Don't spin the Civil War

Washington Post ^ | 12.27.10 | E.J. DIONNE jR.

[trumandogz]

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart.

The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

[rickb308]

“You mean the war of northern aggression will be spun again”

Yep. :-(

[RegulatorCountry]

Yes, let’s just stop spinning it. Secession didn’t suddenly become verboten and “union” sacrosanct just because the southern states attempted it. The Constitutionality of secession had long been assumed, even by secessionist movements in prissy New England.

Yes, let’s just stop spinning it. The African slave trade was almost entirely a creature of New England shipping interests, with a majority of so-called “slave ports” being decidedly north of the Mason-Dixon.

Yes, let’s just stop spinning it, the 3/5ths Compromise, so ignorantly attributed to “racist” southerners and demagogued to infinity, was a compromise insisted upon by northern interests, who did not want slaves counted as fully human in order to prevent Congressional reapportionment from shifting political power to the south.

Yes, let’s just stop spinning it. I could go on for quite a while.

[CoastWatcher]

I agree that it was not a civil war: The South was not trying to take over the government. I view it as a war for independence, but you will never read that in a history book.

[trumandogz]

“I can see the Black Racists and Bigots coming out and whining and lying about all Civil War.”

Lying about the Civil War?

Are you saying that South Carolina’s Declaration of Succession did not state that the reason for succession was not slavery?

Are you saying that the Confederates did not attack Fort Sumter?

Are you saying that Alexander Stephens did not say that “”Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.?”

Are you saying that the Confederate Constitution did not guarantee the right to own “negro slaves?”

[stainlessbanner]

Dixie ping y’all

[FortWorthPatriot]

I have always understood civil war to be defined as a war where two factions fight for control of a government. The “civil war” fought in the United States was not that, but rather a desire by one side to be completely separated from the other and autonomous, which would be aptly titled the “War of Southern Independence.”

[Dr. Sivana]

Our War of Independence would have been called the Colonial Rebellion if GB won and the Civil War would have been the war of independence, or the war of northern aggression if the Confederacy prevailed.

And many still call it the "Revolutionary War," which is also a misnomer. It is in the victor's interest to maintain the meaning of words.

[trumandogz]

“Yes, let’s just stop spinning it, the 3/5ths Compromise, so ignorantly attributed to “racist” southerners and demagogued to infinity, was a compromise insisted upon by northern interests, who did not want slaves counted as fully human in order to prevent Congressional reapportionment from shifting political power to the south.”

Why is it that the Southern States who wanted slaves to be counted as a whole person did not want to extend voting rights to those persons?

[rickb308]

“and I’ve only set foot in the south twice, so I guess I’m a Yankee”

Yankee & Rebel is where your heart is.

Since this war pitted “brother against brother” and the North didn’t fight it’s self, nor did the South, SOMEONE had to cross idealogical lines somewheres.

[sionnsar]

stainlessbanner

[bushpilot1]

Oh please..both sides made money from slavery...

“Anderson once quipped dryly that “the increase of her darkies” had made him rich”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/a-quiet-mans-arrival/#more-70481

[Drennan Whyte]

Get to know the facts before the fiction starts getting spewed out.

Feel free to start.

[Repeal The 17th]

I sure will miss Non-Sequitur on this thread, NOT.

[Drennan Whyte]

Both were incredible, both gave the facts, and both had the take that the South was perfectly within its rights to split off from the Union.

Both gave their opinion that the South was perfectly within its rights to split off from the South. That is not necessarily the same as fact.

[SC_Pete]

He’s an idiot. The Civil War was about economics not race. The south seceded, the north invaded—but not to free slaves. The north invaded to retain the economic realtionship of the agrarian south to the increasingly industrialized north. The south wanted to sell their resources to other countries and the north wanted to prevent that and dictate prices . The north would then use the resources, manufacture goods and ship them back south. The north wanted to maintain a mercantilist relatinship with the south—the same conditions that led to the American Revolution in the first place. Reducing American History to Dionne’s myopic fantasy about racism is absurd.

[reagan_fanatic]

I predict 500 replies. I'll be the first to get things going. Abraham Lincoln was a Saint.

LOL. Not only that, but it was rumored that even the Southern Generals looked up to him as some sort of hero.

[Vigilanteman]

Dionne would do well to read Lincoln's own speeches about the root causes of the conflict, starting with his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1861.

Lincoln goes out of his way to assure the slave holding states of the federal government's intention not to interfere with their peculiar institution.

He doesn't even outright reject the right of the states to secede, but insist that it be done in a constitutional framework as was done when the union was organized, not unilaterally.

Had Lincoln's prescription been followed, the entire sorry war may have been avoided. This is exactly the outcome that the John Brown type abolitionists in the North and the hardliners in the south feared the most. That is why Ft. Sumter was fired upon to prevent such an outcome.

[TLI]

There remains enormous denial over the fact that the central cause of the war was our national disagreement about race and slavery, not states' rights or anything else.

The author may as well have written "The End" right there as that is all they really had to say.

Typically, many folks will actually agree with the above statement while cursing the feds for taking over, oh lets see, Federal EPA issuing air permits to industries in Texas thus exercising control over public and private businesses in that state.

They are like deer in the headlights and will suffer the same outcome.

.

[central_va]

But our conversations, like so many about the war, focused on people and battles, not on why the confrontation happened in the first place. There remains enormous denial over the fact that the central cause of the war was our national disagreement about race and slavery, not states' rights or anything else.

Opinions are like /deleted/ evryone has one.

[TomServo]

Thanks for the Dixie Ping, Stainless - and Merry Christmas from 'Bama!