On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 2:16 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Apr 8, 2010, at 1:10 PM, SA wrote:
>>
>> But the point is that for the majority of the South's population, it
>>> wasn't one country. It was one group of states attacking another group of
>>> states. It was only called a Civil War in the North.
>>>
>>
>> Well of course the South would say that. But I still don't see how one can
>> call a central government's response to secession by a region that joined
>> the nation by choice, not conquest, imperialism in the same sense as bombing
>> a foreign country and/or changing its government.
>>
>
> Well, there was a military occupation. The occupiers overthrew the
> indigenous governments, barred the elected leaders from public life,
> disenfranchised a large share of the hostile population, set up a
> pro-occupation political party (relying on a traditionally oppressed
> indigenous minority to support it) and set up new governments under bayonets
> stacked with allies. There was an underground resistance movement (the KKK)
> that fought the occupation to restore the pre-occupation regime.
>
> Were the North and the South actually the same country? Each side had
> legalistic arguments pro and con. But the way the actual occupation
> proceeded on the ground looked a hell of a lot like the way "normal
> imperialist" occupations proceed.
>
> SA