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The better angels
Why Americans are still fighting over who was right and who was wrong in the Civil War
Who won the Civil War? You'd have a hard time finding out at Gettysburg. Sure, there are plenty of artifacts in the dilapidated vistor center: cases full of gray and blue uniforms, fading regimental flags, and rows of shining rifles. Step outside, and you'll learn about the flanking movements and angles of fire, the storied charges and tactical gambits that decided the momentous three day battle. The 1,320 monuments, markers, and memorials that dot the fields of Gettysburg National Military Park pay special attention to troop movements and casualty lists, emphasizing the valor and courage of those who fought. Only a few mention the preservation of the Union; none celebrate the end of slavery.

For almost 2 million visitors each year, the Pennsylvania battlefield confirms everything they know from documentaries, Hollywood, and popular fiction: that the war was America's epic, a heroic conflict both sides fought for freedom. The same tale is told at battlefields across the country. And it's wrong.

In trying to honor the soldiers who died, Civil War battlefields have historically avoided referring to what the two armies were actually fighting about. As a result, say scholars and park service officials alike, the message of most Civil War parks is subtly pro-Confederate, alienating many people who should find the parks compelling. What's missing, they say, is a moral element, what Abraham Lincoln referred to as "the better angels of our nature." The Civil War was a fight over slavery. The South was for it, the North against it. Not talking about slavery, they say, erases right and wrong from history–not only in the parks but in the national memory itself.

I deleted my first comment

Date: 2002-09-24 11:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] browngirl.livejournal.com
Because it was almost but not quite totally not what I meant to say.

Thank you for this article. I used to get into such arguments in high school when I'd point out that neglected behind all the 'romance' of war was the reality of people fighting to be able to own other people.

The soldiers were brave, and many of them sacrificed all they had, for which I admire and honor them. But, I guess, I also admire and honor my and many other people's ancestors, who had to be brave and struggle to survive being bought and sold, and yes, the US tries hard to forget that that was part of the story.

Date: 2002-09-24 11:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
While the subject of slavery was an important element of the reasons behind seceesion, I know that you know better than the think the entire reasoning behind the Civil War can be so easily summarized as: The Was was about slavery. You and I both now there were core issues, many still unresolved and a number of them being excercised by California recently that are reasons behind the War. One could make the arguement that slavery itself was a secondary cause, being a component of a State's Right to chose whether or not it would allow slavery. I honestly think that the unresolved issues from the 1850s are starting to come to light today, like with the aforementioned California as well as other instances in other States.

Date: 2002-09-24 12:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
While it is definitely true to say that slavery was not the only issue that led to the Civil War, the more I read about the arguments that led to secession the harder it is to argue that it was a secondary cause, in the sense that it was a secondary consideration.

If you look at the wording of the resolutions that led to the secession of the 11 Southern states, like Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, among others, while it is clear that they were asserting the rights of the states to choose, the main right they were asserting was the right to perpetuate the institution of slavery. To that end, Bleeding Kansas happened, for example. Lincoln was hated by the South precisely because he was seen as an abolitionist, and his election in 1860 precipitated Seccession.

While it is also true that only 6 percent of Southerners actually owned slaves, and most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, this statistic is misleading because that 6 percent consituted most of the Southern agricultural economy, and also its political path. 92 percent of the Southern population were slaves - one cannot reasonably argue that slavery was not important to the Southern economy, which thrived due to free labor, nor can one reasonably argue that the economy as it stood would have been imperiled considerably if slavery were to be abolished.

The assertion of the Civil War as a primary assertion of State's Rights is a post-war justification, as is the arguments about legality of secession under the 10th Amendment and so on. The Lost Cause argument was appealing because it both soothed Southern pride as well as fed into the guilt that the North felt over the excesses of Reconstruction and agreeing with such arguments hastened the healing process between North and South.

I understand the difficulty many Southerners may have in realizing or admitting that their ancestors fought for a cause that from today's perspective is rephrensible, or even obscene. The role of history, though, is not to adjudge the rightness or wrongness of the reasons. One might argue that it was a product of their times, and of their thinking, and they were simply obsolete and did not realize it, or unenlightened.

Ultimately, however, that's not quite the point - the point is that by relegating the issue of slavery to a secondary position which it does not deserve, one is effectively distorting the truth of what happened. And the issue of slavery has been swept aside for way too long.

And truth should be truth, to the end of reckoning.

Re: Slavery

Date: 2002-09-24 12:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] etherial.livejournal.com
From my high school history books and other related research, I gathered the opinion that slavery was slowly becoming too burdensome for the south and this contributed to the North's victory. Paid labor allowed the North to vastly outpace the South in Industry and Technology. Mostly the persistence of the slave owners seems pride in the face of the constant nagging of Puritan North.

Are you sure that the population of the south was 92% slave?
That figure sounds exaggerated.

Re: Slavery

Date: 2002-09-24 01:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
You're right. I have no frickin' idea where I got that figure from now - my only defence is that it's late. A quick web search shows that best estimates show that about 38 percent of the total population of the South (not including the border states) were slaves in 1860, that's three and a half million out of about nine million total population.

I even got the slave owning percentages wrong. For a much better statistical overview, look at http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/stat.html

Date: 2002-09-24 12:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
I certainly agree that slavery was a vastly important topic to the people of the time and about its importance to the agriculture that dominated the southern economy. It's also true that the majority of those in political power were tied directly to the wealthy southern landowners, and hence slave owners. I think that the prpensity of the American culture to shorten things into small, easily digestable and concise "news bytes" is a crying shame that does injustice to topics that cannot truthfully be shortened into such forms. Your inital cited article contained what the modern publicicly educated student knows about the Civil War: "The Civil War was a fight over slavery." I find that to be horribly limited and functionally flawed. Like you and I both agree: Slavery was a centralized factor but unless people bother to stand up against that as a simple answer our entire knowledge of history will quickly shorten to one or two word summations. What was World War II about? Nazis. What was World War I about? Who knows/cares.

I too find it to be of particular interest that the landowners and politicos for the most part wanted to keep slavery around but they knew they would have a hard time sellign that to the armies to fight for. It wouldn't shock me to learn that the politicians used the banner of States Rights to generate morale for the armies of the South. Even Robert E. Lee admitted that his loyalty was to the State of Virginia and that was why he sided with the South. Of coruse, it wouldn't be the first time that politicians used a patriotic carrot on a stick to avert the population's attention from the true cause(s) of the war.

Date: 2002-09-24 12:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Truth to tell, I don't think they would have had a tough fight selling slavery as an issue - racism was rife throughout North and South, although of course less so in the North. There were many Southern soldiers who expressed and bought into fears that the abolition of slavery would mean the mixing of races and the black man dominating the white man. What would have been a hard sell would be for those more canny Southerners who would see past the rhetoric and realize that it wasn't so much about the inferiority of races but the profits of the slaveowners at stake. And your average non-slave-owning Southerner, while no less racist, would balk at the idea of fighting to line another man's pockets and not his own.

Date: 2002-09-24 01:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
I can certainly see your points there. Perhaps the land and slave owners realized that the only thing keeping them "safe" was the subjegation of the slaves. If they were allowed to go free then their former owners would surely suffer an ill fate as the slave-to-slave-owner ratio was not in favor of the establishment. Very good point.

Date: 2002-09-24 01:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
That was what they feared. The reality of course we'll never know. Although there were instances of freed slaves going back to kill their former slave owners, there aren't that many reports of that happening. I like the story of a former slave who, after enlisting in the Union Army, recognized his former master being led away as a prisoner of war, and said, "Hello massa... bottom rail on top now."

Robert E. Lee

Date: 2002-09-24 06:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] etherial.livejournal.com
Robert E. Lee was a staunch abolitionist and first choice for both armies in that war. Men like General Lee should be admired because they fought for what they believed in every bit as much as the men fighting for the North, probably more.

In my high school, they tried to drill it into you that the war was about more than just slavery. It was clear to me, though, that slavery was key both in the causes of the war and the motivations of men on both sides during the course of the war.

"I would like God on our side, but I need Missouri." Abraham Lincoln.

Re: Robert E. Lee

Date: 2002-09-24 09:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Ah, ol' Marse Robert. Strange man, that. He apparently viewed slavery as an evil and yet owned slaves and did not free them until after the war, believing that they were better off slaves than free men. Opposed to secession and yet telling Lincoln that he could not take up arms against his "country", Virginia. A genius in war for his audacity and cunning in the face of superior odds and yet stubborn enough to order Pickett's Charge in the face of contrary advice and good sense. There's been a recent backlash among historians re-examining Lee's life in a less-than-favorable light over the last several years. I haven't quite decided myself what I really think of the man, although I certainly admire such masterpieces as Chancellorsville - I'm going to pick up Emory Thomas' (who taught at UGA and whom I met briefly this year) bio of Lee before I do.

Date: 2002-09-24 12:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
As an additional point, I do agree that the tension between state's rights and a strong federal government had not been completed resolved by the Civil War, but then again it's been a bone of contention ever since the Revolution, from the arguments over the Constitution as embodied in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, to the conflict between Thomas Jefferson's Republicans and John Adams' Federalists and also between Jefferson and Chief Justice James Marshall (of Marbury v. Madison fame).

One of my favorite observations is that of Joseph Ellis, who said that America is not so much built on a proposition but an argument about that proposition. I think that the argument is a vital one, and one that has kept one side from becoming a tyranny, and the other side from turning a union into chaos. Point being, that the Civil War was an expression of an ongoing argument, but the specific issues that drove that argument in the 1860s were that of economic dominance, among others, and the core of the economy of the South was centered around slavery. That cannot be avoided.

Date: 2002-09-24 02:33 pm (UTC)
cellio: (Monica)
From: [personal profile] cellio
I've never lived south of the Mason-Dixon line, and I was taught while growing up that the civil war was about slavery. But that's not quite right: the civil war (or, if you prefer, the war between the states) was about states' rights (as guaranteed under the constitution at that time), with slavery being the catalyzing factor. In order for the tension to erupt into war there had to be an issue that was sufficiently repugnant to one side and essential to the other, and slavery was that issue.

Date: 2002-09-24 10:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
And yet even that isn't the whole picture - wars and their reasons tend to be complicated things. While states' rights were guaranteed under the 10th Amendment, nothing in the Constitution truly legitimizes the Confederacy's "right" to secede. It wasn't so much that the South was concerned about the independence of states, it was also the fact that they refused to live under the compact of the Constitution which established a central government, i.e. the rule of the majority. They were outvoted and outnumbered and decided to pack up their toys and go home rather than work within the system.

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