America’s Next Civil War Will Be Worse Than Our Last

The American Spectator ^ | 07/26/18 | H. W. Crocker III

[Enlightened1]

Of that we can be sure.

In the summer of 1862, just weeks before the Battle of Sharpsburg (or Antietam) — the bloodiest single day of fighting in American history — Union Captain George Armstrong Custer attended the wedding of Confederate Captain John “Gimlet” Lea at Bassett Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, as best man. The Union officer was dressed in blue, the Confederate officer in grey, and Custer being Custer spent the next two weeks flirting with the Southern belle cousin of the bride, even joining her in singing “Dixie.”

At one point she told him, “You ought to be in our army.”

“What would you give me if I resigned my commission in the Northern army and joined the Southern?”

“You are not in earnest, are you?”

 

He wasn’t, of course. Custer was nothing if not loyal, and he believed that he was bound to the Union by the oath he had sworn at West Point, whatever his affection for Southern officers and their ladies.

Such gallantry seems unthinkable today, when members of the Trump administration are hounded from restaurants and theatres, and Confederate officers like John Lea, if they are remembered at all, are considered precursors of the German National Socialists, and their once famous and respected commanders like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jeb Stuart have their statues toppled and banished from public squares, their names stripped from public schools, and their memories spat upon and disgraced.

[Pelham]

Such gallantry seems unthinkable today, when members of the Trump administration are hounded from restaurants and theatres, and Confederate officers like John Lea, if they are remembered at all, are considered precursors of the German National Socialists, and their once famous and respected commanders like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jeb Stuart have their statues toppled and banished from public squares, their names stripped from public schools, and their memories spat upon and disgraced.

The difference between the America of today and the America of what seems like just yesterday is that we once had a common culture. As recently as 1990, Ken Burns could make a Civil War documentary for PBS and let historian Shelby Foote wax eloquent on the martial prowess of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest — something that now would likely get them both tarred, feathered, and Twitter-banned.

So what to do? We can start by trying to stop the Left’s war on America’s past, which is poisoning the well-spring of our national identity. If William McKinley, a Union officer turned president, could approve a Confederate memorial at Arlington Cemetery, it seems to me that we can at least be as understanding of our own history. Let us remember that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ordered the 101stAirborne Division to help desegregate Arkansas’s public schools, kept a portrait of Robert E. Lee in his office at the White House and admired him as a hero (as did, incidentally, George C. Marshall, whose anti-fascist bona fides are rather more profound than Antifa’s, I reckon).

Of course it's not just the taliban Left now pushing the ethnic cleansing of the South. They're finding plenty of fellow travelers who think that this is a swell idea.

https://spectator.org/americas-next-civil-war-will-be-worse-than-our-last/

[x]

The Urban Liberal tax and spend people beat the Rural Conservative free trade advocates because they had four times the population.

In 1860 the US population was 80% rural. The Eastern states were more urbanized than the South, but the difference between the South and the Midwest in terms of urbanization was not that great. States like Indiana and Iowa and even Vermont were still overwhelmingly rural. And even in some of the more urban states, most people were a generation or so removed from the farm. Nor was anybody especially "Liberal tax and spend" by today's standards. Stop spreading fake history.

[x]

In the summer of 1862, just weeks before the Battle of Sharpsburg (or Antietam) — the bloodiest single day of fighting in American history — Union Captain George Armstrong Custer attended the wedding of Confederate Captain John “Gimlet” Lea at Bassett Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, as best man.

So? Lea was Custer's prisoner.

North and South venerated the Founders. They shared the same language, the same religion, and, in large part, the same general stock. Most of all, they shared what Jeff Sessions was recently rebuked for calling an “Anglo-American heritage” of liberty under law, stretching from the mists of medieval England — even before Magna Carta — to our own Bill of Rights.

And yet they were willing to kill each other.

Today, however, our divisions are so deep and fundamental that Americans cannot even agree on what marriage is or what a man or a woman is (which is pretty darn fundamental).

But there are divisions within each side, as well as between them. And most people really don't care -- or they care enough to vote but not enough to go to war with each other.

If William McKinley, a Union officer turned president, could approve a Confederate memorial at Arlington Cemetery, it seems to me that we can at least be as understanding of our own history. Let us remember that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ordered the 101stAirborne Division to help desegregate Arkansas’s public schools, kept a portrait of Robert E. Lee in his office at the White House and admired him as a hero (as did, incidentally, George C. Marshall, whose anti-fascist bona fides are rather more profound than Antifa’s, I reckon).

There's more continuity than many people think. Politicians, bureaucrats and business and military leaders say things to keep the country together and avoid saying things that will antagonize sensitive groups. A century ago, when McKinley was president and Eisenhower was growing up, the goal was to keep North and South together. Now, it's to keep Whites and Blacks together. The same kind of people who advocated hanging Jeff Davis in 1865 built monuments to Confederates in 1910 and take them down now.

[FLT-bird]

I see the PC Revisionists who CLAIM to be conservatives but who are really lovers of big government have showed up with their usual court historian BS.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are not accurately stating my position. You are putting forth your cartoon version of what I have been saying.

[DiogenesLamp]

I hope the Republicans gain house seats, and I'm certain we will gain Senate seats, but the media is trying to spread the belief that a "blue wave" is coming.

I don't believe the polls.

[DiogenesLamp]

Nor was anybody especially "Liberal tax and spend" by today's standards.

No, but Lincoln was quite "tax and spend" by the standards of that era. It was due to Lincoln's success at being a tax and spend President that further emboldened the Influence Cartel to keep ramping up spending till it is what you are referring to as "today's standards."

Our current levels of tax and spend were unimaginable to the Founders, and our system was never meant to operate this way.

Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, and LBJ are mostly responsible for creating our current tax and spend insanity.

[BroJoeK]

gogeo: "During the Civil War the legitimacy of the Confederacy came from the consent of the governed."

Well, technically from the consent of their slaveholding elites.

1. It's often said only 6% of Confederates were slaveholders and that's true enough.
   The total was 317,000 of 5.5 million whites.
   But if all those slaveholders voted in the 1860 election, they made up about 1/3 of the Confederate electorate ~900,000).
   And we can easily imagine most slaveholders had family members eligible to vote and so the slaveholding interest group could well be over 50% of Confederate voters.

2. However: of the Confederacy's 5.5 million whites nearly one million were Unionists who provided over 100,000 white troops to the Union army.

3. Plus the Confederacy's 3.5 million slaves provided another 100,000 colored troops for the Union army.

4. And, of the roughly one million Confederates who served the Confederate army, over 100,000 were drafted, proportionately double the Union army, suggesting they weren't so happy to be there.

5. Finally, today it's often claimed only a small percent of Confederate soldiers owned slaves, but estimates at the time fell between 25% and 33% of Confederate soldiers came from slaveholding families, and virtually all of their senior leadership did.

So, consent of the governed?
Sure, but not all the governed consented, many were forced and many more refused.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You are not accurately stating my position. You are putting forth your cartoon version of what I have been saying."

Just slight exaggerations for dramatic effect. ;-)

The sad truth is your actual positions are not different enough from my caricature to make much difference.
Bottom line: it's all Lincoln's fault, right?

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "I see the PC Revisionists who CLAIM to be conservatives but who are really lovers of big government have showed up with their usual court historian BS."

I don't resent your remark because I don't resemble it.
But I do agree your words define the boundaries your own understandings.

[Ransomed]

We haven’t had even 65% eligible voter turnout for 100+ years. Most of the time it has been much less than that. It is much, much less for off year congressional, and even less than that for state and local. I would hazard that most of the people who don’t deign to vote in presidential elections can’t express a coherent political philosophy that would guide them at the ballot.

I guess I am thinking you have to at least try the political process before you undergo the hardship that would come with participating in sustained civil unrest. I think we have it so good that folks really don’t have to care about politics if they don’t want to. I don’t agree with that, but I think that is ultimately the reason eligible voters choose not to care—they just don’t have to care, at least that they perceive.

Our poorest are the most likely to be obese, have smart phones, and most are used to air conditioning. I don’t see anything widespread going down while this is the case.

Freegards

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "...media is trying to spread the belief that a "blue wave" is coming.
I don't believe the polls. "

I don't either, hope you are 100% right on this one.

[DiogenesLamp]

I've noted more than once that Lincoln was in a bit of a pickle, and had he not done what he did, he would have gone down in history as a horrible President.

The economic threat to the North was real. Had Lincoln taken no action to deal with it, there would have been resulting economic devastation in the North East.

[FLT-bird]

Its obvious that’s what you are. Try to deny it all you like.

[Eisenhower Republican]

Agreed. What comes after we win the next one will make Reconstruction look like a European vacation.

[castlegreyskull]

Oh boy! What was the Confederates’ objective??? ‘ Independence. So there was some minor skirmishes in ND and Ohio. The rest were in Union Border states/Territories.

[Vermont Lt]

But, but, but....they made movies about him! He HAS to be a hero. //sarc.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The economic threat to the North was real.
Had Lincoln taken no action to deal with it, there would have been resulting economic devastation in the North East."

You sound like one of my old history professors, a self-avowed Marxist, who claimed all of history can be reduced to economics.
I didn't believe him then and don't believe you now, not sure how I passed his course. ;-)

Here's your number one problem: nobody then expressed issues the same way you do now.
And even if you find occasional hints of such concerns published in newspapers, if you read it again more carefully (here, for example), they are actually concerned about something quite different and so you are imposing your interpretations on them, as if you somehow know better than they did their own minds!!

And who does that kind of thing?
Only one group and it's Marxists who insist against all contrary evidence that their's and their's only is the correct interpretation of history.
I say that's nonsense.

Of course, when it comes to slavers, that's a different story, since they said directly and clearly what they intended, i.e."

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
-- Mississippi Reasons for Secession January 9, 1861

No ambiguity there, clearly Mississippians were motivated by their intentions to protect slavery's economic value from perceived threats by Abe Lincoln's Black Republicans.
We don't need to debate that, since they said it clearly.

Unionists never spoke in such terms, nor did Jefferson Davis for that matter, but whereas the former drives you nuts with denials, you have no problem accepting Davis at his words.

And one reason why Republicans never spoke of the economics of slavery was simply that very few, if any, were involved in it -- those who were involved were virtually all Democrats.

And once again: $200 million in slave-produced cotton exports was about 5% of our $4.4 billion economy (in today's terms equivalent to $1 trillion), meaning it was indeed real money.
Now, it happens that $1 trillion today is the value of US-European trade.
So ask yourself: would President Trump take us to war just to keep that $1 trillion "money flow from Europe" going?
Of course not, that's nuts, though you could well expect some very intense negotiations.

Point again is: for war there must be more than just economics at stake.
Consider North Korea -- would we go to war there just over economics?
No, but we certainly would if NOKOs began bombing our troops in South Korea.

That's my objection to my old Marxist history professor, and also to you.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Its obvious that’s what you are.
Try to deny it all you like"

Nonsense, but I'd agree that's what's going on inside your mind.
Can't be helped.

[FLT-bird]

No, it’s what’s going on in your mind. You’re quite obsessed with white knighting for big government. Witness how you always show up in these threads. Witness how you go out of your way to try to ping me for weeks afterwards to draw me in so you can white knight for big government some more. It’s obvious you’re more in line with the Democrats - they’re the party of big government today.