[Arkinsaw]

But it looks like you're playing a slippery game.

I'm really not trying to play any game. My concerns would be allayed if the popular mind had a more holistic understanding of the whole event. Unfortunately, your average Joe doesn't have that understanding and generally wasn't provided it by our educational system. Those without that understanding will generally absorb the quick soundbite.

When a historian goes on a television show and makes the soundbite statement he generally means what you and I mean, knowing the complexity of the event. That is not necessarily the perception the general public gains from his words, not knowing that complexity.

In a normal environment that would not necessarily mean that much to me. But we are in an environment where activists are attempting to deepen the divide for modern political purposes, for fundraising, and for getting attention. We see this in efforts to alter the interpretation of battlefield parks that previously concentrated on the battle that took place there. We see it iin efforts to erase the Confederate battle flag even as a historical symbol at memorials or cemeteries and in a historical context. Even the Sons of Union Veterans decry this because they have an understanding of the complexities involved.

The offhand statements by historians regarding causation is not necessarily providing the public with the necessary information that they require to adequately judge what they are being told by activists who are trying to sway them to a modern political view. This has been true in regard to the NAACP for years and increasingly true for activists on the other side in recent years who have gotten caught up in the tit-for-tat. Historians should be aware that a one-liner can result in cardboard cutout history in the public mind.

Essentially, the game I am playing is to advocate a much more in depth presentation of the event in our educational system to arm the public with a better understanding of the complexities so that they can better judge the current "yes it is" - "no it isn't" argument.

I am also advocating that Southern partisans, of whom I am one, stop playing that game and stop digging through the historical record for factoids to fling. When the public has a real awareness of the complexities they are much less likely to be swayed by simplistic pronouncements about it by modern pot-stirrers. Fighting factoids with factoids is a loser's game and makes you just another pot-stirrer.

If you change the environment there can actually be rational discussion of how we mark the Civil War as a common cultural event and within its historical context without regard to modern political correctness or agendas. We can provide a full understanding of the tragedy of slavery without prohibiting the display of battle flags. Its not a zero-sum game here.

The guys who actually fought this war on both sides and shot at each other ended up with more common sense about it in their later years than we have 150 years later. Thats just crazy.


"Peace at the End of the Civil War", Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.

[libertarianben]

I like stirring the pot sometimes. It's fun. It makes people have to answer why they believe something other than being sheep. This debate could go on forever with no side winning. I just wish we could end the North=good + righteous, South=evil + racist thing. We should really look at what happen at the war and not just accept what the government history tell us. Remember the winners of war write the history. I done debating and feel much better now.

[Bigun]

If you change the environment there can actually be rational discussion of how we mark the Civil War as a common cultural event and within its historical context without regard to modern political correctness or agendas. We can provide a full understanding of the tragedy of slavery without prohibiting the display of battle flags. Its not a zero-sum game here.

That seems a perfectly reasonable proposal to me.

[My2Cents]

Excellent post. Bravo.

[x]

I don't have an argument with what you say in this post. People do tend to want simple, partisan answers to things. Some people argue that "it wasn't all about slavery," therefore it pretty much wasn't about slavery at all, and others respond in kind, so you get a vicious circle of recriminations.

I don't know what if anything can be done about this. The last time the country decided to simply let bygones be bygones, it meant that African-Americans were left out of the resolution, and North and South agreed on a skewed view of abolitionism and Reconstruction. So beyond the fundraising potential of the issue for both sides, there are real concerns that important points of view would be left out of any resolution.

A generation or two ago, when the country was going through the civil rights movement and the Civil War Centennial, there was a feeling that we might be coming to understand the tragedy better and to do justice to the various sides concerned. Today it seems everybody wants to believe that their "side" was right, period, end of story.

But one can be right about some things and very wrong about others, or be right about the basics and still make a mess of things, or be right or wrong about many things, but also be so moved by the destruction that right and wrong have to be seen a larger context of human fallibility and suffering. That is what Lincoln -- and others on both sides -- were getting at by the end of the war.

The Civil War was such an overpowering experience for those who lived through it that few people wanted to fight it over again, and the enormous effect of the carnage is something that tends to get forgotten sometimes nowadays, as the war is reduced to legal axioms and to factoid flinging.