• butt_mountain_69420@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    And how many of those corpses were poor white trash duped into fighting to preserve a rich man’s status quo?

    I’m betting 98%.

    • dankm@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Without looking and never studying American history, I bet >3% of the confederate soldiers were black slave soldiers fighting because their “owners” made them…

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        You’d be wrong. Few things terrified the white southern aristocracy as much as the prospect of armed black folk. There was a black militia in Louisiana which, inexplicably*, offered its services to the Confederacy. The Confederacy quite vehemently declined.

        *well, not really inexplicably, but getting into race relations in former colonial French holdings and tbqh I don’t feel like going through that right now

        • dankm@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          That’s actually fascinating. I knew there were free black soldiers in the Union, but none in the south is mind boggling.

          Our history classes coverage of the US civil war was basically: “we don’t want that fighting shit up here, so provinces were given less power, and we joined together because we needed to be able to defend ourselves in case the Union invades us.”

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            I think there was a last-ditch effort like, right before the South lost the war where they authorized black soldiers, but I don’t think they ever saw combat. May not have even been mustered and trained. But it was like a month or two before the war ended.