owned slaves themselves, in fact they were the principals owners here in my area of Louisiana. Now consider, there were a large number of freed blacks in the South, why?, because the north would not allow them to live in their states, google "black laws".

Now, the war was caused by Lincoln. The South left because Lincoln promised a government very much similar to what Obama is doing now. We don't like those types of governments now and they did not like them then. They grouped together as people with similar interest and attempted of achieve self-determination. This is the principal of our foreign policy, only we don't practice now or then. In other words, whites, blacks, Indians, all wanted freedom from the US. Lincoln was not going to have that so he forced the firing on Fort Sumter, just like our presidents have taken us to war any number of times since. A manufactured process to inflame the nation. Lincoln's inauguration speech spelled out his reasons for war, it does not say anything about freeing slaves.

Now the emancipation proclamation, this did not free slaves, nor was it intended to free slaves in the US. It was only to free slaves in areas in the South that had not been "pacified" and had their freedom restricted by the US. In other words, you have the US (a slave holding nation, as several slave states had not seceded), fighting the South, slave holding nation, to eliminate slavery. I don't know about you, but that does not make sense to me. Note that Northern soldiers not only took slaves, for there own use, but they took everything else in the South and we are only beginning to recuperate now.

The War of Northern Aggression was wrong, it killed 600,000 people at the low estimate and likely more that 1.5 million in reality. Many of the people killed were women and children as a consequence of the depredations of Sherman and Sheridan. The North and Lincoln acted more like the SS than anyone dreamed of in the South. Prisoners in the North were tortured, starved, and killed intentionally. This has left scares that will not heal. Those of us in the South still yearn for freedom.

You really need to open a history book once in awhile, you say Prisoners in the north were tortured, starved, and killed intentionally? here's an idea, go onto the net and look up Andersonville prison. As to the proclamation only freed slaves in the south.....ummm.....that's where the slaves were?

Four (and one half) 'slave states' remained with the Union during the Civil War. They were Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. The northwester part of Virginia broke away from it to remain in the Union as West Virginia. The 'Emancipation Proclamation' only made slavery illegal in the states that had seceded, except Tennessee, which by that time, Jan 1863, was under northern control. This was a full two years after the war had started. Abraham Lincoln could have cared less about black slaves, he wrote

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

To Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had passed along a report of a rabid anti-Lincoln harangue in the Mississippi legislature, Lincoln wrote that "madman" there had quite misrepresented his views. He stated he was not "pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery," and that he did not "hold the black man to be the equal of the white." People trying to revise history run into the most troublesome things called facts.

P.S. My Grandfathers brother died at Andersonville prison. I don't believe the deaths at either sides POW camps were intentional, just logistically inevitable.

Central Ohio I would like to correct your assertion that the south was fighting to preserve the ability to enslave men. Most of the men who fought in the civil war could not afford to own slaves. They were fighting to preserve their state from aggression from A Lincoln. Whereas the north fought to keep the south in the union and they glorified their cause by saying they wanted to free the slaves. Even Mr Lincoln had no idea what to do with the slaves when they were freed and one idea was to send them back to Africa.

Wetwilly1, you need to open up a book on logic. Just because the south had prison camps that were terrible doesn't mean the north didn't have them either. What kind of ridiculous argument are you trying to make?

My only argument is that both your points are pointless. If someone was trying to say the South treated their prisoners well, then you would have brought up a reasonable point. But nobody did that.

Or you could have even stated, "Union prisoners were also ill treated in the south" to bring up that point as well. But the language you used was nowhere near this.

Poor debating skills, man.

I believe it would fair to say that whatever "cause" is cited as the reason why the Civil War started, said "cause" can be related to the slavery issue. Be it the dispute as to a new state entering the Union as a "free state" or a "slave state," the economic differences between the North (industrial based) and the South (agricultural based, notably cotton), the growing Abolitionist movement, the election of President Abraham Lincoln on November 6, 1860 or the "states rights versus federal rights" cited in your post.

After the Revolutionary War, a Confederation with a very weak federal government was set up under the Article of Confederation. The problems with this weak form of government lead to the Constitutional Convention which began on May 25, 1787 and ended on September 17, 1787. The United States Constitution was approved by the committee, then sent to the Congress of Confederation for approval (affirmed) and to the states for ratification. Many thought the new Constitution gave the federal government too much power and ignored "states rights" and the right of states to act independently if they did not agree with certain federal acts. The concept of nullification, the process where a state can rule a federal act unconstitutional, was discussed but was denied. Proponents felt if nullification was not allowed then session from the Union was their only alternative.

Your argument, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that the south (states rights) was "fighting for freedom" from the central government (federal rights). So the denial of states rights by the federal government, you would agree, lead to session by the states who believed they were being wronged. In the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States, namely the States of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, the reference to slavery is clear and immediate! The first two (2) of the above-mentioned States reference slavery in the second sentence, South Carolina in the first sentence, and Texas in the third sentence of their respective declarations.

With this, I believe whatever "cause" is cited as the "issue" that started the Civil War, especially states right vs. federal rights, slavery will be at the core of the issue.

I do believe "Central Ohio" misses the valid point "rattus68" was referencing as to "fighting men" answering the call to arms of their country or state as in the case presented during the Civil War time period. I believe there were many honorable men who fought for the South during the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee among them. I have heard many times in World War Two documentaries American soldiers describing their German and Japanese counterparts as honorable and brave. This admiration did not extend to soldiers, or leaders who condoned and/or ordered, the summarily executions of "slaves" fighting for the Union, or who were participants in the Holocaust and or those who committed atrocities in Southeast Asia.

It is clear to me "rattus68" does not hold the same beliefs as those brave men on the C.S.N. Hunley because of his or her, if the case maybe, beginning the post with "In spite of their beliefs." But he or she can relate to the "their country's call to the colors." I thank you for your service "rattus68."

Correct.

Incorrect posters opinion it was a power struggle between politicians. The argument is one sided if you do not mention the Irish worker slaves in Northern factories. Can we get back to the Huntley, please? If ti makes you feel better call me a racist and move on, please!

Ron:

If you are implying that the south will again secede from the Union, I can't imagine the North giving a damn enough to fight to get you back this time around. We have been regretting having bothered the first time around for the past 150 years.

If it were not for the South, you liberal idiots in the north would have frozen or starved to death years ago!!! Who the hell do you think funds all of the liberal boondoggles that are undertaken by the glorious blue states of the north!!!! Your time has come and gone, better get used to it!!!

Chester I am with you I live in the only red state left in the North New Hampshire. M@!$%#s have moved up here after destroying their state and want to now ruin ours you are dead on. I just wish we could all be Americans again.

Very good post Joe. It is just frustrating (sarcasm) when a person presents facts to support his or her position.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Adams

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/civilwarmenu/a/cause_civil_war.htm

Read history again. Slavery was only ONE of the main five reasons for the war.

The US paid for the South West territoriy in blood and treasure. Treaty of Hiladago

Viewer_Rready, Did you even read the link you gave ? Well done. Of the five main reasons, FOUR were clearly about slavery, and the fifth arguably.

1. Thus, the southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and therefore on slavery

3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents

4. Growth of the Abolition Movement

5. They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests

and even #2, the issue of state rights, was tied to slavery, though could be argued more generally.

I love it when people post "sources" assuming nobody will read them.

Good post ShoelessJeanJacket. I was thinking the very same think. I went to the website Viewer_Ready listed in his/her post and after reading it I was wondering which reason was not about slavery.

Thank you, Forrest. Igmonic is as igmonic does. Life is like a box of igmonics. You always know what you are going to get.

Well said Pam. I can't wait until they put this piece of history on display so I can see it for myself.

"I have a great idea,"

Stating your idea is great immediately warns the the audience you just might have an air of superiority in your discourse.

"Without going into a WHOLE lesson here, some people need to read up on the why's. who's, what's, when's AND where's of the AMERICAN Civil War."

Confirmation is received. You may be shocked to find many posters here are very well-versed, not just in the war, but in the history the led to the war.

There are no misconceptions about slavery. No one disagrees with much of what you state. It was not the average southerner who owned no slaves who were considered the, 'Firereaters.' In any era or country there is always a small minority who control the money and the power. In America, many of these people wind up in the Congress. For the southern congressmen in the antebellum south, they had the interests of that less than 20% with the large bank accounts at heart. Cotton was king and it would not flourish without human bondage to support it. As we expanded westward over the first sixty years of the nineteenth century, southern representatives fought tooth and nail to ensure slavery would not be prohibited in new states born from that expansion.

I conclude that slavery was the prime mover in every debate in Congress. Charles Sumners of Massachusetts was beaten to near death at his desk in the Capitol. His crime was his rhetoric against slavery. Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked him with a cane. When the news spread Mr. Brooks received hundreds of new canes for his act.

I agree there were other important factors in the rift. The north went to war to preserve the union. The south started the war to preserve their way of life. Those 80% who did not own slaves may very well have been fighting for their freedom. The voices for the south sang a different song. Denial will never rewrite history.