Doing Confederates already? I was going to wait till the Americans were finished. Who wants to do two big projects at once? Turtle Fan 18:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Confederates are Americans Edit

Why are they labeled as being different? People from the CSA would be as much Americans as people from the USA. They're both States of America, just with different governments.

They're Americans in the sense that Cubans and Brazilians and Chileans and so forth are Americans, true. They come from the Americas. That, however, is far too broad a definition for our purposes.

Also, since there was never any legal mechanism for secession, the Confederate States of America never existed, except in the imaginations of those who wanted it to. Though treasonous, they remained subject to US jurisdiction.

In two of HT's alternate histories, however, the US signs off on Confederate secession and treats with them as a legitimate government. In both cases it's under duress, and in TL-191, the US reabsorbs ten of the eleven seceding states (and strongly hints the eleventh won't be independent for long), two states which the Rebs had seized militarily in earlier generations, and three states built from territory which the rebel "government" had acquired from foreign powers over the years.

Although in GotS Lee and his aides objected to Rhoodie referring to the US as Americans. Lee sternly told him "We are Americans". This was in the first scene where Rhoodie was demonstrating the AK-47. Likewise in TL-191 various CS characters considered themselves Americans, some referring to themselves as "true" Americans rather than the degenerate, mongrel race to the north.

They self-identified as Americans. That means next to nothing--Again, see the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. And as for the 191ers--Well, they also said things like "I'm here to tell you the truth," when of course they were doing no such thing. Turtle Fan 03:03, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Be that as it may, this section should stand since it is a useful category with a descriptive name. Perhaps it should be made a sub-cat of Americans? ML4E 21:38, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what function that would serve. American refers to the US, Confederate to the CS. True the CS was once the US, but . . . Should we make Canadians a subcat of Englishmen while we're at it? They once shared a government, and they still share a head of state. But if you want out of a country, you're out of it. Turtle Fan 03:03, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Still, if we're going to treat the CS as a legitimate, sovereign entity, that means it is not the United States. Thus, the term "American" does not apply. Just because a country puts a phrase into its name does not make the meaning of that phrase attach to he country. See, for instance, the "Democratic" "People's" "Republic" of Korea.

Actually, that example fits pretty well, albeit not perfectly: While the DPRK is neither democratic nor a republic, and does not belong to its people, it is on the Korean peninsula, geographically speaking, but unlike the government based in Seoul, it is not a successor state to the Republic-in-exile which was founded on March 1, 1919 and coordinated resistance to Japan for the next 26 years. So when a person says "Korea" or "Korean" without qualifier, they are most often referring to the South. In the Korean language, in fact, they don't even use the name 한국 to refer to the North at all. There's even a story of a defector not knowing what 한국 was when she first got to China. Turtle Fan 19:31, October 5, 2010 (UTC)