Granted, those are pretty broad strokes, as some Rebs were fighting to maintain the "peculiar institution," and some Federals were abolitionists, but those were the minority. Basically, slavery was A cause of the War, not THE cause, as the dimwit revisionists would have us believe. The fight for national level political supremacy between sections, hypocrisy on both sides, changing economic conditions, and societal shifts brought on by increased immigration were the main causes of the shooting....slavery was just caught up in all of that. I could make the argument that the southern states were entirely justified in wanting to see slavery expanded into the western territories, and equally that they were being hypocritical in claiming "States's rights" and then wanting to deny those rights to people in states who didn't want slavery by saying that if it's legal one place, it must be legal everywhere. As well, the north was just as hypocritical in calling secession wrong, and calling secession "treason", when Massachusetts was prepared to leave the Union over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and none in the north considered that treasonous.
My heartfelt belief is that the men who fought that war were ALL the best Americans, as they did what Americans have always done: Fought for freedom. In one case, it was the freedom to be left alone to live your life as you'd always lived it, in the other it was a fight to determine if freedom applied to all of us or just to some of us. You can take your pick as to which side is which....because some Rebs fought for one and not the other, and some Federals fought for the other and not for one.
I may have reenacted the War in a blue uniform, but I revere the Southern Cross as a symbol of bravery and honor, just the same as I do the Stars and Stripes. Banning the Southern Cross is just shy of banning the Stars and Stripes, and I won't stand for either to happen.
fwiw, MOST reenactments NEED "bluebellies".
being "a yank" is so UNPOPULAR (even in the north) that MOST re-enactors have to "galvanize" from time to time, so that the reenactment doesn't look ridiculous.
free dixie,sw
Concur. And the irony of both sides employing conscription in a war supposedly *against slavery* leaves a particularly bitter taste as well.
I may have reenacted the War in a blue uniform, but I revere the Southern Cross as a symbol of bravery and honor, just the same as I do the Stars and Stripes. Banning the Southern Cross is just shy of banning the Stars and Stripes, and I won't stand for either to happen.
I would be proud to meet you on the field of battle most any time in the future, should that geographicly unlikely possibility come to pass, and will do my level-best to shoot or skewer you to a fare-thee-well. But those who would defame, denigrate or deface either the Union's Stars and Stripes or the South's Southern Cross can expect to find us both on the same side, with more than a few others like us- and that might be a combination they will not enjoy one bit.