It seems that April is Confederate Heritage month. Why one would want to celebrate a heritage of violent rebellion against a democratically elected government in order to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery is a bit hard for me to say.”?—?Matthew Yglesias [1]
The kindest way I can put this, is …. Your misunderstanding, Matt, is far more than you imagine.
In the end, the Civil war was not about slavery, but about the constitution, which stated (at least when it was written) that each state would be free.
Mind, I do not propose to defend slavery, that’s not the point here, and I would not in any event. The fact was and remains however, that the war was against a strong federal government… as was the Constitution itself until the end of the war. That freedom is something the strong federal government couldn’t stand for.
It’s true enough, by the time things really got going, we were suddenly fighting a war about ending slavery. But that didn’t come about, that wasn’t the reason for the war until days after the war began. Remember, gang, in Lincoln’s first inaugural, he said flatly he had no intention of abolishing slavery, or of repealing the Fugitive slave law. Lincoln himself stated that the war was not about slavery, or about the rights of blacks, but about the preservation of’ the union’. Lincoln even went so far as to bar Blacks from serving in the Military. It was only well after the war was underway did Lincoln pull an about face, and suddenly the war was about slavery. Ending slavery was a more tangible goal than ‘saving the union’, particularly given most people didn’t understand what the union was, except in the loosest of senses. Ending slavery served as a far easier to support rally cry, then the real purpose, which was to retain the vast resources of the south, under the control of Washington.
Nor did Lincoln save the union. Most people do not understand, (Mostly because they’re not taught this) is that the union ceased to BE a union as of the civil war. America was saved, but only in the Geographic sense. As of the Civil war, America wasn’t a union of states anymore, but a very powerful federal government… something the founders never intended.
Moreover, the south didn’t start a rebellion. Certainly, the south posed no military threat to the north. Nor did they show any intention of any invasions of the north. They simply chose to remove themselves from the union.
So, the question, then is… Was it worth all the people who died? Yes, we ended slavery, but historianns tell us that it was an institution which would have died shortly in any event. Was ending it ten years earlier, I ask you, worth killing so many men women and kids, and creating the behemoth federal government, thus destroying the union we had thought to save?
In my own view, the Civil war should have been called the war for Southern independence. Then again, the victors usually get to re-label things, don’t they?