On This Day In History
on 11/19/2006 at 06:36 PM
Gotta disagree there Pieper; Mencken was looking at things from the wrong side. The self-determination fought for by the North was to keep the original model in place. The model that We The People are stronger as a single team than as a loose group of smaller teams. I think it’s too simplistic to try to boil down the whole conflict into a State’s Rights vs. Federal Rights issue. Besides, in creating the CSA, the Southern States traded one group leadership model for another, albeit a weaker one somewhat similar to the old Articles of Confederation that had been set aside years before as unworkable. Their expression of self-determination wasn’t so clear that they reverted to individual nation-states. Texas had given that a try 20 years previously; they joined the USA about as fast as they could.
Had the CSA not opened hostilities they might have survived. That was seven generations ago. It would be really difficult to research things to find the real base reasons that caused secession and battle; all we have left at this point are the opinions of 150 years of historians. Were Federal policies of the day really onerous to the South, and biased in favor of the North? (It’s not like they had income tax, affirmative action, or the EPA in those days) Why did the South not embrace the changing economic model - this was the dawn of the industrial revolution, and fortunes were being made everywhere. They certainly had the resources and the know-how, yet didn’t make inroads there and were eventually lost because of it. Why did the average Johnny Reb willingly defend a near feudal system that kept him low in the hierarchy? Were they hornswoggled by an elitist aristocracy? Similar questions can be asked of the people of the North too. At this point all we have left are opinions about opinions, and passed down stories that grow in the telling.
Lincoln was not a hero, but a bully. He got what he deserved. He imprisoned many northeners for disagreeing with him and caused the most casualties for Americans in any war. He pulled out the race card, but his own statements show that he cared little about what happened to blacks. He wanted to force the Southern states back into a union they peacefully left.
I can’t accept that one either Preacher. Peacefully left perhaps, but not peacefully kept. Six months of negotiations instead of cannon fire would have solved the whole thing I bet.
Nor is it exactly fair to pull up casualty numbers when it was Americans on both sides of the fight. It was a big war and hard fought. Technology had taken a big step forward in the 17 years since the Mexican War, but generals and tactics hadn’t. Better guns took their toll along with outdated ways of fighting.
It’s quite likely that Lincoln didn’t care much about the blacks, but this made him no different than just about everybody else in those days. This is what I said earlier about history: we can’t see the 19th century properly because we can only look at it with 21st century eyes. Yes old Abe suspended Habeus Corpus and locked up a bunch of yellow journalists. Right or wrong, it was deemed necessary then. Nearly 60 years later Wilson did the Aliens and Sedition Act. People took loyalty seriously in those days! FDR had people locked up in mental institutions and interment camps. I bet W wishes he could play that way; instead he gets accused of tyranny if he even looks at the TV cross-eyed.
I seem to recall that the CSA went on the attack first; something like 3/4 of the battles and skirmishes in the first two years were fought in Northern states (which were slave holding states)! Actions in the South were mostly small naval bombardments at that point. More than a third of the Confederacy was still part of the USA at the time of Ft. Sumter! Secession barely passed in Georgia by a few hundred votes. I think I also recall that it took the North 2 or 3 years to even win one big fight. So “peacefully” doesn’t apply, nor does a sense of real CSA unity in the first months of the conflict.
Peiper, I think it was an adventure for most of them at first. Just like the early months of WWI. It’s all fun and games until somebody gets killed and the rest find out they can’t go home and they’re on the wrong end of incoming.
In keeping with my new persona, “Damn Yankee Carpetbaggers!!!”
Good one YD! I guess you reinvented yourself after the election? Reconstruction was a mess, I’ll agree.
