Is this is a “revolution†or maybe a form of “secessionâ€
Zero would say that states are revolting or seceding (attempting) by not implementing obamacare or taking muslim refugees. and he will force the issues on us along with homos and other issues.
Lots of parallels between then and now?
Looking back, I am glad the union was maintained (although not perfect) and slavery was elimated (but again, not perfectly)
So my question to all here does anyone wish our nation had divided and slavery maintained? Lets all keep the BIG PICTURE.
I recently had this discussion about the Revolutionary War. I don’t have the time or inclination to pound out more on my tablet tonight, but the Civil War was not a revolution. Maybe more to follow over Christmas when I’m at the desktop.
To expound (briefly) on this matter:
The Revolutionary War was not a “revolution” in my opinion. Or if it was, it was as John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1815:
“What is meant by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution.... the Revolution was in the minds of the People, and this was effected...before a drop of blood was drawn.”
The point made here is that by 1775, the American colonists had begun to think of themselves as a polity separate from Britain, where they were not represented in Parliament. Instead, they were increasingly looking at King George, his appointed governors and judges, and the troops stationed in the colonies in time of peace, as an occupying power. In other words, the Americans already saw themselves as Americans.
I look at a revolution as an overthrow of the fundamental political and social order. The French and Russian Revolutions were clearly that. The American War of 1776-1783 was really a war of independence rather than a revolution. At the end of the war, the existing social order in Britain was unchanged. More importantly, the existing social order in the American colonies remained unchanged. The leaders of the War of Independence were essentially the same people who wrote the Constitution. The faces may have changed, but they were of the same social class. The fundamental or revolutionary change, if there was one, that came after the war was the creation of the Constitution. And even that creation, based upon compromise and the recognition of limited states’ rights, was not a radical change in the existing social and political order. Those changes came later in fits and starts, with the seminal Supreme Court cases such as Marbury v. Madison, Gibbons v. Ogden and McCulloch v. Maryland and later with “Jacksonian Democracy.” Even the fundamental changes in the relationships of the States to the Federal government that came out of the Civil War were not immediately apparent, as the Court initially gutted the meaning of two clauses of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson.
But I digress. The Civil War had many of the same parallels as the Revolutionary War. The Southern states saw themselves as a separate polity from the Union, and sought to dissolve the Union through their own independence. As such, the Civil War was an unsuccessful war of independence. It did not seek to overturn an existing social and political structure. On the contrary, the leaders of the existing social and political structure were trying to preserve it (and their positions). Given the population, social and economic trends taking place in the United States in the 1850s, it was apparent that in a few years the southern states would permanently lose their ability to control the federal government, and the Three Fifths Compromise that had allowed the south greater proportional representation in Congress had been superseded by changing circumstances.
The South saw a window of opportunity to separate from the Union, and they thought the window was closing. However, the reality was that given the far greater resources of the north in 1860, as they they translated into military advantage during the war, the window had already closed.