Thanks to Dimitri Rotov and his blog for bringing about an awareness of Valdosta State University Professor David Williams’ new book Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War. I haven’t read the book yet, but it looks like Williams has laid out many of the plain and simple facts that some Southerners have a hard time accepting.
David Williams hits the nail on the head
Posted on August 27, 2008 by Robert Moore
Bill Vallante
September 20, 2008
David Williams “hit” the nail on the head? He couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. It’s another book with the same old same old B.S…. Oh those werry werry bad planters leading their fellow southerners astray and the country into war…. the slaves were pining for the union army to free them…. (oh lawdy lawdy hab mercy! Come free me fo’ da’ yeah ob jubilo mistah yankee)…. most southerners were against the war, the reb army didn’t have its heart in the fight and they were deserting left and right, (now we’ve got an Underground RR for Confederate soldiers? How creative!). And a combination of white southern deserters and runaway slaves won the war for the Union? BWHAHAHA!
David Williams may or may not be on drugs. More likely, he’s trying to cash in on a rapidly growing trend in today’s dime-a-dozen-history book-writing market – finding a new way to trash the Confederacy. Frankly, I think the whole thing is growing old and tired but there still seems to be a market for it. The more I watch this phenomenon, the more convinced I become that for the last 30 or 40 years, someone has been putting “stupid pills” in the water supply to dumb us all down because so many people accept this B.S. without question. One big question to Mr. Williams and his legions of fellow Confederacy trashers would be, if all of what you say is true, then why the hell did the war last so long, and why were so many people killed? If it was indeed as you say, the war would have been over in a week. I don’t suppose anyone ever asks that question though. As I say, too many people have been drinking from the public water supply.
cenantua
September 24, 2008
Wow! Thanks a lot, Bill Vallante, for being a representative example of what is bad in the way that some remember the Confederacy and how some cannot see the forest for the trees. You wrote a lot of words without providing anything worthwhile in opposition to what David Williams says in his book (or for that matter, what others, such as Charles B. Dew, have been writing about for sometime). Your assessment is shallow and holds about as much water as a tub with the bottom out. For me, as a Southerner, who has Confederate ancestors (hmm, while intending no slight to others who are without Confederate ancestors but have adopted a passion for Confederate history “sans blinders,” can you say the same?), I have no problem reading about multiple angles of observation in reflecting upon the war and the men who fought in it. In fact, before ever reading works such as David Williams’, I was finding “flaws in the armor of the grand illusion.” I also find it curious that many of those who have found substantial amounts of evidence that would support Williams’ approach, are in fact, Southerners…
James R. Nivison
December 21, 2008
My surname family pioneered to Michigan in the mid 19th century. My great, great grandfather and 2 brothers served in Custer’s cavalry but mustered out when assigned out west after the war. Another grandfather fresh from England and just married served the Union army. None of them deserted. Now my mother who is from Alabama had a grandfather who had been pressed into a confederate cavalry unit when he was in his mid fifties. He managed to get through the difficult times without getting injured and without causing harm to anyone. Because he didn’t desert despite the families opposition to the confederacy, he was eventually given a state pension 3 decades after the war was over. He had always been held in high regard in his community and lived to over 101 years of age. This author is right. The whole episode is another example of the tyranny that authority with power can bring and the struggle of people to resist it. The wealthy have been victimizing average people for a long time and still do so today and have all kinds of excuses to maintain their position. These things will play out again I’m sure.
cenantua
December 21, 2008
Thanks for commenting Mr. Nivison. Thanks also for sharing some interesting information about your ancestry and how, even in reviewing pension records, we need to look beyond the simple record as a reflection of sympathies.