Gettysburg, the Extended Edition

Eorapter1 has it....the war was fought to preserve the Union. Slavery was the issue that threatened the Union, but the war was fought to preserve the Union. So Ken, I stand in disagreement with you.

An important distinction, quickly lost in the post war period and the subsequent creation of the "cause" mythology ( I refer to both sides myths here, not simply the Southern "lost cause").

Remember that not every slave state seceded, and most of the Western states were on the fence until the last moment and did not secede until after Sumter. Arkansas, where my family is from, condemned the secessionist movement until the day after Sumter's fall. These states did not leave the Union over slavery.

if Rami we're going to touch on this subject I would approach it from the oblique...make a declaration, either slavery was or was not the cause, then attack it either way Using a Socratic methodology (which is what we're doing here...more or less). See where you end up.

By the way, I often think of the dilemma one would have faced as a serving officer in the Army at that time. Now, with 154 years of distance it would be easy to say I would have stayed with the army I knew and loved and could not conceive of taking up arms against my country. But then, I don't have that strong bond to a particular state that those gentlemen would have had. Part of the result of the civil war.
 
That's an interesting way to look at it, and I think it has merit. The secession was over slavery, but the war initially at least was fought to preserve the union.

Yes, I agree with that. But, I guess I come down on the point that without secession, there would have been no war. So, perhaps it is more a cause and effect relationship that I focus on vice the initial justification for the war itself. One thing I think we can both agree on is that for a great number of people, the war was fought to eliminate slavery and they sought every means by which to ensure that would be the case. Eventually, the moral weight of their arguments, combined with the horrible human cost of the war, convinced Lincoln that there had to be a more positive outcome than simply mending fences at the end of it. So, Lincoln by the end of the war became an abolitionist. For him, to have already paid the monumental human cost, there had to be an end to the institution that so divided the nation or else there would be serious risk of a second such war. No one wanted that!

Cheers,

Ken
 
Reply...

Hey guys,

I have no disillusions about slavery's role in the Civil War. I have not found cause to disagree with McPherson's assessment in those video links that slavery was at the root of a lot of the issues leading up to the Civil War...tracing back to Jefferson's warning about "a fire bell in the night" and to the original founding of the Constitution.

All I was saying was that from a Union perspective at the start of the Civil War, the question of slavery was not a paramount issue. For Lincoln, the issue of what to do about the states in the Confederacy was. It became clear later on in the war that slavery had to be destroyed....but at that point (late 1862) more to destroy the South's economy and to keep foreign powers (specifically England and France) from assisting the South, especially with the Union blockade. By 1864, however, it was clear that by destroying slavery, it would settle this simmering issue that had plagued the United States since its inception in 1776.

Lincoln was a human being whose perspective on slaves changed over time...compare his attitudes in the Lincoln-Douglas debates to that of the Emancipation Proclamation. That's a lot of personal growth. (Although yes, the document did not in fact free a single slave...it gave slaves an incentive to flee to Union lines)
 
Having been raised and educated on the west coast I was given a pretty shallow account of the war. It was years later that I first heard the southern perspective and it was eye-opening to say the least. To them what history books call the Civil War was their War of Independence. Lee was their Washington and Lincoln was the oppressive King George. The average Confederate soldier was not fighting to save slavery, but to save his home, mother, and apple pie (propaganda was alive and well back then too).

edit: Not trying to politicize this thread, only making the point that history can look pretty different depending on your point of view. I was surprised to learn how deep some folks feelings were about something that was a dusty historical event to me.
 
I doubt the issue will ever be firmly resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. It seems that the debate continues through the generations and continually serves as fodder for writers to expound upon the subject. If memory serves me correctly, the Civil War and its origin(s) IS the period in American history about which most books are published.

I guess you pays your money and you takes your choice !!
 
TeaSea said:
By the way, I often think of the dilemma one would have faced as a serving officer in the Army at that time. Now, with 154 years of distance it would be easy to say I would have stayed with the army I knew and loved and could not conceive of taking up arms against my country. But then, I don't have that strong bond to a particular state that those gentlemen would have had. Part of the result of the civil war.
Click to expand...

This, I think, is one of many things people today tend to miss; when Robert E. Lee says "I could not draw my sword against my country" he means Virginia.

Just a few parting thoughts; as I think I said, we're still cleaning up from a flood here in Niagara County, and I still have a lot to do. That, plus my other projects mean last night was the first time in nearly a month I even plugged in my joystick. I do want to thank everyone who participated in this thread, even if I didn't agree with you, and I thank everyone as well for their civility. I'm used to vandalism and hate mail, so I'm sometimes confused by people who practice manners. Now, once upon a time, I had the reputation of being, shall we say, opinionated. I'll take that. I admit, I'm deeply biased toward my own point of view. Something else that gets me in a lot of trouble is my proclaimed belief that humans are not particularly rational beings, they rationalize, which is IMO a different mental process. They have double, triple, and quadruple standards. They can justify nearly anything. It's like watching an episode of Mission Impossible; you know the Team is going to accomplish the mission; it's just a matter of how. They want to see themselves as realists, but they also want to think highly of their ancestors, and this to my mind leads directly to selective blindness, selective memory, and selectivity on whom they are willing to grant full humanity. Just throwing that out there, because IMO it makes a HUGE difference on what reality people are willing to accept. I'm very interested in the historical period, but I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the Romanticism surrounding it. That represents a sanitized view of history I deeply resent. It was a horribly destructive, and IMO avoidable conflict. As Sherman pointed out at the time, people chose that war, and we're still living with the consequences. We're going to go on living with the consequences. I don't agree with Shelby Foote on everything, but one thing I do agree with is his statement that nothing came out of the war that couldn't have been achieved through arbitration, but then as now, people saw arbitration as being for wimps. What price glory?

I thank everyone again for their much appreciated civility.

JAMES
 
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