By George Wilson | W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South, first published in 1941, is a brilliant examination of how the Southern elite, even with slavery no longer possible, managed to extend the same economic and political philosophy and system to their own benefit for 100 years, using Jim Crow.
When I see the Confederate flags waved today, I always think about the social unfairness that existed in the South during the Civil War. Here are a few examples.
- The food riots by starving people, in Atlanta, Richmond, Columbus, Macon, Augusta and other cities because the planter class refused to grow food crops but persisted in growing cash crops cotton and tobacco;
- The Confederate Congress amending the draft law to exempt anyone who owned 20 or more slave;
- Above all, Southerners were about evenly split between those who favored secession and those who wanted to stay with the Union. David William’s book, A People’s History of the Civil War, is a good place to learn how the only state to hold a secession referendum was Texas. The vote was 2-1 to stay in the Union. Secession conventions in the other states were won by the planter class largely through vote fraud, violence and threats of violence against anti-secessionists.
It would be hard for rich slave owners to get the non-slave owners to fight, hence they would wrap it in pretty words like “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” I mean, “Slave Rights or States Rights.”
Today, I’m always interested in the political chicanery that Republicans and moneyed elites commonly implore to maintain control in the South. For example, same sex marriage, welfare, guns, and abortion are used to play the same old shell game on the gullible. The latest is the so called freedom of religion, a non-issue.
Finally, when the Georgia legislature meets in January, you can depend on these continual diversions from the real problems. Raising the minimum wage, extending Medicaid to everyone, making it easier to vote, solving transportation problems and addressing educational inequality, are examples of issues that could assist ALL Southern men.
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