Thread 17940316

It doesn't seem talked about very often, but there were actually quite a handful of various Southern Republicans in Missouri, Virginia, and Southern-born Republicans in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. People talk about how in Missouri the main Unionists in the early days were immigrants in St. Louis, but actually, all the leaders of the Republicans in St. Louis were Southerners born into slaveholding families. The Republican Party itself was started by a Southern slave owner. They wanted to see slavery gradually end, but they weren't abolitionists as such. Seems like an understudied group. The St. Louis Junta was literally all Kentuckians.

People like to portray the Civil War as a lot more white and black (kek) than it really was. There was a lot more nuance than popular retellings tend to allow for.

St Louis was a rail hub and all Republicans were just discount Whigs that wanted to dictated where economic development happened. Preferably as close to their city as possible. St Louis falling into irrelevancy must have made them spin in their graves

Missouri had almost no Republican presence in the 1860 election except for some Germans in St. Louis. The majority of the state voted for Stephen Douglas with John Breckinridge getting some votes in the southern counties.

>>17941020
Reminder Lincoln was known for having faithful goons to do his biding and the German immigrants were promised fast-tracked citizenship if they supported him. They formed their own militias and had private military parades in support of Lincoln. They also protected the armory in st Louis for Lincoln so that people in St Louis couldn't rise up

After the Reconstruction era Southern Democrats rapidly gained control of state politics and created a falsified image that Missouri was and had always been a Southern state which it never was outside the southern counties.

>>17941040
99% of Missouri was Confederate. The only part the north controlled was st Louis and that was because of Lincoln's faithful German goons

>>17941045
which obviously was not the case, secessionist support was confined to the south around the bootheel and those were the only areas where slavery was established. the state was mostly independent farmers who did not own slaves or engage in plantation agriculture. of roughly 150,000 Missourians who served in the war about 40,000 of those joined the Confederate army which means less than 30% of the total.

>>17941074
>those were the only areas where slavery was established
There was literally a line of fertile soil that cut across northern Missouri that started near st Louis where there were slaves. This was also where 0-15% of the population was German, naturally, as they clicked to the fertile areas of the US.

If the people captured the st Louis armory Missouri would have been a completely different ball game in the civil war

Anyway as this shows only a small area in the state was pro-secession.

>>17941175
>retards voted for douglas so that means they weren't pro secession
if the midwestern cities weren't thoroughly corrupt and under northern whig control they would have seceded too if they had actually been told the truth of what was happening

>>17941182
reminder that douglas' entire shtick was being blue lincoln and anybody that voted for him were completely fooled

this was especially powerful in missouri where he proposed to build a railroad, so people in missouri would be heavily inclined to vote for him

>>17941200
Rather, lincoln's entire shtick was being red douglas but he quickly surpassed him in his penchant for institutional corruption

>>17941200
Abolitionism was never popular in the Midwest except among Germans and some other minority groups, most Western soldiers believed they were fighting to save the union.

>>17941210
Of course it wasn't, the midwest was settled by southerners. It was only the major cities, fought over by corrupt robber barons like Lincoln and Douglas, that controlled the entire state's politics. Everything outside of the cities was solid democrat

>>17941214
which also was not the case north of about 35N most settlers were from the Northeast and were looking for land as it opened up. New England in the early 19th century was being rapidly depopulated as people were heading west. my own ancestors were farmers in Pennsylvania who moved out to Illinois sometime during that era.

>>17940316 (OP)
Honestly slavery was on it's way out in America and the world. The South would have stopped slavery in time.which makes the term war of Northern aggression all the more apt.

>>17941220
>35N
That's not even in Illinois. Lincoln himself was a Southerner that settled in Lerna with his father and step siblings. This was at 40 degrees north, right in the middle of the state. He said everybody outside of the city was democrat, and I can assume a southerner

>>17940316 (OP)
The Grant family was from carolinas and georgia. Thats all i got chief

>>17941249
I wonder if this map is a map of the influence of the northerners

>>17941214
There were rural Southern descended whigs in the Midwest too though, and many became republicans.

>>17942706
The majority of charter member Republicans in the 1850s were former Whigs, a few were former Democrats.

>>17942706
>rural Southern descended whigs in the Midwest
You mean like lincoln? the guy who became a whig and used democrat hillbillies from out of town to ransack his competitors and throw out hecklers when he gave speeches? the guys that really liked cockfighting?

>>17942756
Well, yeah, he was one of them. A Southerner that moved to the Midwest, Whig background, became a Republican. It was more common than people think. Yes the majority were Dems but Southern Indiana was chalk full of Kentucky/Tennessee descended Whigs-turned-Republicans.

>>17941261
It largely reflects settlement patterns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butternut_(people)