Except many people still hold to their beliefs, so they aren't defeated yet. You can find them in abundance in the South. Some of my family in Tennessee believe they should have won 😢
Problematic, as to work it has to be so subtlety paradoic that mistaking it for true can come back years later and bite you back if it resurfaces when important employer/client doesn't want to be associated with the statement.
The civil war was a conspiracy by French infiltrators of the South, hoping to incite the south into losing a war, ending slavery much faster than it would have otherwise, and thus reshaping the global trade economy to be more favourable to their interests.
Little did he know, that night, Stonewall Jackson rose from his grave, and with a mighty roar, He Lifted up his fist, and made a terrifyingly racist comment on twitter.
Take it from a historian: Sometimes, history actually ends up being written by the losers. And when it's written by the losers, they are always _extremely_ bitter about the winners.
I'm reminded of how some of our best sources on Roman history come from Greeks who wrote about how Rome conquered the Greek world, and learned senatorial Romans who wrote about how the Senate lost its power and fell prey to a series of mad emperors (whether they were actually mad or not is not the point).
History is written by those who write history, not necessarily winners or losers, but it can be written by either or as well. Lost cause is a great example of being written by losers.
Eh idk about beaten down. More like fixed right. Sucks that reconstruction died cause grant couldn’t choose good cabinet members for the life of him. If it didn’t I bet the lost cause would just end up as footnotes.
Southern women were literally being r**ed dude. This video is right in some ways, but after the civil war, an estimated 1/4 of the freed slaves from the south starved or passed from disease. In the north and south many just worked under contracts that didnt really improve their conditions. The civil war shouldnt be simplified like this.
The scandals with the members of Grant’s administration didn’t help, but Grant did his best to end the confederate rhetoric, and the Force Acts were very successful. The issue was the Compromise of 1877 that brought Hayes into the office with the provision that Union troops leave the south
The "freeing the slaves" motivation narrative is part of the whole coping narrative. usa gov removed indians from the east and pushed them west. The usa gov never cared about people of color and would never fight for them. Blacks lived in misery for decades after the civil war. Lincoln himself his priority was to perserve the union. The usa stole land and colonized hawaii, phillipines, puerto rico, and the policy has always been to keep people of color down. The usa used 2 nukes in japan. The "free the slaves" is propaganda to perserve the union. The north used non union labor including children in factories
I feel like Atun Shei has slowly been tricking us throughout every Checkmate Lincolnites episode, Each episode will be less and less about the American civil war and more about Southern American history as a whole. And I am here for it.
I don't think it was so much "tricking" as simply needing more and more to explain the context of antebellum (and even postbellum) American history as he continues to dive into the topic. Repeating over and over again that Confederate officials stated they were leaving to protect slavery in their declarations of secession or that there were no black Confederates would be pointless.
For a moment i thought you.mean South America. Y'know, the triple alliance war and how foreign meddling and constant infighting led to today's weak stated
That feeling of anger where you try to treat someone who has an absurd argument with more respect than they deserve only to have them throw it back in your face as they refuse to listen to any of your points is very accurate. The urge to just insult and show them what you really think. I felt for Billy Yank there.
Yup. I often try to have reasoned debate with people like this, but it’s continually frustrating to have them not realize that I am treating them with more respect than 90% of people would in my circumstances, and as a result they treat me like shit. It doesn’t stop me, but it’s discouraging.
@@_somerandomguyontheinternet_ I know, I try the same as I find treating them with initial vitriol will cause them to dig their heels in the ground and resist even harder. The hope is that them spitting in our faces as we try to reason with their insanity, is them having a defense reaction due to them actually considering it. I know I've had arguments with some people only to come back and find they've relented on one issue since we last talked. It's a slow arduous change, but I do think there can be redemption for some.
@@zachnoland155 yeah there are plenty of reasons as to why they lash out when you're trying to be respectful in discussions around this. Think of how a 50 year old man who grew up on nothing but the Lost Cause being told by someone like me, 28, that I think their ancestors were traitorous slaver boot lickers. Now I would be saying that exactly thing to them, but that's what they hear, added to the fact that most authority figures in their life have enforced their beliefs and here is some uppity kid saying their wrong, which to them could be an implied insult as well, and I get where their anger may come from.
Late to the party, But holy crap that ending where he rants at Johnny reb (a clear stand in for people stuck in a past, false narrative) is perfect. “‘Ive been trying to coax you into the 21st century before the people behind me drag you into it.” What a line
I live in the South and continue to be utterly baffled by these people. I even had ancestors in the Confederate Army. I would tell them their cause was bullshit to their face if I could, "heritage" be damned.
Sooner or later he’ll cave in to the reality show genre. After that it’s just going to be Real Housewives of the Antebellum South, Survivor: Army of Northern Virginia, Confederate House Hunters, and America’s next top Witchfinder until the end of time.
After the war, the Southern people knew that slavery couldn’t be justified morally. The idea that they were fighting and dying for something so morally repugnant couldn’t be accepted mentally.
Good point. My friend said something similar about citizens who are complicit in the imperialism or atrocities carried out by their army and government adamantly refusing to believe the stories the rest of the world is telling about them because it's more morally acceptable to believe that everyone else is lying than that you may in fact be the monster.
Billy snapping felt like a man telling his brother a frustrated truth, the anger wasn’t out of hatred but actual concern and love for Johnny a man who refuses to see the truth. I’ve seen this sort of confrontation at a family gathering and it was genuinely upsetting to watch even if the one being shouted at deserved it. Excellent work again AtunShei
Actually, it felt like what it was- the juvenile tantrum of a modern Liberal who created a cartoon strawman, and then used it to vent his own personal hatred and feelings of superiority onto all of the "stupid, racists white supremacists" that he imagines everyone who disagrees with him to be.
Yes, we know this is how progressives see themselves at this moment. Exasperated people simply begging and pleading with rightoids to just be normal. That is what makes you totally delusional, you don't see the world of vicious narcissism you have ushered in.
Exactly, and this is where conservative ideology fails, funny enough. Both sides simply arent equal. One side wants to maintain a stagnant, miserable status quo, the other side actually wants us to move forward.
@@jeffreygao3956 Moderate conservatism, radical conservatism, all I see is stagnation and regression. I am asking in good faith here, what do they really bring that will help society, especially its more marginalized peoples?
Billy Yank losing his patience hit that feeling so perfectly - "I am trying so hard to be nice, to help you grow into a not-completely horrible person. You don't even really deserve this kind of empathy and understanding, but I'm trying to offer it to you anyway." And they always just spit it back in your face with bile and rage and demands that you be even nicer, even more accommodating, to appease even more. It's good to try, but at some point, you just have to tell them what gigantic, dumb, snivelling children they are.
You truly don't understand that it's your smug, hate-fueled arrogance and insistence that everyone who isn't you is "evil" is the actual problem in America today. Yeah, you're "trying hard to be nice" by reducing other human beings to cardboard cutouts without any emotions or motivations beyond "white supremacy". Simply unbelievable.
I disagree, because everyone is deserving of empathy: they got to where they are the same way you got to where you are; and no choice was in it save an illusion of one. Yet, with another point, I would agree, because appeasement is not the same as empathy, and is far less effective at achieving a desirable result.
@@Genarii you're theorizing on it. Speaking as one who has repeatedly tried to convince my grandma that Obama is not in fact the devil, and that the vaccine isn't going to change your voting patterns, Johnny snapping and shouting is very real to life. To use your phraseology; if everyone is deserving of empathy, one must forgive the patient for being human. And yet, it is taken not as a sign of humanity, but of stripping away falsities. I am here with you, trying to show you a truth in a cave full of lies. Please forgive me when I stub my toe and swear.
Psychological evidence suggests people change their minds about "core" issues like these ones, ones they attach their identity to, based on some kind of admiration of another person. So the best way to change a confederate supporter's mind is to have him fall in love with you. (This is also why hate groups are often described by members and ex-members as being like a family, that's the atmosphere they inculcate to create that sense of mutual admiration as a recruitment tactic, consciously or not)
@@Genarii no they don’t . They elected some rotten people like JD Vance , Margery Taylor Greene and Ron Desantos. They tried to elect so many more fascists, too.
"As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man." - Ulysses S. Grant
One of Massachusetts' most famous abolitionists: "And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before." "...the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white."
The problem with this idea is the lack of wonder the great many of us now have in how the eagerness of men to defend their financial, social and political power can drive them to the defense of nearly any moral repugnance. The South is far too audible in it's echos to yet achieve what Ulysses spoke of.
I'm glad Billy Yank finally pointed out that he's been coddling Johnny Reb this entire time, because I definitely noticed that. If he wanted to, he could have gone much harder on him, because Lost Cause mythology is just that ridiculous.
I think a quote from my 8th grade history teacher is best here. "The civil war was about states rights, the state's right to have slavery or not have slavery."
BS! That right was undisputed. 1860 Republican platform called for "maint[aining] inviolate... the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions [i.e. slavery] according to its own judgment exclusively..."
@@Krensharpaw Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” ...in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. ... "This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one - when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..."
@@Bulvan123 You don't really think the North was denying the right of the southern states to have slavery, do you? Or are you just content to believe things without any historical evidence?
We should have finished the job. By the way, you guys should do the Ubaid period or pre civilization period in every culture across the world. Really go ancient.
Another huge problem that the Lost Causers have with debunking the whole, "the average southerner didn't hate black people", is that if that were the case, they wouldn't have spent the next 100 years doing their damndest to prevent black children from going to school with them, or voting, or eating at the same lunch counter. I mean, if they were such lovers of liberty down there, then if a white man chose to sit with a black man to have a meal, they wouldn't even think twice about it... But that's not what happened, is it?
@@apoorhorseabusedbycenkbut it's true, if the South was so concerned with rights. Then why in the fuck did they pass laws to suppress and beat down the Black man in hopes he won't rise?
@@borkistanon4194to say nothing of districts within the confederate states that opposed secession. Dud the CSA just let them peacefully remain in the union?
Yea those, damn Democrat plantation owners, founders of the Ku Kukx Klan, writers of Jim Crow laws, and voting agaisnt all civil rights legislation since the succession of the South. And yet, most blacks still vote Democrat. Hmm, almost like the slavery party found a better way to keep them on the plantation.
I deeply hope we someday get a finale episode to this series. I know you said you weren’t feeling it anymore, but that moment at the end with Johhny Reb really left me craving a conclusion to his character arc. I don’t know what that would look like, but i hope one day we get it
As a southerner from Texas I tend to agree with you logically but always hold on to sentiments of the Lost Cause for emotional reasons which I never could explain. This particular video and especially the dialogue with Johnny Reb, however corny it may appear from the outside, really made me stop and think about my own perpetuation of false history which continues to threaten people's civil liberties today (not to mention belittling the experience of blacks for the last several centuries). It won't happen at once but I plan to reflect on it and separate my identity from the modern echoes of the Lost Cause, which is itself built on falsehoods.
That's the thing. It's a lot easier to be fooled into feeling something, than to realise you've been fooled through thinking. But please, please at least try. Before it is too late.
If there's one thing I respect to about the approach these videos take here is that the creator actually get Johnny's point of view because that's how he thought about the Civil War too and it took a while for him re-evaluate what he once accepted as true face up to face up to the harder more & nuanced truth. Too many people forget its hard to admit when you've been misled especially when your emotions and identity get wrapped up in a false narrative. Its a very human thing and we've all done it regards to something to one degree or another. There does need to be a space to let people grow and not just condemn and write them off especially when the fact that you are in the right is on a matter and someone else when is wrong is often down to circumstance, not intelligence or virtue you just happened to be taught the right thing by your teachers or your parents and someone else was taught wrong through no effort of their own. I mean how many people whether or not the they know Slavery was the underlying cause of secession and the Civil War actually know the Stars and bars from the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia maybe what 1 in 10 on a good day? The way history is taught in schools is pretty anemic across the board.
It's a very hard to consider new perspectives, but very noble too. You should feel proud, of applying yourself to a very difficult but very praiseworthy goal.
As a proud Southern boy, born and bred in Mississippi, I would wish to the good L-rd this series wasn't as crucially important as it is. And, I thanks that L-rd it exists. Checkmate, Judah P. Benjaminites!
Out of curiosity, why bother censoring the word Lord? That's not his name, it's a title, and wishing and thanking in his name wouldn't be a matter of saying it in vain anyway. So why censor it?
I never noticed this, but the angrier Atun-Shei gets, the more he starts to develop a Massachusetts accent. All these years living in New Orleans, he's still Massachusetts at heart
@@drpepper96x82 no he wasn't. he took a natural accruing phenomena adding false narratives to make it deliberate active of man-made malus and cast it as a side effect of trying to conspiratorially do the same to humans in a secrete program. theres nothing right there not even about the frogs
That sequence about 30mins in where Billy finally snaps at Johnny was so gratifying. It's really cool to watch in real time, history getting this much needed course correction. That line where you say "trying to gently coax you to the 21st century before the people behind me drag you there." Hit home how close we actually are.
It’s really sad to see them both falling out, but Billy snapping was necessary to make Johnny to really think about what he’s doing. And hopefully it finally leads him to stop believing in the Lost Cause myth and see the Confederacy for what it really was.
@Lexington73300 I'm glad Billies exist, because I just don't have the patience anymore. I go straight to his angry rant nowadays. That work is for people with the patience to do it, and that ain't me, but I'll stick around for the dragging.
It is both deeply satisfying and profoundly saddening to see Billy Yank fire off at Johnny Reb in such a way. On one hand it's everything anyone who actually understands history has ever wanted to scream at these people, on the other, there is a clear sadness in in Billy Yank's voice as if he's trying to reach a friend who's fallen into some horrid addiction. This may be the best episode of checkmate lincolnites yet.
Consider this: It is the approved belief that the Civil War was about slavery, only slavery, nothing else. It is a way to portray the northern states as valiant heroes fighting for a noble cause against an enemy that was evil for the sake of evil. As such, it is a bunch of cow pies. Don't get me wrong. The southern states _did_ want to keep slavery. They _were_ economically dependent on it. But northern states wanted to keep control over southern states. That just doesn't sound quite so noble. A video like this is not meant to convince anyone. It is meant to browbeat opponents with the idea of "you better toe the line."
@@PvblivsAelivs ok 1) no one said the south was evil for evil sake. They didn't think about it as evil but you can't deny that THE Goal more so than anything else was to keep slavery and not just bc their economy depended on it. If it was just that then Jim crow or reconstruction would have never happened. It was a real hatred and disdain for black people 2) no one said the north were heros he never even talked aviut their motives. Im sure he wouldn't even say the greatest motive was ending slavery but the fact rhat it was one of their motives vs the south who motive was to keep it makes them the good guys no matter how u slice it.
If history were rewritten with truthful accuracy, most Americans would be embarrassed by the corrupt & cruel treatment of minorities & indigenous people carried out in the name of political expediency.
I’d say that can be said for all colonial countries. As a white Australian, it’s honestly really depressing to see how wiling people here are to simply plead ignorance of the ocean of blood our country is built on. I’m a member of a different minority group and that puts me in hard situations a lot, but by far the people who are the worst off in my country are the people who’ve lived on it for longer than any written history (60,000 years). All countries are flawed, it’s the nature of the beast. But colonial countries have an especially bloody, ugly foundation. It’s about time more people learned to live with that. It doesn’t make you a bad person by being born from it, but neglecting to remember it and to try to right it’s wrongs such as you can does.
@@cakecinema9385 I'm sorry, are you saying I'm neglecting history? I posted the title to a book that emphasizes the point OP was making, which is: Americans should be embarrassed by how this country treated people on our rise. Totally confused by your comment unless you're simply agreeing with OP, like I was
I grew up in the backwoods of WV to SC parents. My mother’s favorite movie is Gone with the Wind. My father and grandfather were civil war reenactors. I began reenacting when I was 10. I was surrounded by people who defended the south, and was brought up young believing that the south was nothing more than victims in a war for freedom. “The Second American Revolution” it was called. Even into my early adult life, I believed these things. Then a friend of mine showed me your videos. I have always thought myself a critical thinker, when I choose to apply it. But, I didn’t think the matter was worth looking into. You showed me how wrong I was, how I’ve been taught. You challenged the my worldview in a critical and substantiated way. You opened the path for me to look at history (particularly southern history) in an unbiased, critical way. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, thank you. For being what I needed to break out of the Lost Cause Myth. I understand that some apologists still react to your videos belligerently, and I hope they try to look at things differently. Because, if history is to remember you, I certainly think it will be as someone who fought for truth, and a good man who wants history to be remembered honestly.
@@jasonr8525 having lived in West Virginia for over a decade, I’ll say that very few (if any) resident of that state who holds the Confederacy in high esteem or at least looks fondly upon it’s history as heritage doesn’t know about the state’s secession from Virginia nor the reason why. They see the state as a part of the South with a shared history and all of the accompanying dislike of the Yankee North.
I suspect it was the coal fields not the Confederacy that was the draw. As an African-American born in mostly raised in WV, my family transplanted there as part of a lesser known destination of the Great Migration, for the same reason that many Central and Eastern European immigrants did. The coal mines and their Union paying jobs offered opportunities not widely available in the rest of the South. It was certainly no multicultural Utopia, but neither was it a Jim Crow-ocracy. And at least when I was growing up there wasn't as much of an affinity with the rest of the South. In fact when I visited about 5 years ago for a funeral I was literally taken aback by the three or four Confederate battle flags I saw on a few trucks and front porches. I never saw anything like that growing up.
I can personally testify that Checkmate has changed my opinions on a lot of stuff. I was raised in rural Kentucky and the Lost Cause was the only version of history i ever heard. Your videos gave me a different side, with cited sources, and it changed my stances forever. For what its worth
Every time I hear complaints about "revisionist history," I instantly think of James Banner,'s _The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History_ which basically argues that those who wish to keep history static are the ones who wish to deny the past, for only through revision may we get closer to the truth. Great book
The book (and you) is definitely correct, but in the realm of popular discourse, "revisionist history" implies a specific goal intertwined with a broader political agenda rather than truth for truth's sake. The false historical narratives pushed by the Russian government (BUSH PROMISED, etc.) for example are certainly revisionist histories. Given that, I think its more contructive to reserve the label "revisionist" for obviously false narratives (e.g., lost cause as revisionist and newer histories as a return to truth) rather than embrace 'revisionism' per se.
We don't call science 'revisionist science' when it's right. Because like history, science is ALWAYS under revision. But those revisions are based on fact. Not coping mechanisms. That's when it truly becomes 'revisionist'. Not when it's updated thanks to advances in information gathering technology or techniques, but because wounded men with wounded hearts came together to desperately throw a rug over their true history...
@@a_level_70_elite_raccoon unlike, I would wager by your necessity to specify a nationality, the Israeli genocide denies who are very sane? Or the American flat earthers? Or perhaps Scientology, a bat s**t insane American™ creation? Yeah, check your internalised xenophobia and government mandated russo-phobia before indexing a whole nationality to a specific fringe belief. Unless you want people to label flat earth as the "American conspiracy".
I played an RPG in 8th grade history and was the only one willing to be Robert E. Lee, primarily because I believed the Civil War was fought over States' rights. I feel very misled by my school system.
Wanna let you know, this series was what pushed me over the edge and finally renouncing my belief in the lost cause myth. Thank you for that and I’m glad we’re still getting new episodes.
The speech at the end really sums up what it's like dealing with mass misinformation in the past decade. They continue to act like they're being persecuted for believing whatever fearmongering nonsense is being peddled to them that month. The unfortunate thing is, often times I discuss these topics with people on a calm level, and they end up agreeing or reaching some kind of middle ground that's a a least somewhat reasonable, only to go back to repeating the thing they agreed was incorrect the previous day.
Firstly I shared this with my brother, he said in response to the title, "It was already rewritten, it's being unrewritten." Honestly that's a perfect summary of the video. Secondly we all gonna ignore that Atun-shei is basically writing COD zombies fanfic at this point?
He didn't even watch it, I assume? Because that's how democracy works effectively - by ignoring everybody who isn't of your opinion, thereby never having to come to the embarrassing conclusion that you might have been wrong about something. Pretty sad.
I thought the civil war was about slavery, then I read the Constitution of the Confederate States and the cornerstone speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. Then I knew it was about slavery.
@@oldslowcoach No, it was merely one of many and not even a main one that were about state's rights. It would have faded over time, but so many people believe it would not have done so, and even further that it has not done so. Why they believe that despite the evidence that slavery is abhorred across the nation regardless of its location? These are the same people, mind you, that believe all people are exactly the same regardless of race despite massive amounts of evidence that shows otherwise. So, according to them, people have the same characteristics based on their region regardless of their race, but are all exactly the same based on their race regardless of their region. Now why would that be do you suppose?
Confederate legislators: We're leaving to preserve slavery. Confederate Vice President: Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Confederate Constitution: You can never alter this to banish the institution of slavery or repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. Confederate soldiers: We're fighting to defend slavery. Lost Cause: This had nothing to do with slavery!
Truths In 1854 Robert E Lee was West Point Superintendant after he commanded an artillery regiment in Mexican War Likewise President of the Confedeacy Davis was in 1854 Secretary of Defense so as many of the officers and enlisted of the American Army split ranks acording to what their state did
God, the whole end. Billy snapping, Johnny’s realization, and then that ridiculous “we rise again” scene. I lost it at “Jackson’s arm”, that was way too funny.
That J. Williams Jones quote at 22:36 is shockingly modern. Replace the word "Yankee" with "Woke" and you have the exact same ideology that you would find in the 1776 Commission or Project 2025. This is why learning history is so important folks!
I love the stealth humor you weave in to serious discussions. "Got their asses handed to them" - "Enough of your cheek"; "Fell into alcoholism"-both people drink. Good times, glad to see you back :)
Growing up in Illinois and living in Georgia for a little while was a strange time for a kid who enjoyed reading history. The conversations I would get into are very similar to this series. I have been a fan of your channel since I came across it!
I live in Pennsylvania and I hate how many Confederate flags I see on pickups...like you're literally above the Mason Dixon line and PA boys were instrumental in defeating Robert E Lee.
Apart from that very funny nazi-spoof section, the ending with Johnny almost making it outside the cave of ignorance . . .but then falling back in at the last moment, only to get the deserved tongue-lashing was both horrifying and incredibly sad. You can almost feel the double-think churning away inside him just by his expressions when being called out. Worst part is, he almost looks sorrowful for having disappointed Billy his longtime adversary and friend. Like he knows he did wrong but just cannot admit it, cuz that would shatter the illusion he has built around himself.
I used to be on Johnny's side too. I felt that. I know what it's like to come to the realization that my entire world was wrong. I used to believe in the lost cause and all the alt right bullshit that it came with. When my views were challenged for real it hurt. Like i wanted to retreat back into my walls to try and feel safe again but those walls were already starting to crumble. It's hard, it's brutal, but it's necessary. Johnny is one step closer to realizing it. I hope the last episode of Checkmate Lincolnites finally breaks his walls and he comes to the same realization I did years ago
THIS. It's the perfect allegory for modern Conservatives. These people would rather cut ties from loving family members than admit they got duped. I actually have massive respect for people who admit their mistakes openly and honestly, because I was one of them at one point... perhaps 8 years ago or so. If I can get out, they can too. It's not easy, but it IS doable. AND, a lot of people will massively respect you for doing so :)
I agree, Johnny Reb may strongly disagree with Billy Yank about the Civil War and sure, the two of them have had some intense verbal wars with each other but Johnny still considers Billy his friend and doesn't want to disappoint him. It mirrors how the peoples of the North and South despite their problems with each other regarded each other as wayward siblings during the Civil War era. However, in every war such as the two World Wars and beyond, the peoples of the North and South despite their political and social differences have watched each other's backs because at the end of the day, they're both Americans and Billy Yank and Johnny Reb will too I suspect.
"Slaver's Rebellion", a very terse, but accurate, description of the war. And one that Lost Causers desperately continue to deny in the face of all evidence.
@sword-swinging cat People don't talk about it enough but it must be stressed that the war just as much about East and West than it was North and South. The War wasn't just about slavery in the South as they already had it. These states specifically wanted the new states being formed out West to be slave states. When Mexico lost the war and ceded territories up like Utah and New Mexico, the South was trying desperately to make sure slavery made its way west. There was so much violence in those disputed states between abolitionists and slavers even to the point of full out blood bath gun battles. These slavers were literally hardcore set on keeping slavery going across the West.
@@firingallcylinders2949 And/or conquering Mexico and Cuba outright and dividing them into multiple slave states. There was even a group called the "Golden Circle" (I think) who advocated that. But yeah, Bleeding Kansas was one of many examples of that sort of violence. New Mexico wanted to be a free state, so Texas tried to launch an invasion to force it to become a slave state at gunpoint. For the South, keeping and *expanding* slavery was their biggest goal.
@@pyromania1018 and what's interesting is sometimes you will hear the line that "slavery was on its way out anyways" which is true in the fact Mexico outlawed it, Great Britain had outlawed it which included Canada so it is true it was waning...but that just makes what the Confederacy did even more ridiculous. If it was on its way out then they just look like jackasses trying to hold on to a dying institution.
Billy Yank exploding on Johnny Red at the end is so painful to sit through but completely not in a bad way. The look on Johnny’s face of just pure horror and guilt as he knows what Billy is saying is completely true and knows he’s in the wrong. While Billy’s anger coming off not as hatred or rage but as a friend that’s trying their best to help someone they truly care about but is just at their limit with how much the friend can’t let go of the past and accept the help. It’s so beautiful to see.
Doesn’t change the fact the statues should’ve stayed up and the Mississippi Governor illegally changed the state flag without putting it up to the people (who would’ve voted to keep the flag) anti democracy aggressive north carpetbaggers
@@obi-wankenobi1233 he is trying. Johnny Reb has worse problems ahead. The dead have risen. And he needs to convert against his current position before it's too late. Because Klaus is not far away from trying to manipulate him.
I dont understand white guilt. Can you not see that you have been taught to hate yourself by the media and academia, which are largely controlled by "the chosen people". This is not some conspiracy theory. All this channel is, is white guilt. Use your mind, Europeans have contribited many positive things to the world, do not let the subversive propaganda of a certain ethno-religious group determine how you think.
Anyone that says the civil war was over "states rights" needs to go read a secession letter. Every state specifically says theyre fighting mainly over slavery.
None of those declarations says anything at all about what they were fighting for, because they were all written before the war even started, and they also don't say anything at all about a threat of a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery or anything else of the sort that would have prevented them from continuing to practice slavery if they hadn't seceded.
@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 "It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion." MISSISSIPPI Article of Succession, 1/9/1861, 3 months before the Civil War started in 4/12/1861
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Literally the second sentence in the South Carolina secession letter. "[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution." You don't know what youre talking about dude.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Texas secession letter "She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Georgia secession letter. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic
As a man who grew up in the South, and whose grandfather was a grand dragon, ty for spreading fact. Nearly my whole life I have rejected messages of hate disguised as nobility, and lived under the mantra that all people are created equal. A man is entitled to his own opinion...but not his own facts. It hurts me to see a similar thing happening in our lifetime, but these cults have a weakness: truth.
Still we shouldn't allow these cults in positions of power. Last thing we need is people not believing what their doctors and the CDC is telling them. If they don't even listen to that, debating them is a lost cause. A genius can easily lose an argument to a fool.
I had to look up that title. Holy shit! Why does every KKK-term sound so goddamn ridiculous? I thought grand imperial wizard was as stupid as it got. (How long until Q-anon followers start giving each other equally silly titles?) I said to my dad today: "The best innoculation against dictaturship is knowledge."
Exactly im from the the south too and there fantasy of the confederacy is disgustingly racist. i got very sick of being around the hate and ignorance. So i moved.
@@Shantari When a cult deluded in its own vision of righteousness exists for century or two, they start to go a bit crazy, hence grand wizards, grand dragons etc.
Atun-Shei, this might be your best work in the terms of character development on this UA-cam channel. That comes in the originally non-character Billy Yank If we count episode 5 and onwards as Billy, then from there, we see Billy genuinely care about Johnny. He sees him as misguided, and really wants to help him. They share gifts and exchange in witty banter. All of this for Billy Yank’s hope that Johnny will see that he is wrong. But he doesn’t, and when Billy finally realizes that he might not ever be able to help Johnny, he snaps. When Billy Yank is going off ( and forgive me if this was unintentional ) but he sounds like he is about start crying. I just wanted to point how fantastic of a character Billy Yank is, even if he just started out as just being Atun-Shei.
As a Southerner who had Yankee sympathies even from an early age I really love how these videos debunk a lot of the pro-Confederate propaganda that gets spewed out willy-nilly nowadays. I also love how Billy Yank and Johnny Reb seem to be friends even though they disagree with each other about pretty much everything, it's oddly wholesome!
"Pick a quote, any quote!" Ouch, the sad thing is life has always been a matter of perspective. The Civil war was not fought for state Reichs it was fought to preserve the way of life afforded to poorest of the poor by being white.
it doesn’t debunk anything. He just spreads lies and rhetoric. Oh yeah the union has dictatorial control over the south for 13 years and somehow didn’t assert their will
To this day I still get annoyed that I was taught the "states' rights" bullshit in grade school. The more egregious part of it is that I went to grade school IN MINNESOTA. Granted, it was a private Christian school, but still. You know where I learned about the 1st Minnesota Infantry? FROM TUMBLR.
I went to public school in the Deep South during the 2000s. It was pretty heavily emphasized that the Civil War was driven primarily by the concept of slavery. Our teacher would even go out of his way to debunk the idea of it being about "states rights". Saying, yes states rights were a factor, but it cannot overtake the fact that slavery was THE primary factor which also seeped into the supposed states rights that the confederacy was fighting for. That being said, we were one of the better public schools in the state, and Georgia has progressed a decent amount over the years.
I'm also from Georgia, and my private Catholic school, like your public school, was not super pro-south. I remember my history teacher there talking admirably about John Brown, and us getting shown videos about how f***ed up Southern chattel slavery was. For my part, I think it was because most of us didn't have Southern heritage. Catholics were a massive minority in Georgia before the 1990s, but it spiked in the 90s for some reason. So most of us at that Catholic school were children of people who grew up outside the Deep South (my dad's from Ohio and my mom's from north Kentucky for instance). So I don't think a lot of my teachers just didn't have Southern heritage. That aforementioned history teacher was from Ohio.
Same here. Went to public school in Georgia, graduated in 2000, and we were also taught that slavery was the ultimate cause of the war. Although I was aware of it from older neighbors, I never heard any of the lost cause BS in school.
I really love how this series is concluding, getting more meta, funnier, and emotional. Billy snapping is the best acting I have ever seen on UA-cam. Thank you so much for this series and all the great moments, voices, lines, and history you’ve taught.
Honestly you can tell lost causers they’re wrong a billion times and it won’t change a thing. I think if you truly want to win the argument you have to get down to the root of the cause. People don’t want to be ashamed of their ancestors. If we can find a way to assuage a broken pride, people will stop clinging to the lost cause like a lifeline.
It's always insane to me how people put so much stock on their ancestors, trying to live vicariously through them. You did not make the achievements nor their failings. And people are not going to flip through a genealogy tree to see which side your ancestors are on for the fight. What people see is you flying the Confederate flag while spouting lost cause BS.
"That's not what history/science said when I was in school." You're right grandpa. 60 years ago both were less complete than they are now. Yet you and I can both agree that lead killed babies and cigarettes kill everyone regardless of what lead paint or cigarette manufacturers told us 60 years ago. That's how this works: we find new data, we reassess the theories under this new data, then we teach the new knowledge.
I can understand the frustration, though. It's not like we're unearthing new documents; they've been available this whole time. You gotta admit, it's really counterintuitive that our understanding gets better the longer it was. You'd expect the opposite, that information and perspectives would be lost over time, not found.
If we find new evidence, sure. I think the concern is that people are willfully reinterpreting historical events to support their modern agendas, without any additional evidence. One of the earliest examples of this is the Trojan War. Homer's "The Odyssey" says the Greeks were the good guys and the Trojans the bad guys. Roman poet Virgil instead takes the narrative and flips it in "The Aeneid" so that the Trojans are the good guys and the Greeks the bad guys. But despite the Trojans' "lost cause", Aeneas escaped from Troy and traveled to Italy where his descendants founded the world-conquering Roman Empire. No new evidence (that we are aware of), just a desire to "claim" the Trojans as their own and present them as moral victors.
This is leftist BS. As horrid as slavery was, at the time it was a "State Right". They also complained about the Supremacy Clause, about the powers of the President, about the six-year terms of Senators, and about the many new powers granted to Congress. Slavery was just the straw that broke the camel's back ! It really is a shame that the war wasn't a draw and compromise had to be reached, where slavery was abolished, yet the states kept their Rights . . . . . . . . Just look at our bastardized government now, it's almost completely centralized and look at all the problems we are having ! ! !
@@cymond Not really, we are in fact finding new documents. Fox news in 2020 ran a story about new documents showing the bloody aftermath of Antietam’s aftermath. So yes we are still finding documents. Also never before in history have so many people had access to the primary documents from the time. So in order yes we are still getting documents, yes people that are seeking understanding will modify their understanding when they review documents that they haven't seen before or are recently uncovered. Kind of like how you would change your battle plan after finding the opposing generals battle plan wrapped around a bunch of cigars.
He does have a double, as it's evident another arm is used to show one of the characters interacting with the other, for example, when Johnny reb reaches for the duffel bag that Billy yank holds with 2 hands
That ought to be one of those things you are required to hear read aloud in school, like the preamble to the Constitution or the Gettysburg Address. If it was, we wouldn't be having most of these conversations.
@@academicdeaneducation6671 It does lay it out, particularly in the part that directly addresses the tension with the Republican-led North: "...notwithstanding their [Republicans'] professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor. Their philanthropy yields to their interest. The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after though they come from the labor of the slave."
I found official minutes from various Grand Army of the Republic reunions, and found some simmering anger against the Lost Cause myth. One of the meetings in the 1890s I believe, had a younger man welcoming union veterans there; he alluded to General Lee being a great officer. In a very Victorian fashion, a veteran stepped up to the podium and said in what I can only presume was immense sarcasm "thanks, hey, let's give a big thanks to all the guys here who lost limbs to Lee, and count how many of our young men died going off to war." There were also a bunch of protests against statues of Lee in certain buildings. Also, it recorded a hilarious moment of a meeting dragging on too long and someone going "Hey can we save this for later? A lot of us have a train to catch!"
Many Union soldiers objected bitterly to allowing the statutes of Confederate Generals and other leaders being placed in the Halls of Congress during the 1890s and early 1900s when it occurred.
@@donpietruk1517 I can only imagine the betrayal those veterans must have felt, seeing the leaders of the army that wounded them and killed their fellows lionized in the halls of the government they gave everything for. It seems like nothing less than the ultimate disrespect for their sacrifices.
@@drpibisback7680 Imagine if the UK put up a statue of Napoleon in Trafalgar Square, like even though Napoleon wasn't really morally reprehensible the notion just sounds insane so why the fuck did the US do the same for a morally reprehensible for. Like what's next is the US going to put up a statue of Osama Bin Laden?
Billy's (or Andy's I guess) monologue when his fustration finally boils over, and Johnny's timid silence in reaction to Andy blowing up like that are both really powerful. You can see the gears turning in Johnny's head while he sits there. It feels weirdly natural refering to them as two separate people just because they are played so well
29:52 Billy Yank’s rant kinda broke my heart when I saw Johnny reb’s face. For once, they were 100% brothers. It was kinda sad. Seeing Billy Yank get so flustered about this shot and show that he actually cares I know it’s a silly UA-cam series but made me feel Also, can’t wait for next Frozen Fifties man
This episode has everything going for it. The existential dread of coming to terms with one’s own cognitive dissonance. The heartfelt plea for reason and empathy. The Rami styled scene at the end, ft. Karl from InRange was the cherry on top. This channel is a real treat to watch , as well as pleasure to share and use as a educational tool. I am excited to see where this story goes.
Fun fact: General Lee had such respect for Grant that he defended Grant from any more of slander, he'd probably hate the Lost Cause Sympathizers for that reason alone
Well another fun fact is General Lee was one of the few successional members of the provisional government that actually fought for states rights, he was offered the generalship for the Union but turned it down to stay loyal to his state.
@@scotch4890 Lee said so many different things about why he went with the Confederacy that his own words are unreliable. According to Secretary of War Joseph Holt, Lee told him he would take the Union commanding general position and asked permission to temporarily return to Arlington in order to get things in order. During that time, Lee accepted the position of the head of Virginia's forces.
In divinity school, we had a unit on the Lost Cause and how it carried all the “marks” of a religion: With relics, rituals, and saints. This is the first video I’ve seen that has made that comparison. Thank you
I can't remember the actual book, but I remember reading a book on the Lost Cause years ago, that had a photo in it that noted that the headquarters of the Lost Cause movement in the late 1890s was built to resemble a temple.
@@brickbuildingcompilations4757 We need to brief the General on the progress we've made, especially in recent years. Let him know his work wasn't for naught. And give him the unfortunate news about what happened to his political party.
The ending made me wonder if he is going to delve into the current fascist movement and cult which is (unbeknownst by the cult members) just recycled 1930 fascist propaganda (mainly "Protocols")
I think it's actually correct. Johnny isn't racist, he doesn't hate black people, in the end he has a kind heart. He was mislead and indoctrinated by the Lost Cause Myth. If you haven't yet I suggest watching the last episode of this series.
No more unrealistic than the Union counterpart not saying the N-word. “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…” -Lincoln
@@MarcoCaprini-do3dq That's actually what I'm curious about. Are Johnny Reb and Billy Yank like human archetypes of the Civil War, or a couple of larper-bros? Johnny is wrapped up in the romance of the Lost Cause heroism, but immediately retreats into himself when confronted with the repulsive racism of his own brothers in arms. If he actually fought back then(at the very least, he *has* been shot), I can't imagine he couldn't have known....especially since this revisionist stuff didn't happen until shortly after the war ended.
@@mc_zittrer8793 I believe Johnny is the representation of the people that were (and are) led to believe lost cause myths, but in reality they are good people that were decieved
What's funny is I was educated in the south (Tennessee) and we learned in our history class that the war was about slavery (or states rights...to own slaves). When I moved back up north (Michigan) I kept finding people, who were educated up north, who learned what is more in line with the lost cause.
Southern Missourian here. We were taught it was about slavery as well despite being from the area who was on the Confederate side. Fun fact: Missouri was only one of two states where Union civilians actively attacked Confederate civilians.
Yeah I always found that part weird, coming from someone who was born and lived in Michigan for all my life. You’ll see it more in the northern part of the mitten, which is mostly due to a lot of people from down south having moved up there and started little families and whatnot. Usually I’ll see these people living on land with junked trucks and houses that haven’t been maintained in years. Wonder if that means anything.
I went to middle and high school in one of the best public schools in Michigan (really good ones do exist even if they are few and far between) and even we were taught the civil war was about “states rights” I don’t think I took it to heart because of the way my family educated me, my boyfriend from the same school had his mind blown a few years later though 😂
West Coast here. I don't remember what specifically our text books said, I know I heard the phrase "states rights". However I'm not sure if it was then undercut in the book itself or if my history teachers themselves posed the question, "state rights to do what?". Though I don't consider my schooling to be typical as I went to one of the best school districts in the state and after I went to College I realized just how large a gap there is between schools. I guess the kids in the next town over really weren't wrong when they referred to my school as an Academy (it was a public school, just a really rich one).
@@steverogers8163the standard textbook when I was in HS did a nice job of dancing around this for acceptability by rac*ts while drawing the outline of what you needed to know.
I managed to convince my history teacher to show this video in our class since we’re about to go into the Civil War era and I can’t wait to see the faces of my classmates when they watch this
Has anybody ever told you that you are actually really good at acting? No, I am serious. Professional level acting. You are a lot better at telegraphing emotion with your face, and very nuancedly so, than quite a lot of people who earn a lot of money in the film industry at.
@@bonniea8189 No there is a specific scene much earlier in the video, where Johnny Reb just goes from looking sceptical to even more sceptical by raising an eyebrow even higher. That nuance, that was fantastic. Everyone can do funny overacting, but that was brilliant.
Better than Ralph the Movie Maker. Love that guy, but man his films are so bland. I adore this man's work because although it's amateur, he has fun with it!
The lost cause was actually taught as wrong and they debunked it in my school thankfully. Thank you all (people who have done the work in debunking the Lost Cause myth) for this.
Same bro…. I felt that too. made me stop for a few seconds. Growing up I actually believed in most lost cause mythos… this shows been a help for me… even if it hasn’t for Johnny 😂. Still the Duffel Bag part cracks me up.
I was just in a twitter chat last night about the causes of the civil war. The main supporters of the lost cause myth were 3 young men (under 20) who reiterated over and over again that it was about Lincoln violating the constitution and that his raising union troops to suppress the rebellion was the trigger of secession. Mind you also that they were also VERY religious (to the point that only married men with land should be able to vote). It was disturbing to see "kids" that young to actually use the same documentation quoted here to justify the session of the south.
@@xeagaort Because many fundamentalists take the word to the bible very to the letter, and since the bible at times implies that a man is truly an adult only when he marries and owes obediency to the patriarch of the family in any case (hence the one that owns the wealth of the family) it follows that a man is not autonomous until he marries *and* has his own wealth of which land is the most obvious type, if those conditions aren't both met it means the man is not fit for voting. It goes with a lot of American fundamentalist christianity being influenced by the calvinist version of predestination that asserts prosperity on Earth marks the people chosen by God. Of course that this would keep in power a class of wealthy landowners and disenfranchise everyone else is totally a coincidence. Totally.
@@WordofLifeEternal Being a citizen of legal age, full stop. Anything else can be (and has been) used by any government to just limit the rights of the people that don't vote for them.
Your show IS helping unravel the myth, dude. I've showed it to a lot of people who have believed in the lost cause myth, and it actually has opened their minds to change. Excellent as always.,
Black American here who's 6x great grandfather was nathan bedford forest. Who's black 6x great grandmother was in a "relationship" with him. I ended up getting the name "Ned" passed down to me from him. The combination of Nathan + Bedford = Ned. I whole heartedly agree with this video. Civil war history interest me due to the real world consequences an event from 200 years ago has on the socio political atmosphere of today. Still not sure if I am going to pass down the name to my son knowing what bedford has done. It's very confusing to me. I would like you to make a video on Nathan bedford forest and debunk what confederate sympathizers say about him to this day.
Work on being a good enough person that you can be proud of it as your name, not his. All of us have ancestors who weren't good people. Most of us bear names that were/are used by evildoers. The less power you give them over you, the better
What a masterclass! Loved the little nods to the camera and the tension at the end. The final sequence was absolutely fantastic and the production quality was stunning as always. A little bittersweet now that we're near the end but always looking forward to what's next!
@@matthewrigdon2547 thank you for your amazing performance! Loved your role in Frozen 50's man and I am excited to see more from you as unded Jeff Davis!
The WKUK skit at the beginning. The overdue and thoroughly satisfying dressing down of Johnny at the end. The epic ending skit with Jackson’s arm getting its own grave. And of course, all the excellent research, presentation, humor and acting in the middle. Didn’t think I could love this channel more, but here we are
@@aaroncabatingan5238 After Jackson was shot (accidentally) by confederate soldiers, doctors had to amputate his arm to try to save him. He died a few days later, probably due to sepsis-induced fever.
@Aaron Cabatingan If I remember correctly, 'Stonewall' Jackson's arm really is buried in a different grave then the rest of his body. Complete with actual separate shrine and all. Southern Lost Cause worship was (and still is in some cases) WILD.
This should become a fully animated series. With Lincon being revived and Johnny having a redemption ark. Edit: I meant to say Johnny would have the redemption ark.
I am always baffled by the claim that history has suddenly changed. I grew up in Memphis in the 80s and 90s and I was always taught that the Confederacy fought for the states' rights to have slaves. This is one of the many reasons why we need a standardized curriculum for every school. There should be non-Core classes available, of course, as well as region-appropriate extra-curriculars and the like. This disparity in education is unacceptable.
This is leftist BS. As horrid as slavery was, at the time it was a "State Right". They also complained about the Supremacy Clause, about the powers of the President, about the six-year terms of Senators, and about the many new powers granted to Congress. Slavery was just the straw that broke the camel's back ! It really is a shame that the war wasn't a draw and compromise had to be reached, where slavery was abolished, yet the states kept their Rights . . . . . . . . Just look at our bastardized government now, it's almost completely centralized and look at all the problems we are having ! ! !
"I supposed this is when you bring out a 'racist quote.'" "I literally have a duffel bag full of them." Reb's face: "Oh crap." Also, it's eerie to hear some of them. Replace "Black" with "transgender" and it is literally the talking points of the right today.
It’s not the only time that comes out. I listed to a recording of the oral arguments to the “Loving v. Virginia” (the SCOTUS case that allowed interracial marriage). The arguments against interracial marriage are identical to the arguments made against gay marriage.
It's sad that when a minority who have been suppressed for so long finally rise up that the oppressors fight tooth and nail to keep them down. They act like giving minorities rights would be the destruction of a fundamental aspect of their lives. Then they have the gall to act like "we're trying to protect you from yourselves" or "my religious freedom is bring suppressed!" It's like losing a punching bag for them is detrimental to their ways of life. They are horrifyingly upset when someone receives rights that they themselves already have. Then that same opposition dares to claim that those others who speak out against them are "sensitive" and "snowflakes". I accept that the First Amendment gives people the right to freedom of speech. That being said, if you're going to use it, others also have a right to disagree with you.
As a European I bought the lost cause (if not the apologea) due to Lost Cause bilge seeping into schoolbooks. Thank you Bill Yank and Johnny Rebel. NEVER STOP.
I don't think we saw the ACW in details in our textbooks, we just mention the "Secession War", but I bought lost cause narrative about "state rights" and "taxations" when I first searched for that part of american history on youtube. Then I found Atun-shei's channel XD
In the UK (well; England, the other 3 bits of the UK have their own education systems) it was a bit different, we didn't go over it in massive detail but it was quite clear when it was taught that it was over the subject of slavery.
@@00muinamir what the real causes of the American Civil War? This was over 20 years ago, but it's a small but integral part of English curriculum (and, while I can speak definitively, I would imagine it is in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too). Someone going "the War was about states rights" definitely would raise a few eyebrows over here.
Here in Sweden I would say that the greatest influence the "Lost Cause" myth had was on greaser culture (raggare). Since it absolutely had nothing to do with slavery and was only about the individual against the system, the greasers embraced the whole "rebel" mentality and it's still not uncommon to see greasers in lovingly maintained american 50's and 60's cars drive around with confederate (rebel) flags somewhere. It's only in recent years that there's been a discussion about the rebel flag in greaser culture, but many refuse to take them down, since in their mind it has nothing to do with the confederacy and slavery, but is their own, appropriated, symbol of rebels against the system.
I teach in a Louisiana classroom as a history teacher, and more often than not I hear from students the same Lost cause mythology that I hear from their parents, so during break days what I will do is actually show them a video of checkmate Lincolnites, add shockingly it's somehow getting through to a couple of them
Why let them read original documents in their full context when you can show students stupid propaganda videos? What else would government employees do with children?
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 they do??? I show these videos on days where there's nothing else on the agenda and there's time, otherwise it's a completely professional teaching environment
"I suppose this is where you pull out a racist quote" I love how Billy's just like "oh please, we're talking about the confederacy, I can do a *lot* better than 'a' quote."
since the check mate lincolnites video came out 4 years ago, this series lasted longer than the confederacy!!
oooof lol That's brutal
Checkmate davisites!
That’s cold sir…..mighty cold
Woohoo!
Except many people still hold to their beliefs, so they aren't defeated yet. You can find them in abundance in the South. Some of my family in Tennessee believe they should have won 😢
The masculine urge to leave a deliberately egregious civil war hot take in the hope you appear in the next Checkmate Linconites
I would think it would be hard to be original at this point.
Problematic, as to work it has to be so subtlety paradoic that mistaking it for true can come back years later and bite you back if it resurfaces when important employer/client doesn't want to be associated with the statement.
The civil war was a conspiracy by French infiltrators of the South, hoping to incite the south into losing a war, ending slavery much faster than it would have otherwise, and thus reshaping the global trade economy to be more favourable to their interests.
lol just call it the second revolutionary war 😂
And there was no "LOST CAUSE"
STATES RIGHTS!
I find it kinda funny how he asks "have I been talking to a brick wall?" when in reality he probably was talking to a brick wall while filming.
No, not a brick wall... a *stonewall*
@@auroraofclanborealis A JACKSON!!!! :D
Little did he know, that night, Stonewall Jackson rose from his grave, and with a mighty roar, He Lifted up his fist, and made a terrifyingly racist comment on twitter.
@@doncomputer5931then he gets atuo ratioed
@@anyaguilar1595 That was 3 weeks ago, he's already been cancelled and nobody thinks about him anymore.
You haven't been talking to a brick wall. You've been talking to a Stonewall.
*Johnny throws off his uniform like a yakuza boss to reveal the ghost of Stonewall Jackson*
@@tonyjoestar2632reveals full back tattoo of stonewall jackson
*drywall
@GrumpyNCO that makes no since. stonewall is because of stonewall jackson.
@GrumpyNCO that makes no since. stonewall is because of stonewall jackson.
“The foolish man cries about the hole in his pocket while the wise man uses it to scratch his balls” - Robert E Lee
🤣🤣 so good im gonna get that on my gravestone one day
If he actually said that that is hilarious
Please tell me that’s an actual quote.
“Hey stonewall Jackson, ever had your shit pushed in?” - General Sherman
the smartest thing he said
Johnny Reb's continual horror delving through the duffel bag may be one of my new favorite moments from this series
The constant shifts he has to do to avoid saying the N-word is peak lowbrow comedy.
Pick a quote, any quote 😁
Same. The way he had to kill that white claw just to keep going, only to be even more repulsed damn near killed me.
@@LewisB3217 refills are free!
and it just kept getting worse.. that was great.
Take it from a historian: Sometimes, history actually ends up being written by the losers. And when it's written by the losers, they are always _extremely_ bitter about the winners.
What? Next you'll be telling me that the Battle of Kadesh _wasn't_ a crushing victory for the Egyptians.
As one food history youtuber (Tasting History) has said:
"History is written by... people who write."
I like your Sixth Doctor profile picture.
I'm reminded of how some of our best sources on Roman history come from Greeks who wrote about how Rome conquered the Greek world, and learned senatorial Romans who wrote about how the Senate lost its power and fell prey to a series of mad emperors (whether they were actually mad or not is not the point).
History is written by those who write history, not necessarily winners or losers, but it can be written by either or as well. Lost cause is a great example of being written by losers.
The lost cause was essentially the greatest coping session in American history. And further proof they weren’t beaten down hard enough post civil war.
Eh idk about beaten down. More like fixed right. Sucks that reconstruction died cause grant couldn’t choose good cabinet members for the life of him. If it didn’t I bet the lost cause would just end up as footnotes.
Southern women were literally being r**ed dude. This video is right in some ways, but after the civil war, an estimated 1/4 of the freed slaves from the south starved or passed from disease. In the north and south many just worked under contracts that didnt really improve their conditions. The civil war shouldnt be simplified like this.
Yeah, imagine being such a sore loser, your descendants are salty about something that happened over a century before they were born.
The scandals with the members of Grant’s administration didn’t help, but Grant did his best to end the confederate rhetoric, and the Force Acts were very successful. The issue was the Compromise of 1877 that brought Hayes into the office with the provision that Union troops leave the south
The "freeing the slaves" motivation narrative is part of the whole coping narrative.
usa gov removed indians from the east and pushed them west. The usa gov never cared about people of color and would never fight for them.
Blacks lived in misery for decades after the civil war. Lincoln himself his priority was to perserve the union.
The usa stole land and colonized hawaii, phillipines, puerto rico, and the policy has always been to keep people of color down.
The usa used 2 nukes in japan.
The "free the slaves" is propaganda to perserve the union. The north used non union labor including children in factories
I feel like Atun Shei has slowly been tricking us throughout every Checkmate Lincolnites episode, Each episode will be less and less about the American civil war and more about Southern American history as a whole.
And I am here for it.
I’m there with you m8 hope to see more, historic details of smaller areas is a big interest of mine
I don't think it was so much "tricking" as simply needing more and more to explain the context of antebellum (and even postbellum) American history as he continues to dive into the topic. Repeating over and over again that Confederate officials stated they were leaving to protect slavery in their declarations of secession or that there were no black Confederates would be pointless.
Well Southern United States History or I guess you could say “Dixie” History
@@samrevlej9331 Exactly. To keep the videos fresh other parts of antebellum history should get spotlights
For a moment i thought you.mean South America. Y'know, the triple alliance war and how foreign meddling and constant infighting led to today's weak stated
That feeling of anger where you try to treat someone who has an absurd argument with more respect than they deserve only to have them throw it back in your face as they refuse to listen to any of your points is very accurate. The urge to just insult and show them what you really think. I felt for Billy Yank there.
Yup. I often try to have reasoned debate with people like this, but it’s continually frustrating to have them not realize that I am treating them with more respect than 90% of people would in my circumstances, and as a result they treat me like shit. It doesn’t stop me, but it’s discouraging.
@@_somerandomguyontheinternet_ I know, I try the same as I find treating them with initial vitriol will cause them to dig their heels in the ground and resist even harder. The hope is that them spitting in our faces as we try to reason with their insanity, is them having a defense reaction due to them actually considering it. I know I've had arguments with some people only to come back and find they've relented on one issue since we last talked. It's a slow arduous change, but I do think there can be redemption for some.
@@tylercummings1458 I wish you luck, friend.
I think on a subconscious level they know their ideas are dying and that's why they cling to them
@@zachnoland155 yeah there are plenty of reasons as to why they lash out when you're trying to be respectful in discussions around this. Think of how a 50 year old man who grew up on nothing but the Lost Cause being told by someone like me, 28, that I think their ancestors were traitorous slaver boot lickers. Now I would be saying that exactly thing to them, but that's what they hear, added to the fact that most authority figures in their life have enforced their beliefs and here is some uppity kid saying their wrong, which to them could be an implied insult as well, and I get where their anger may come from.
Billy Yank: "I've been coddling you!"
Also Billy Yank: Murdered Johnny Reb in ep 1.
Clearly he didn’t, as Johnny’s still kicking
It was a different Johnny.
"That must have been some other Confederate officer."-Johnny reb
good for him!
Johnny Reb was magically resurrected.
Late to the party,
But holy crap that ending where he rants at Johnny reb (a clear stand in for people stuck in a past, false narrative) is perfect. “‘Ive been trying to coax you into the 21st century before the people behind me drag you into it.”
What a line
I love how whenever Johnny isn’t reading off a comment or some lost causer, he sounds so reasonable that Billy is actually taken aback
That’s character development for ya
Yeah, it's hilarious how Atun-Shei's strawman of lost causers is less crazy than the real thing.
@@antonioscendrategattico2302 If anything it seems like Atun-Shei often steelmans the Lost Cause.
the internet hurt this poor mans mind.
I live in the South and continue to be utterly baffled by these people. I even had ancestors in the Confederate Army. I would tell them their cause was bullshit to their face if I could, "heritage" be damned.
I forget regularly that Atun-Shei is not twins. The way this is shot and edited is mind-bending.
It's his evil clone he keeps in the basement, actually.
@@FalconRS He lives in New Orleans, he doesn't have a basement. He keeps Johnny Reb in the attic.
They're actually quintuplets, you know. Speeds up the editing to just limit it to two of them on camera at once.
I know they make talking to yourself in costumes an art form.
I think it was crazier in the early videos where he had different facial hair between the characters
This series has been more engaging and entertaining than anything on TV right now.
you spoke the truth.
Sooner or later he’ll cave in to the reality show genre. After that it’s just going to be Real Housewives of the Antebellum South, Survivor: Army of Northern Virginia, Confederate House Hunters, and America’s next top Witchfinder until the end of time.
Tbf that’s not particularly stiff competition
What was it one of his ideas for a television show was people building the pyramid as a sitcom... I'd watch it
Nice dodge of outright dropping "entergagement"-- d'oh, the copyrighters are after me!
After the war, the Southern people knew that slavery couldn’t be justified morally. The idea that they were fighting and dying for something so morally repugnant couldn’t be accepted mentally.
Good point. My friend said something similar about citizens who are complicit in the imperialism or atrocities carried out by their army and government adamantly refusing to believe the stories the rest of the world is telling about them because it's more morally acceptable to believe that everyone else is lying than that you may in fact be the monster.
Yes❤
Billy snapping felt like a man telling his brother a frustrated truth, the anger wasn’t out of hatred but actual concern and love for Johnny a man who refuses to see the truth. I’ve seen this sort of confrontation at a family gathering and it was genuinely upsetting to watch even if the one being shouted at deserved it. Excellent work again AtunShei
Yeah, I found that bit especially cathartic.
Actually, it felt like what it was- the juvenile tantrum of a modern Liberal who created a cartoon strawman, and then used it to vent his own personal hatred and feelings of superiority onto all of the "stupid, racists white supremacists" that he imagines everyone who disagrees with him to be.
Yes, we know this is how progressives see themselves at this moment. Exasperated people simply begging and pleading with rightoids to just be normal. That is what makes you totally delusional, you don't see the world of vicious narcissism you have ushered in.
Johnny Reb is going to get manipulated by Klaus if he doesn't watch.
My brother and I.....ugh it's been a rough last couple of years.
I never thought I could feel this much emotional investment in two characters who are the same exact guy. Bravo.
Don’t forget the 3rd also completely different guy
@@joshuahere5097 Only 3? Are you forgetting Klaus or Jedidiah?
@@onbearfeet im refuring to klaus
“not all perspectives are valid history” I wish more people would learn that
based
@@dr.cloud1258 Based in FACT!
Exactly, and this is where conservative ideology fails, funny enough. Both sides simply arent equal. One side wants to maintain a stagnant, miserable status quo, the other side actually wants us to move forward.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Don’t judge conservatives too hard for the more nasty members among them.
@@jeffreygao3956
Moderate conservatism, radical conservatism, all I see is stagnation and regression.
I am asking in good faith here, what do they really bring that will help society, especially its more marginalized peoples?
I absolutely love the phrasing of "your asses were surgically removed, and physically placed within the grasp of thine own hands."
I love when crude statements are made all eloquent and verbose
Billy Yank losing his patience hit that feeling so perfectly - "I am trying so hard to be nice, to help you grow into a not-completely horrible person. You don't even really deserve this kind of empathy and understanding, but I'm trying to offer it to you anyway." And they always just spit it back in your face with bile and rage and demands that you be even nicer, even more accommodating, to appease even more.
It's good to try, but at some point, you just have to tell them what gigantic, dumb, snivelling children they are.
You truly don't understand that it's your smug, hate-fueled arrogance and insistence that everyone who isn't you is "evil" is the actual problem in America today. Yeah, you're "trying hard to be nice" by reducing other human beings to cardboard cutouts without any emotions or motivations beyond "white supremacy". Simply unbelievable.
I disagree, because everyone is deserving of empathy: they got to where they are the same way you got to where you are; and no choice was in it save an illusion of one. Yet, with another point, I would agree, because appeasement is not the same as empathy, and is far less effective at achieving a desirable result.
@@Genarii you're theorizing on it. Speaking as one who has repeatedly tried to convince my grandma that Obama is not in fact the devil, and that the vaccine isn't going to change your voting patterns, Johnny snapping and shouting is very real to life.
To use your phraseology; if everyone is deserving of empathy, one must forgive the patient for being human. And yet, it is taken not as a sign of humanity, but of stripping away falsities. I am here with you, trying to show you a truth in a cave full of lies. Please forgive me when I stub my toe and swear.
Psychological evidence suggests people change their minds about "core" issues like these ones, ones they attach their identity to, based on some kind of admiration of another person. So the best way to change a confederate supporter's mind is to have him fall in love with you. (This is also why hate groups are often described by members and ex-members as being like a family, that's the atmosphere they inculcate to create that sense of mutual admiration as a recruitment tactic, consciously or not)
@@Genarii no they don’t . They elected some rotten people like JD Vance , Margery Taylor Greene and Ron Desantos. They tried to elect so many more fascists, too.
God damn, that ending sequence was amazing. The grave labeled “Stonewall Jackson’s arm” got a good laugh outta me. Great stuff, man
The fact that it’s historically accurate as well
Pretty awesome, and I'm excited to see where it goes (if it goes). Plus, it reminded me of Army of Darkness in a big way.
Was the arm giving the finger too? 🤔🇺🇸
It was as if the arm was reaching out and grasping my own humerus. 🦴
The grave is still there, well maintained and picturesque in Elwood. It’s such a beautiful place, arm headstone notwithstanding.
"As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man." - Ulysses S. Grant
One of Massachusetts' most famous abolitionists: "And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before." "...the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white."
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 still purported by white people. White people don't have problems.
The problem with this idea is the lack of wonder the great many of us now have in how the eagerness of men to defend their financial, social and political power can drive them to the defense of nearly any moral repugnance. The South is far too audible in it's echos to yet achieve what Ulysses spoke of.
Please don't quote war criminals
Please don't quote war criminal and antisemitic who used the strategy of just keep sending men in to the grinder till we win then burn everything.
I'm glad Billy Yank finally pointed out that he's been coddling Johnny Reb this entire time, because I definitely noticed that. If he wanted to, he could have gone much harder on him, because Lost Cause mythology is just that ridiculous.
I think a quote from my 8th grade history teacher is best here. "The civil war was about states rights, the state's right to have slavery or not have slavery."
BS! That right was undisputed.
1860 Republican platform called for "maint[aining] inviolate... the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions [i.e. slavery] according to its own judgment exclusively..."
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 copying and pasting your responses now? REALLY?!
@@Krensharpaw Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” ...in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. ...
"This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one - when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..."
That it was about the right to have slavery changes nothing about whether states hd the right to determine their own destiny.
@@Bulvan123 You don't really think the North was denying the right of the southern states to have slavery, do you? Or are you just content to believe things without any historical evidence?
6:14 is so perfect! 100 years later, same argument - Reconstruction failed hard.
We should have finished the job. By the way, you guys should do the Ubaid period or pre civilization period in every culture across the world. Really go ancient.
Fancy seeing you here.
Collab time?
Seeing Kings & Generals pop up on some of my favorite channels just makes me like them more.
reconstruction didn't fail cause it was a bad idea... it failed cause the North lost interest in seeing it through
Another huge problem that the Lost Causers have with debunking the whole, "the average southerner didn't hate black people", is that if that were the case, they wouldn't have spent the next 100 years doing their damndest to prevent black children from going to school with them, or voting, or eating at the same lunch counter. I mean, if they were such lovers of liberty down there, then if a white man chose to sit with a black man to have a meal, they wouldn't even think twice about it... But that's not what happened, is it?
No one said that
@@apoorhorseabusedbycenkbut it's true, if the South was so concerned with rights. Then why in the fuck did they pass laws to suppress and beat down the Black man in hopes he won't rise?
@@borkistanon4194to say nothing of districts within the confederate states that opposed secession. Dud the CSA just let them peacefully remain in the union?
So are you claiming the north loved blacks?
Yea those, damn Democrat plantation owners, founders of the Ku Kukx Klan, writers of Jim Crow laws, and voting agaisnt all civil rights legislation since the succession of the South.
And yet, most blacks still vote Democrat. Hmm, almost like the slavery party found a better way to keep them on the plantation.
I deeply hope we someday get a finale episode to this series. I know you said you weren’t feeling it anymore, but that moment at the end with Johhny Reb really left me craving a conclusion to his character arc. I don’t know what that would look like, but i hope one day we get it
No there is going to be a final episode it's just going to be bigger then all others. I heard it is going to be a musical
@@debater452I hope it's a musical
Seconded tbh
i have good news
Apparently there’s going to be full on battles.
As a southerner from Texas I tend to agree with you logically but always hold on to sentiments of the Lost Cause for emotional reasons which I never could explain. This particular video and especially the dialogue with Johnny Reb, however corny it may appear from the outside, really made me stop and think about my own perpetuation of false history which continues to threaten people's civil liberties today (not to mention belittling the experience of blacks for the last several centuries). It won't happen at once but I plan to reflect on it and separate my identity from the modern echoes of the Lost Cause, which is itself built on falsehoods.
That's as much as anyone could ask of you. I applaud your sincerity and introspection.
Good man.
That's the thing. It's a lot easier to be fooled into feeling something, than to realise you've been fooled through thinking. But please, please at least try. Before it is too late.
If there's one thing I respect to about the approach these videos take here is that the creator actually get Johnny's point of view because that's how he thought about the Civil War too and it took a while for him re-evaluate what he once accepted as true face up to face up to the harder more & nuanced truth.
Too many people forget its hard to admit when you've been misled especially when your emotions and identity get wrapped up in a false narrative. Its a very human thing and we've all done it regards to something to one degree or another. There does need to be a space to let people grow and not just condemn and write them off especially when the fact that you are in the right is on a matter and someone else when is wrong is often down to circumstance, not intelligence or virtue you just happened to be taught the right thing by your teachers or your parents and someone else was taught wrong through no effort of their own.
I mean how many people whether or not the they know Slavery was the underlying cause of secession and the Civil War actually know the Stars and bars from the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia maybe what 1 in 10 on a good day? The way history is taught in schools is pretty anemic across the board.
It's a very hard to consider new perspectives, but very noble too. You should feel proud, of applying yourself to a very difficult but very praiseworthy goal.
I love that this is no longer an educational series, but now has an actual plot
I love that it's equal measures of both.
You do know it's still educational right? He just added a side story to it that's been developing for several episodes...
@@MechaMSgundamfan this was obvious hyperbole
As a proud Southern boy, born and bred in Mississippi, I would wish to the good L-rd this series wasn't as crucially important as it is. And, I thanks that L-rd it exists. Checkmate, Judah P. Benjaminites!
Out of curiosity, why bother censoring the word Lord? That's not his name, it's a title, and wishing and thanking in his name wouldn't be a matter of saying it in vain anyway. So why censor it?
@@blazesilvernail5357 eh, custom.
In the deep south thw o is actually silent aonits spelled without it
@@blazesilvernail5357 you shouldn't write the word g-d or anything similar where it can be defaced
@@_aelfweard what? Why? That's a ridiculous interpretation of that commandment
I never noticed this, but the angrier Atun-Shei gets, the more he starts to develop a Massachusetts accent. All these years living in New Orleans, he's still Massachusetts at heart
As a Rhode Island spending almost a year in Kansas, trust me, accents stick around for a WHILE lol
Ah man, you just gotta appreciate the amount of work that went into this. Especially the last sequence.
Gay Frog guy was Right about the frogs.
I like to believe these videos are how he copes with his split personality disorder.
Really puttin those patreon dollars to work on Spirit Halloween skelingtons
@@drpepper96x82 no he wasn't. he took a natural accruing phenomena adding false narratives to make it deliberate active of man-made malus and cast it as a side effect of trying to conspiratorially do the same to humans in a secrete program. theres nothing right there not even about the frogs
@@drpepper96x82
No, he wasn't.
That sequence about 30mins in where Billy finally snaps at Johnny was so gratifying. It's really cool to watch in real time, history getting this much needed course correction.
That line where you say "trying to gently coax you to the 21st century before the people behind me drag you there." Hit home how close we actually are.
and then Johnny's reactions make it even better.
It’s really sad to see them both falling out, but Billy snapping was necessary to make Johnny to really think about what he’s doing. And hopefully it finally leads him to stop believing in the Lost Cause myth and see the Confederacy for what it really was.
@@cjrecio5702 yeah.
To all the Billy's out there, it's time to admit the truth and we can move forward together!
Johny's reaction seems to be kind of an "oh shit" thing, which is really good acting and scripting.
@Lexington73300 I'm glad Billies exist, because I just don't have the patience anymore. I go straight to his angry rant nowadays. That work is for people with the patience to do it, and that ain't me, but I'll stick around for the dragging.
It is both deeply satisfying and profoundly saddening to see Billy Yank fire off at Johnny Reb in such a way. On one hand it's everything anyone who actually understands history has ever wanted to scream at these people, on the other, there is a clear sadness in in Billy Yank's voice as if he's trying to reach a friend who's fallen into some horrid addiction. This may be the best episode of checkmate lincolnites yet.
I can relate to it so deeply. Being an American right now is partially the experience of watching a loved one disintegrate into a right wing ghoul.
@@callusklaus2413 "a right wing ghoul"... so very apt
Consider this: It is the approved belief that the Civil War was about slavery, only slavery, nothing else. It is a way to portray the northern states as valiant heroes fighting for a noble cause against an enemy that was evil for the sake of evil. As such, it is a bunch of cow pies. Don't get me wrong. The southern states _did_ want to keep slavery. They _were_ economically dependent on it. But northern states wanted to keep control over southern states. That just doesn't sound quite so noble.
A video like this is not meant to convince anyone. It is meant to browbeat opponents with the idea of "you better toe the line."
The South was right. Lincoln was a tyrant and war criminal.
@@PvblivsAelivs ok 1) no one said the south was evil for evil sake. They didn't think about it as evil but you can't deny that THE Goal more so than anything else was to keep slavery and not just bc their economy depended on it. If it was just that then Jim crow or reconstruction would have never happened. It was a real hatred and disdain for black people 2) no one said the north were heros he never even talked aviut their motives. Im sure he wouldn't even say the greatest motive was ending slavery but the fact rhat it was one of their motives vs the south who motive was to keep it makes them the good guys no matter how u slice it.
If history were rewritten with truthful accuracy, most Americans would be embarrassed by the corrupt & cruel treatment of minorities & indigenous people carried out in the name of political expediency.
A People's History of the United States!!
You should be embarrassed by the corrupt & cruel treatment of White people today.
I’d say that can be said for all colonial countries. As a white Australian, it’s honestly really depressing to see how wiling people here are to simply plead ignorance of the ocean of blood our country is built on.
I’m a member of a different minority group and that puts me in hard situations a lot, but by far the people who are the worst off in my country are the people who’ve lived on it for longer than any written history (60,000 years).
All countries are flawed, it’s the nature of the beast. But colonial countries have an especially bloody, ugly foundation. It’s about time more people learned to live with that. It doesn’t make you a bad person by being born from it, but neglecting to remember it and to try to right it’s wrongs such as you can does.
@@cakecinema9385 I'm sorry, are you saying I'm neglecting history? I posted the title to a book that emphasizes the point OP was making, which is: Americans should be embarrassed by how this country treated people on our rise.
Totally confused by your comment unless you're simply agreeing with OP, like I was
@@rustyshackleford1465you should try living in reality. White people still have it pretty good in reality.
I grew up in the backwoods of WV to SC parents. My mother’s favorite movie is Gone with the Wind. My father and grandfather were civil war reenactors. I began reenacting when I was 10. I was surrounded by people who defended the south, and was brought up young believing that the south was nothing more than victims in a war for freedom. “The Second American Revolution” it was called. Even into my early adult life, I believed these things.
Then a friend of mine showed me your videos. I have always thought myself a critical thinker, when I choose to apply it. But, I didn’t think the matter was worth looking into. You showed me how wrong I was, how I’ve been taught. You challenged the my worldview in a critical and substantiated way. You opened the path for me to look at history (particularly southern history) in an unbiased, critical way.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, thank you. For being what I needed to break out of the Lost Cause Myth. I understand that some apologists still react to your videos belligerently, and I hope they try to look at things differently. Because, if history is to remember you, I certainly think it will be as someone who fought for truth, and a good man who wants history to be remembered honestly.
Holy damn that is a comment and compliment.
seems weird that they would move to a state that literally only exists because they refused to join the confederacy with the rest of virginia
@@jasonr8525 having lived in West Virginia for over a decade, I’ll say that very few (if any) resident of that state who holds the Confederacy in high esteem or at least looks fondly upon it’s history as heritage doesn’t know about the state’s secession from Virginia nor the reason why. They see the state as a part of the South with a shared history and all of the accompanying dislike of the Yankee North.
@@dangerousdays2052 Here's one: the right to leave a compact of states.
I suspect it was the coal fields not the Confederacy that was the draw. As an African-American born in mostly raised in WV, my family transplanted there as part of a lesser known destination of the Great Migration, for the same reason that many Central and Eastern European immigrants did. The coal mines and their Union paying jobs offered opportunities not widely available in the rest of the South. It was certainly no multicultural Utopia, but neither was it a Jim Crow-ocracy. And at least when I was growing up there wasn't as much of an affinity with the rest of the South. In fact when I visited about 5 years ago for a funeral I was literally taken aback by the three or four Confederate battle flags I saw on a few trucks and front porches. I never saw anything like that growing up.
I can personally testify that Checkmate has changed my opinions on a lot of stuff. I was raised in rural Kentucky and the Lost Cause was the only version of history i ever heard. Your videos gave me a different side, with cited sources, and it changed my stances forever.
For what its worth
Credit due to you and your discernment. Open-mindedness is, in some pertinent ways, the strongest form of bravery and self-esteem.
What county?
@@madisondines7441 chill dude
@@ViktoriousDead eastern KY, we moved counties a few times.
Kentucky should still be part of Virginia. Fight me.
Every time I hear complaints about "revisionist history," I instantly think of James Banner,'s _The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History_ which basically argues that those who wish to keep history static are the ones who wish to deny the past, for only through revision may we get closer to the truth. Great book
The book (and you) is definitely correct, but in the realm of popular discourse, "revisionist history" implies a specific goal intertwined with a broader political agenda rather than truth for truth's sake. The false historical narratives pushed by the Russian government (BUSH PROMISED, etc.) for example are certainly revisionist histories.
Given that, I think its more contructive to reserve the label "revisionist" for obviously false narratives (e.g., lost cause as revisionist and newer histories as a return to truth) rather than embrace 'revisionism' per se.
We don't call science 'revisionist science' when it's right. Because like history, science is ALWAYS under revision. But those revisions are based on fact. Not coping mechanisms. That's when it truly becomes 'revisionist'. Not when it's updated thanks to advances in information gathering technology or techniques, but because wounded men with wounded hearts came together to desperately throw a rug over their true history...
Maybe you are missing the difference between revising and revisionist. The Holocaust happened during ww2, revisionists deny it happened.
@@professorquarter as an aside to thr main conversation, you are absolutely right about the Russian revisionists. Those guys are actually insane.
@@a_level_70_elite_raccoon unlike, I would wager by your necessity to specify a nationality, the Israeli genocide denies who are very sane? Or the American flat earthers? Or perhaps Scientology, a bat s**t insane American™ creation? Yeah, check your internalised xenophobia and government mandated russo-phobia before indexing a whole nationality to a specific fringe belief. Unless you want people to label flat earth as the "American conspiracy".
I played an RPG in 8th grade history and was the only one willing to be Robert E. Lee, primarily because I believed the Civil War was fought over States' rights. I feel very misled by my school system.
I'd like to play Deadlands as a Confederate soldier, but that's just because in the setting they have cool gear and it's fun to roleplay as a villain.
Wanna let you know, this series was what pushed me over the edge and finally renouncing my belief in the lost cause myth. Thank you for that and I’m glad we’re still getting new episodes.
Proud of you! Down with the hate!
I know, it's pretty surprising that one presidents dick size caused generational insecurity in the much shorter men of the time compared to Lincoln.
@@KobyOwen bro???
The speech at the end really sums up what it's like dealing with mass misinformation in the past decade. They continue to act like they're being persecuted for believing whatever fearmongering nonsense is being peddled to them that month. The unfortunate thing is, often times I discuss these topics with people on a calm level, and they end up agreeing or reaching some kind of middle ground that's a a least somewhat reasonable, only to go back to repeating the thing they agreed was incorrect the previous day.
Say friend you seem like a well reasoned individual, want to discuss our own personal sides of the political spectrum?
Its easy to stick with what you know. It’s harder to admit you were wrong.
I’ve had to learn this fact hard.
You can't get snakes from chicken eggs.
@@Dudofall But you are in fact able to pull your head out of your ass
Firstly I shared this with my brother, he said in response to the title, "It was already rewritten, it's being unrewritten." Honestly that's a perfect summary of the video. Secondly we all gonna ignore that Atun-shei is basically writing COD zombies fanfic at this point?
Yah that ending blew my wig back lol
Makes me wish someone would make an Atun-Shei inspired Custom Zombies map for good ol' WaW
COD Civil Conflict when
He didn't even watch it, I assume? Because that's how democracy works effectively - by ignoring everybody who isn't of your opinion, thereby never having to come to the embarrassing conclusion that you might have been wrong about something. Pretty sad.
@@lennyfais5040 Unironically I would play CoDZ again if it meant I got to gun down a train of undead butternuts
"Civil war history is being rewritten!"
"Yes, and it's finally being moved to the Non-fiction section of the library."
What?
I thought the civil war was about slavery, then I read the Constitution of the Confederate States and the cornerstone speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. Then I knew it was about slavery.
Which is why those documents MUST be studied in a US History class.
It was about States' Rights, very prominently among them the States' right to continue slavery (and to secede). There's no contradiction in that.
@@gandydancer9710 hence why people boil it down to it being about slavery, because THAT is the state right they wanted to preserve
@@oldslowcoach No, it was merely one of many and not even a main one that were about state's rights. It would have faded over time, but so many people believe it would not have done so, and even further that it has not done so. Why they believe that despite the evidence that slavery is abhorred across the nation regardless of its location? These are the same people, mind you, that believe all people are exactly the same regardless of race despite massive amounts of evidence that shows otherwise. So, according to them, people have the same characteristics based on their region regardless of their race, but are all exactly the same based on their race regardless of their region.
Now why would that be do you suppose?
@@michaelsteven5558 did you even watch this man's video or just come here to make comments?
Confederate legislators: We're leaving to preserve slavery.
Confederate Vice President: Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy.
Confederate Constitution: You can never alter this to banish the institution of slavery or repeal the Fugitive Slave Act.
Confederate soldiers: We're fighting to defend slavery.
Lost Cause: This had nothing to do with slavery!
Truths In 1854 Robert E Lee was West Point Superintendant after he commanded an artillery regiment in Mexican War Likewise President of the Confedeacy Davis was in 1854 Secretary of Defense so as many of the officers and enlisted of the American Army split ranks acording to what their state did
@@edwardgoering1237 What does that have to do with the mountain of evidence by people at the time that they did it to defend the Peculiar Institution?
God, the whole end. Billy snapping, Johnny’s realization, and then that ridiculous “we rise again” scene. I lost it at “Jackson’s arm”, that was way too funny.
The Jackson’s arm bit was the cherry on top.
That J. Williams Jones quote at 22:36 is shockingly modern. Replace the word "Yankee" with "Woke" and you have the exact same ideology that you would find in the 1776 Commission or Project 2025. This is why learning history is so important folks!
I love the stealth humor you weave in to serious discussions. "Got their asses handed to them" - "Enough of your cheek"; "Fell into alcoholism"-both people drink. Good times, glad to see you back :)
The grave for Jacksons arm is what got me
Growing up in Illinois and living in Georgia for a little while was a strange time for a kid who enjoyed reading history. The conversations I would get into are very similar to this series. I have been a fan of your channel since I came across it!
Where in Illinois? Depending on where you are, it could drastically change the opinions one would find.
@@georgemetcalf8763 Certainly north of I80 lol and you are right. You also have to remember how many sundown towns we had (have)
@@hillogical yep, there are quite a few.
I live in Pennsylvania and I hate how many Confederate flags I see on pickups...like you're literally above the Mason Dixon line and PA boys were instrumental in defeating Robert E Lee.
As another fan, thanks for donating!
Apart from that very funny nazi-spoof section, the ending with Johnny almost making it outside the cave of ignorance . . .but then falling back in at the last moment, only to get the deserved tongue-lashing was both horrifying and incredibly sad. You can almost feel the double-think churning away inside him just by his expressions when being called out. Worst part is, he almost looks sorrowful for having disappointed Billy his longtime adversary and friend. Like he knows he did wrong but just cannot admit it, cuz that would shatter the illusion he has built around himself.
I used to be on Johnny's side too. I felt that. I know what it's like to come to the realization that my entire world was wrong. I used to believe in the lost cause and all the alt right bullshit that it came with. When my views were challenged for real it hurt. Like i wanted to retreat back into my walls to try and feel safe again but those walls were already starting to crumble. It's hard, it's brutal, but it's necessary. Johnny is one step closer to realizing it. I hope the last episode of Checkmate Lincolnites finally breaks his walls and he comes to the same realization I did years ago
@@5tarSailorYou sir, are my hero.
THIS.
It's the perfect allegory for modern Conservatives. These people would rather cut ties from loving family members than admit they got duped. I actually have massive respect for people who admit their mistakes openly and honestly, because I was one of them at one point... perhaps 8 years ago or so. If I can get out, they can too. It's not easy, but it IS doable. AND, a lot of people will massively respect you for doing so :)
@5tarSailor by walls do you mean...
Stonewalls?
(I'll be here all week folks)
I agree, Johnny Reb may strongly disagree with Billy Yank about the Civil War and sure, the two of them have had some intense verbal wars with each other but Johnny still considers Billy his friend and doesn't want to disappoint him. It mirrors how the peoples of the North and South despite their problems with each other regarded each other as wayward siblings during the Civil War era.
However, in every war such as the two World Wars and beyond, the peoples of the North and South despite their political and social differences have watched each other's backs because at the end of the day, they're both Americans and Billy Yank and Johnny Reb will too I suspect.
"are you about to shit on Gods and Generals again?"
Please, keep doing that i cant watch that movie without drinking myself blind
"Slaver's Rebellion", a very terse, but accurate, description of the war. And one that Lost Causers desperately continue to deny in the face of all evidence.
Slavery wasn't even a moral issue in the Civil War until the near end.
@sword-swinging cat whole heartedly agreed
@sword-swinging cat People don't talk about it enough but it must be stressed that the war just as much about East and West than it was North and South. The War wasn't just about slavery in the South as they already had it. These states specifically wanted the new states being formed out West to be slave states. When Mexico lost the war and ceded territories up like Utah and New Mexico, the South was trying desperately to make sure slavery made its way west. There was so much violence in those disputed states between abolitionists and slavers even to the point of full out blood bath gun battles. These slavers were literally hardcore set on keeping slavery going across the West.
@@firingallcylinders2949 And/or conquering Mexico and Cuba outright and dividing them into multiple slave states. There was even a group called the "Golden Circle" (I think) who advocated that. But yeah, Bleeding Kansas was one of many examples of that sort of violence. New Mexico wanted to be a free state, so Texas tried to launch an invasion to force it to become a slave state at gunpoint. For the South, keeping and *expanding* slavery was their biggest goal.
@@pyromania1018 and what's interesting is sometimes you will hear the line that "slavery was on its way out anyways" which is true in the fact Mexico outlawed it, Great Britain had outlawed it which included Canada so it is true it was waning...but that just makes what the Confederacy did even more ridiculous. If it was on its way out then they just look like jackasses trying to hold on to a dying institution.
Billy Yank exploding on Johnny Red at the end is so painful to sit through but completely not in a bad way. The look on Johnny’s face of just pure horror and guilt as he knows what Billy is saying is completely true and knows he’s in the wrong. While Billy’s anger coming off not as hatred or rage but as a friend that’s trying their best to help someone they truly care about but is just at their limit with how much the friend can’t let go of the past and accept the help. It’s so beautiful to see.
I agree. It feels more like the frustration of an older brother, who, in spite of all his efforts, just can't reach through to him.
Doesn’t change the fact the statues should’ve stayed up and the Mississippi Governor illegally changed the state flag without putting it up to the people (who would’ve voted to keep the flag) anti democracy aggressive north carpetbaggers
@@obi-wankenobi1233 he is trying. Johnny Reb has worse problems ahead. The dead have risen. And he needs to convert against his current position before it's too late. Because Klaus is not far away from trying to manipulate him.
@@v.k.rt.m.6030 This is just a video. It says whatever the writers and directors wanted it to say.
Johnny Reb: "Hello Darkness my old friend..."
"You're allowed to honor your Confederate ancestors just like you're allowed to buy truck nuts" is literary perfection.
Right? 😂😂
Except for the fact that the US government ruled that Confederate war dead were America's war dead.
I dont understand white guilt. Can you not see that you have been taught to hate yourself by the media and academia, which are largely controlled by "the chosen people". This is not some conspiracy theory. All this channel is, is white guilt. Use your mind, Europeans have contribited many positive things to the world, do not let the subversive propaganda of a certain ethno-religious group determine how you think.
@@derrickdinwiddie8759 and Germany provided military benefits for nazi soldiers. Doesn't really change the atrocities, does it,
@@derrickdinwiddie8759 How is that relevant? It's legal, just trashy.
Anyone that says the civil war was over "states rights" needs to go read a secession letter. Every state specifically says theyre fighting mainly over slavery.
None of those declarations says anything at all about what they were fighting for, because they were all written before the war even started, and they also don't say anything at all about a threat of a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery or anything else of the sort that would have prevented them from continuing to practice slavery if they hadn't seceded.
@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558
"It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion." MISSISSIPPI Article of Succession, 1/9/1861, 3 months before the Civil War started in 4/12/1861
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Literally the second sentence in the South Carolina secession letter. "[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution."
You don't know what youre talking about dude.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Texas secession letter
"She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 Georgia secession letter.
For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic
As a man who grew up in the South, and whose grandfather was a grand dragon, ty for spreading fact. Nearly my whole life I have rejected messages of hate disguised as nobility, and lived under the mantra that all people are created equal. A man is entitled to his own opinion...but not his own facts. It hurts me to see a similar thing happening in our lifetime, but these cults have a weakness: truth.
Still we shouldn't allow these cults in positions of power. Last thing we need is people not believing what their doctors and the CDC is telling them. If they don't even listen to that, debating them is a lost cause.
A genius can easily lose an argument to a fool.
I had to look up that title. Holy shit! Why does every KKK-term sound so goddamn ridiculous? I thought grand imperial wizard was as stupid as it got. (How long until Q-anon followers start giving each other equally silly titles?)
I said to my dad today: "The best innoculation against dictaturship is knowledge."
Exactly im from the the south too and there fantasy of the confederacy is disgustingly racist. i got very sick of being around the hate and ignorance. So i moved.
@@Shantari When a cult deluded in its own vision of righteousness exists for century or two, they start to go a bit crazy, hence grand wizards, grand dragons etc.
@@aerystargaryenii2565
Are you seriously caping for the CDC? Lmao
Atun-Shei, this might be your best work in the terms of character development on this UA-cam channel. That comes in the originally non-character Billy Yank
If we count episode 5 and onwards as Billy, then from there, we see Billy genuinely care about Johnny. He sees him as misguided, and really wants to help him. They share gifts and exchange in witty banter. All of this for Billy Yank’s hope that Johnny will see that he is wrong.
But he doesn’t, and when Billy finally realizes that he might not ever be able to help Johnny, he snaps. When Billy Yank is going off ( and forgive me if this was unintentional ) but he sounds like he is about start crying.
I just wanted to point how fantastic of a character Billy Yank is, even if he just started out as just being Atun-Shei.
And Johnny Reb also Is beginning to look disappointed in himself
This.
so billy is an emotionally manipulative abuser who lashes out as soon as he doesn't get what he wants... who's the real child?
@@SymphonicConvergence girl what the hell are you talking about 😟
@@SymphonicConvergence arguing with essentially a brick wall for years would drive even the most patient of men mad
As a Southerner who had Yankee sympathies even from an early age I really love how these videos debunk a lot of the pro-Confederate propaganda that gets spewed out willy-nilly nowadays. I also love how Billy Yank and Johnny Reb seem to be friends even though they disagree with each other about pretty much everything, it's oddly wholesome!
This man is a based centurion enjoyer
As Northerner who is Pro-South, I try to Hear out both perspectives and try to NOT let bias get in the way
"Pick a quote, any quote!"
Ouch, the sad thing is life has always been a matter of perspective.
The Civil war was not fought for state Reichs it was fought to preserve the way of life afforded to poorest of the poor by being white.
it doesn’t debunk anything. He just spreads lies and rhetoric. Oh yeah the union has dictatorial control over the south for 13 years and somehow didn’t assert their will
@@harlleygurrola8394how are you pro-south? Do you mean pro-confederate? If so then please watch any of these videos.
To this day I still get annoyed that I was taught the "states' rights" bullshit in grade school. The more egregious part of it is that I went to grade school IN MINNESOTA. Granted, it was a private Christian school, but still. You know where I learned about the 1st Minnesota Infantry? FROM TUMBLR.
I went to public school in the Deep South during the 2000s. It was pretty heavily emphasized that the Civil War was driven primarily by the concept of slavery. Our teacher would even go out of his way to debunk the idea of it being about "states rights". Saying, yes states rights were a factor, but it cannot overtake the fact that slavery was THE primary factor which also seeped into the supposed states rights that the confederacy was fighting for. That being said, we were one of the better public schools in the state, and Georgia has progressed a decent amount over the years.
I'm also from Georgia, and my private Catholic school, like your public school, was not super pro-south. I remember my history teacher there talking admirably about John Brown, and us getting shown videos about how f***ed up Southern chattel slavery was. For my part, I think it was because most of us didn't have Southern heritage. Catholics were a massive minority in Georgia before the 1990s, but it spiked in the 90s for some reason. So most of us at that Catholic school were children of people who grew up outside the Deep South (my dad's from Ohio and my mom's from north Kentucky for instance). So I don't think a lot of my teachers just didn't have Southern heritage. That aforementioned history teacher was from Ohio.
@@thewildblueone5341Ohio 🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 bro omg 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱 lol WTF
Same here. Went to public school in Georgia, graduated in 2000, and we were also taught that slavery was the ultimate cause of the war. Although I was aware of it from older neighbors, I never heard any of the lost cause BS in school.
@@frantisekcenek1199dead meme
I grew up in Tennessee in the early 2000’s and it was the same with us, we were taught the same.
I really love how this series is concluding, getting more meta, funnier, and emotional. Billy snapping is the best acting I have ever seen on UA-cam. Thank you so much for this series and all the great moments, voices, lines, and history you’ve taught.
legit after billy yank snapped I started crying it was such good acting billy legit sounded like he was gonna start crying
Honestly you can tell lost causers they’re wrong a billion times and it won’t change a thing. I think if you truly want to win the argument you have to get down to the root of the cause. People don’t want to be ashamed of their ancestors.
If we can find a way to assuage a broken pride, people will stop clinging to the lost cause like a lifeline.
It's always insane to me how people put so much stock on their ancestors, trying to live vicariously through them.
You did not make the achievements nor their failings.
And people are not going to flip through a genealogy tree to see which side your ancestors are on for the fight. What people see is you flying the Confederate flag while spouting lost cause BS.
"That's not what history/science said when I was in school." You're right grandpa. 60 years ago both were less complete than they are now. Yet you and I can both agree that lead killed babies and cigarettes kill everyone regardless of what lead paint or cigarette manufacturers told us 60 years ago. That's how this works: we find new data, we reassess the theories under this new data, then we teach the new knowledge.
I can understand the frustration, though. It's not like we're unearthing new documents; they've been available this whole time. You gotta admit, it's really counterintuitive that our understanding gets better the longer it was. You'd expect the opposite, that information and perspectives would be lost over time, not found.
If we find new evidence, sure. I think the concern is that people are willfully reinterpreting historical events to support their modern agendas, without any additional evidence.
One of the earliest examples of this is the Trojan War. Homer's "The Odyssey" says the Greeks were the good guys and the Trojans the bad guys. Roman poet Virgil instead takes the narrative and flips it in "The Aeneid" so that the Trojans are the good guys and the Greeks the bad guys. But despite the Trojans' "lost cause", Aeneas escaped from Troy and traveled to Italy where his descendants founded the world-conquering Roman Empire. No new evidence (that we are aware of), just a desire to "claim" the Trojans as their own and present them as moral victors.
This is leftist BS. As horrid as slavery was, at the time it was a "State Right". They also complained about the Supremacy Clause, about the powers of the President, about the six-year terms of Senators, and about the many new powers granted to Congress. Slavery was just the straw that broke the camel's back !
It really is a shame that the war wasn't a draw and compromise had to be reached, where slavery was abolished, yet the states kept their Rights . . . . . . . . Just look at our bastardized government now, it's almost completely centralized and look at all the problems we are having ! ! !
@@JandJFarmCritters "Wasn't it KINDA about States Rights???"
ua-cam.com/video/XjsxhYetLM0/v-deo.html
Short version: No.
@@cymond Not really, we are in fact finding new documents. Fox news in 2020 ran a story about new documents showing the bloody aftermath of Antietam’s aftermath. So yes we are still finding documents. Also never before in history have so many people had access to the primary documents from the time. So in order yes we are still getting documents, yes people that are seeking understanding will modify their understanding when they review documents that they haven't seen before or are recently uncovered. Kind of like how you would change your battle plan after finding the opposing generals battle plan wrapped around a bunch of cigars.
Just imagine not knowing much about your family who were in the war then seeing their name get pulled out of the duffel bag.
Damn your acting has gotten visibly better throughout the series. That dressing down of Johnny Reb deserves an Oscar 🙂
It has to be so challenging to shoot this as a solo actor.
@@blue-pi2kt Agreed! Just a testament to his many talents :)
I don't think that was acting.
it's good enough that sometimes I forget it's the same person playing both characters
He does have a double, as it's evident another arm is used to show one of the characters interacting with the other, for example, when Johnny reb reaches for the duffel bag that Billy yank holds with 2 hands
Geeze, just read Alexander Stephen's "Cornerstone Speech". The Vice President of the CSA pretty much lays it out right there.
That ought to be one of those things you are required to hear read aloud in school, like the preamble to the Constitution or the Gettysburg Address. If it was, we wouldn't be having most of these conversations.
@@jesseberg3271 As my mother use to say, "from your mouth to God's ear". 👍
@@academicdeaneducation6671 It does lay it out, particularly in the part that directly addresses the tension with the Republican-led North: "...notwithstanding their [Republicans'] professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor. Their philanthropy yields to their interest. The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after though they come from the labor of the slave."
Hi, direct descendant of Jeff Davis here. I appreciate someone finally correcting the misconceptions about all that. Also, I enjoy the zombies.
I wish I had an ancestor that is well known enough that someone would make a zombie video of them 😂
I found official minutes from various Grand Army of the Republic reunions, and found some simmering anger against the Lost Cause myth. One of the meetings in the 1890s I believe, had a younger man welcoming union veterans there; he alluded to General Lee being a great officer. In a very Victorian fashion, a veteran stepped up to the podium and said in what I can only presume was immense sarcasm "thanks, hey, let's give a big thanks to all the guys here who lost limbs to Lee, and count how many of our young men died going off to war." There were also a bunch of protests against statues of Lee in certain buildings. Also, it recorded a hilarious moment of a meeting dragging on too long and someone going "Hey can we save this for later? A lot of us have a train to catch!"
Where can I read that
Many Union soldiers objected bitterly to allowing the statutes of Confederate Generals and other leaders being placed in the Halls of Congress during the 1890s and early 1900s when it occurred.
@@donpietruk1517 I can only imagine the betrayal those veterans must have felt, seeing the leaders of the army that wounded them and killed their fellows lionized in the halls of the government they gave everything for. It seems like nothing less than the ultimate disrespect for their sacrifices.
@@sebastiansullivan6450Journal of Proceedings of the Annual Encampment of the Department of New Hampshire, Grand Army of the Republic volume 40-44
@@drpibisback7680 Imagine if the UK put up a statue of Napoleon in Trafalgar Square, like even though Napoleon wasn't really morally reprehensible the notion just sounds insane so why the fuck did the US do the same for a morally reprehensible for. Like what's next is the US going to put up a statue of Osama Bin Laden?
Billy's (or Andy's I guess) monologue when his fustration finally boils over, and Johnny's timid silence in reaction to Andy blowing up like that are both really powerful. You can see the gears turning in Johnny's head while he sits there. It feels weirdly natural refering to them as two separate people just because they are played so well
I can't get over what a great SS villain he plays. Over-the-top, but somehow still scary.
goddamn he's actually a really good actor i forgot that these 2 aren't the same person for a minute there, this show is actually powerful
Cringe
It was so cathartic
@@akizeta ye especially in the previous episode that fear factor comes into place
A wise green man once said, “States’ rights to do what?”
The “Lost Causers” don’t realize you’re their therapist, not their enemy.
Well said
29:52
Billy Yank’s rant kinda broke my heart when I saw Johnny reb’s face. For once, they were 100% brothers. It was kinda sad. Seeing Billy Yank get so flustered about this shot and show that he actually cares
I know it’s a silly UA-cam series but made me feel
Also, can’t wait for next Frozen Fifties man
This episode has everything going for it. The existential dread of coming to terms with one’s own cognitive dissonance. The heartfelt plea for reason and empathy. The Rami styled scene at the end, ft. Karl from InRange was the cherry on top. This channel is a real treat to watch , as well as pleasure to share and use as a educational tool. I am excited to see where this story goes.
Fun fact: General Lee had such respect for Grant that he defended Grant from any more of slander, he'd probably hate the Lost Cause Sympathizers for that reason alone
Well another fun fact is General Lee was one of the few successional members of the provisional government that actually fought for states rights, he was offered the generalship for the Union but turned it down to stay loyal to his state.
He was also against putting up Confederate monuments, knowing that it would bring division and that it was time for our nation to move on.
@@scotch4890 Lee said so many different things about why he went with the Confederacy that his own words are unreliable.
According to Secretary of War Joseph Holt, Lee told him he would take the Union commanding general position and asked permission to temporarily return to Arlington in order to get things in order. During that time, Lee accepted the position of the head of Virginia's forces.
Oh for christ sake will you Lee fangirls ever disappear.... Even here in these comments? Come on.
@@johnroscoe2406 I mean, I still hate him, but still
In divinity school, we had a unit on the Lost Cause and how it carried all the “marks” of a religion: With relics, rituals, and saints. This is the first video I’ve seen that has made that comparison. Thank you
I can't remember the actual book, but I remember reading a book on the Lost Cause years ago, that had a photo in it that noted that the headquarters of the Lost Cause movement in the late 1890s was built to resemble a temple.
Literally sitting in front of Grant’s tomb watching this. That ending sequence hit different.
Were you bringing him up-to-date knowledge, or only visiting?
@@brickbuildingcompilations4757 We need to brief the General on the progress we've made, especially in recent years. Let him know his work wasn't for naught. And give him the unfortunate news about what happened to his political party.
@@Deadener Gotta go visit Sherman and let him know there are still Confederates around.
Did they ever figure out who is buried in that tomb, perchance?
@@akumakorgar I was gonna ask that.... but you already did.... and it seems that no one knows.
Didn’t expect the series to go in this direction…. But I am freaking DOWN TO SEE WHERE WE’RE HEADED
The ending made me wonder if he is going to delve into the current fascist movement and cult which is (unbeknownst by the cult members) just recycled 1930 fascist propaganda (mainly "Protocols")
Most unrealistic part is Johnny Reb refusing to say the N-word
I think it's actually correct. Johnny isn't racist, he doesn't hate black people, in the end he has a kind heart. He was mislead and indoctrinated by the Lost Cause Myth. If you haven't yet I suggest watching the last episode of this series.
No more unrealistic than the Union counterpart not saying the N-word.
“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…” -Lincoln
@@MarcoCaprini-do3dq That's actually what I'm curious about. Are Johnny Reb and Billy Yank like human archetypes of the Civil War, or a couple of larper-bros? Johnny is wrapped up in the romance of the Lost Cause heroism, but immediately retreats into himself when confronted with the repulsive racism of his own brothers in arms. If he actually fought back then(at the very least, he *has* been shot), I can't imagine he couldn't have known....especially since this revisionist stuff didn't happen until shortly after the war ended.
@@mc_zittrer8793 I believe Johnny is the representation of the people that were (and are) led to believe lost cause myths, but in reality they are good people that were decieved
What's funny is I was educated in the south (Tennessee) and we learned in our history class that the war was about slavery (or states rights...to own slaves). When I moved back up north (Michigan) I kept finding people, who were educated up north, who learned what is more in line with the lost cause.
Southern Missourian here. We were taught it was about slavery as well despite being from the area who was on the Confederate side.
Fun fact: Missouri was only one of two states where Union civilians actively attacked Confederate civilians.
Yeah I always found that part weird, coming from someone who was born and lived in Michigan for all my life. You’ll see it more in the northern part of the mitten, which is mostly due to a lot of people from down south having moved up there and started little families and whatnot. Usually I’ll see these people living on land with junked trucks and houses that haven’t been maintained in years. Wonder if that means anything.
I went to middle and high school in one of the best public schools in Michigan (really good ones do exist even if they are few and far between) and even we were taught the civil war was about “states rights” I don’t think I took it to heart because of the way my family educated me, my boyfriend from the same school had his mind blown a few years later though 😂
West Coast here. I don't remember what specifically our text books said, I know I heard the phrase "states rights". However I'm not sure if it was then undercut in the book itself or if my history teachers themselves posed the question, "state rights to do what?". Though I don't consider my schooling to be typical as I went to one of the best school districts in the state and after I went to College I realized just how large a gap there is between schools. I guess the kids in the next town over really weren't wrong when they referred to my school as an Academy (it was a public school, just a really rich one).
@@steverogers8163the standard textbook when I was in HS did a nice job of dancing around this for acceptability by rac*ts while drawing the outline of what you needed to know.
I managed to convince my history teacher to show this video in our class since we’re about to go into the Civil War era and I can’t wait to see the faces of my classmates when they watch this
Whats their reaction?
I'm curious too.
Don’t keep us hanging. What happened?
@@taddonddat2217 I unfortunately missed watching it in class with them, but they seemed to like it a lot
@@Cheese25536 You had ONE JOB
Has anybody ever told you that you are actually really good at acting? No, I am serious. Professional level acting. You are a lot better at telegraphing emotion with your face, and very nuancedly so, than quite a lot of people who earn a lot of money in the film industry at.
Many people have told him. He's very talented. Does it all! Directs, writes, acts, producer, etc.
Yeah the facial expressions of Klaus in the final skit 👌
@@bonniea8189 No there is a specific scene much earlier in the video, where Johnny Reb just goes from looking sceptical to even more sceptical by raising an eyebrow even higher.
That nuance, that was fantastic.
Everyone can do funny overacting, but that was brilliant.
Better than Ralph the Movie Maker. Love that guy, but man his films are so bland. I adore this man's work because although it's amateur, he has fun with it!
The lost cause was actually taught as wrong and they debunked it in my school thankfully. Thank you all (people who have done the work in debunking the Lost Cause myth) for this.
Same, and I went to school in Florida no less. I feel lucky. Although that was also in the 2000s so it wasn't a complete Republican hellhole yet.
The catharsis I felt when Johnny was bluntly confronted at the end was... so on point. Thank you.
Same bro…. I felt that too. made me stop for a few seconds. Growing up I actually believed in most lost cause mythos… this shows been a help for me… even if it hasn’t for Johnny 😂. Still the Duffel Bag part cracks me up.
I was just in a twitter chat last night about the causes of the civil war. The main supporters of the lost cause myth were 3 young men (under 20) who reiterated over and over again that it was about Lincoln violating the constitution and that his raising union troops to suppress the rebellion was the trigger of secession. Mind you also that they were also VERY religious (to the point that only married men with land should be able to vote). It was disturbing to see "kids" that young to actually use the same documentation quoted here to justify the session of the south.
I’m with you 100% but I’m just curious. What does being religious have to do with thinking only married men with land should be able to vote?
@@xeagaort Because many fundamentalists take the word to the bible very to the letter, and since the bible at times implies that a man is truly an adult only when he marries and owes obediency to the patriarch of the family in any case (hence the one that owns the wealth of the family) it follows that a man is not autonomous until he marries *and* has his own wealth of which land is the most obvious type, if those conditions aren't both met it means the man is not fit for voting.
It goes with a lot of American fundamentalist christianity being influenced by the calvinist version of predestination that asserts prosperity on Earth marks the people chosen by God.
Of course that this would keep in power a class of wealthy landowners and disenfranchise everyone else is totally a coincidence. Totally.
@@det.bullock4461 in your mind what makes a man fit to vote?
@@WordofLifeEternal Being a citizen of legal age, full stop. Anything else can be (and has been) used by any government to just limit the rights of the people that don't vote for them.
@@det.bullock4461
I have a lot to say about 🐂 💩 religions, but at times like this after reading that, I am speechless.
Your show IS helping unravel the myth, dude. I've showed it to a lot of people who have believed in the lost cause myth, and it actually has opened their minds to change. Excellent as always.,
I love how much Johnny is shown to grow in this series. It’s so well done. He’s a true anti villain.
Black American here who's 6x great grandfather was nathan bedford forest. Who's black 6x great grandmother was in a "relationship" with him. I ended up getting the name "Ned" passed down to me from him. The combination of Nathan + Bedford = Ned. I whole heartedly agree with this video. Civil war history interest me due to the real world consequences an event from 200 years ago has on the socio political atmosphere of today. Still not sure if I am going to pass down the name to my son knowing what bedford has done. It's very confusing to me. I would like you to make a video on Nathan bedford forest and debunk what confederate sympathizers say about him to this day.
Work on being a good enough person that you can be proud of it as your name, not his. All of us have ancestors who weren't good people. Most of us bear names that were/are used by evildoers. The less power you give them over you, the better
There's a section about him in another video of this series, the one about confederacy's generals.
Own it. You can name him whatever you choose in spite of some balding KKK leader’s existence.
The lost cause is a strawman and this video is trash
Then again Bedford also went on to become an abolitionist and worked towards the black rights movement
What a masterclass! Loved the little nods to the camera and the tension at the end.
The final sequence was absolutely fantastic and the production quality was stunning as always. A little bittersweet now that we're near the end but always looking forward to what's next!
I loved the comedic bit of “Thomas Jackson” “Thomas Jackson’s arm”
@Some Random Person on the Internet thank you so much! And thank you @ADeadMilkman for your kind words! We had a lot of fun working on it!
@@matthewrigdon2547 thank you for your amazing performance! Loved your role in Frozen 50's man and I am excited to see more from you as unded Jeff Davis!
The WKUK skit at the beginning. The overdue and thoroughly satisfying dressing down of Johnny at the end. The epic ending skit with Jackson’s arm getting its own grave. And of course, all the excellent research, presentation, humor and acting in the middle. Didn’t think I could love this channel more, but here we are
Jackson's arm had me laughing so hard though 🤣 but yea definitely agree this is up there for best video yet
@@kathrynradonich3982 I'm confused. What's up with Jackson's arm? Is there a historical story about that or did he just add it in?
@@aaroncabatingan5238 After Jackson was shot (accidentally) by confederate soldiers, doctors had to amputate his arm to try to save him. He died a few days later, probably due to sepsis-induced fever.
@Aaron Cabatingan If I remember correctly, 'Stonewall' Jackson's arm really is buried in a different grave then the rest of his body. Complete with actual separate shrine and all.
Southern Lost Cause worship was (and still is in some cases) WILD.
Jackson's skeletal arm shaking silently actually made me spit-take for the first time in my life. Water everywhere
This series is unironically the best guide to the study of history and effective historical thinking I've ever seen
This should become a fully animated series. With Lincon being revived and Johnny having a redemption ark.
Edit: I meant to say Johnny would have the redemption ark.
You mean Johnny right? Billy Yank is fine
@@littleaqua32 Nah, this whole series has been working up to the stunning revelation that Johnny was right all along. Checkmate, Lincolnites!
@@littleaqua32 Ah is Johnny the confederate?
@@ricardobautista-garcia8492 Yes
Wasn't there an "Abe Lincoln vs the Zombies" or "Abe Lincoln, Zombie Hunter" movie 5-10 years back?
I really wish these didn't need to exist but since we definitely do need them, I'm damn glad they are here.
I am always baffled by the claim that history has suddenly changed. I grew up in Memphis in the 80s and 90s and I was always taught that the Confederacy fought for the states' rights to have slaves. This is one of the many reasons why we need a standardized curriculum for every school. There should be non-Core classes available, of course, as well as region-appropriate extra-curriculars and the like. This disparity in education is unacceptable.
Same, and we even watched Roots, pretty sure I was in Goose Creek, SC at the time.
Florida and Texas want to rewrite histories base on politicians. They are pretty much believing in the Lost Cause.
This is leftist BS. As horrid as slavery was, at the time it was a "State Right". They also complained about the Supremacy Clause, about the powers of the President, about the six-year terms of Senators, and about the many new powers granted to Congress. Slavery was just the straw that broke the camel's back !
It really is a shame that the war wasn't a draw and compromise had to be reached, where slavery was abolished, yet the states kept their Rights . . . . . . . . Just look at our bastardized government now, it's almost completely centralized and look at all the problems we are having ! ! !
@@JandJFarmCritters name 1 state rights back then. Best of luck. Beside owning slaves, what other state rights are there?
@@tr1bes I think I named some already. Did you not read past the first sentence ?
"I supposed this is when you bring out a 'racist quote.'"
"I literally have a duffel bag full of them."
Reb's face: "Oh crap."
Also, it's eerie to hear some of them. Replace "Black" with "transgender" and it is literally the talking points of the right today.
It’s not the only time that comes out.
I listed to a recording of the oral arguments to the “Loving v. Virginia” (the SCOTUS case that allowed interracial marriage). The arguments against interracial marriage are identical to the arguments made against gay marriage.
It's sad that when a minority who have been suppressed for so long finally rise up that the oppressors fight tooth and nail to keep them down. They act like giving minorities rights would be the destruction of a fundamental aspect of their lives. Then they have the gall to act like "we're trying to protect you from yourselves" or "my religious freedom is bring suppressed!" It's like losing a punching bag for them is detrimental to their ways of life. They are horrifyingly upset when someone receives rights that they themselves already have. Then that same opposition dares to claim that those others who speak out against them are "sensitive" and "snowflakes".
I accept that the First Amendment gives people the right to freedom of speech. That being said, if you're going to use it, others also have a right to disagree with you.
@@CSXIVthe more things change, huh?
Aww Billy and Johnny falling out makes me sad, they seemed to be getting more friendly as the episodes went on
me too :(((
Maybe Johnny will get his face turn and be instrumental in stopping the Zombie Confederacy.
I honestly forget that Andy plays both characters all the time, they’re such different personalities 😂
I really hope the series isn't going to end with that sad note.
@@gaylewinds4808 me too. this is the second to last episode, and I'm praying it doesn't end on a sour note.
Stonewalls arm getting its own grave is probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen
Lots of videos make me chuckle. That made me laugh out loud heartily.
There is an actual monument to Jackson’s arm in Virginia 😂 look it up
What makes it even better is that it actually did get one, IIRC.
As a European I bought the lost cause (if not the apologea) due to Lost Cause bilge seeping into schoolbooks. Thank you Bill Yank and Johnny Rebel. NEVER STOP.
I don't think we saw the ACW in details in our textbooks, we just mention the "Secession War", but I bought lost cause narrative about "state rights" and "taxations" when I first searched for that part of american history on youtube. Then I found Atun-shei's channel XD
In the UK (well; England, the other 3 bits of the UK have their own education systems) it was a bit different, we didn't go over it in massive detail but it was quite clear when it was taught that it was over the subject of slavery.
Aw man, it broke containment and crossed the pond? Well, that makes me doubly glad for this series.
@@00muinamir what the real causes of the American Civil War?
This was over 20 years ago, but it's a small but integral part of English curriculum (and, while I can speak definitively, I would imagine it is in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too).
Someone going "the War was about states rights" definitely would raise a few eyebrows over here.
Here in Sweden I would say that the greatest influence the "Lost Cause" myth had was on greaser culture (raggare). Since it absolutely had nothing to do with slavery and was only about the individual against the system, the greasers embraced the whole "rebel" mentality and it's still not uncommon to see greasers in lovingly maintained american 50's and 60's cars drive around with confederate (rebel) flags somewhere.
It's only in recent years that there's been a discussion about the rebel flag in greaser culture, but many refuse to take them down, since in their mind it has nothing to do with the confederacy and slavery, but is their own, appropriated, symbol of rebels against the system.
I teach in a Louisiana classroom as a history teacher, and more often than not I hear from students the same Lost cause mythology that I hear from their parents, so during break days what I will do is actually show them a video of checkmate Lincolnites, add shockingly it's somehow getting through to a couple of them
Why let them read original documents in their full context when you can show students stupid propaganda videos? What else would government employees do with children?
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 they do??? I show these videos on days where there's nothing else on the agenda and there's time, otherwise it's a completely professional teaching environment
@@consof8724 Name three related primary source documents you've read in full in class or given your students time to read in class in full.
@@consof8724 It's time for you to quit milking the taxpayer for a dishonest babysitting job and find a way to make an honest living.
@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 You're a sad excuse of a person lmao. Imagine hating on teachers. The least paid, yet most crucial job in our society
"I suppose this is where you pull out a racist quote"
I love how Billy's just like "oh please, we're talking about the confederacy, I can do a *lot* better than 'a' quote."