Posted on 04/24/2002 9:33:49 AM PDT by wasp69
RICHMOND - It's only a two-hour drive from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House here on Clay Street.
It took four years and more than 600,000 lives to make that same journey during the second American Revolution, now officially known as the US Civil War.
It's odd that this nation's bloodiest war, a war between brothers, stretched from 1861 until 1865 when the capital of the COnfederate States of America in Richmond is only 100 miles south from the capital of the United States of America in Washington.
Thousands of Americans annually visit Civil War battlefields, museums and monuments.
Enthusiasts study in passionate detail the leaders, military strategy and battles of the Civil War.
My fascination with the Civil War has less to do with military engagements than with the motivations of up to 1.5 million Southern men and boys wiling to die to tear the nation in two in defense of slavery, an utterly indefedsible institution.
Had the conflict, also known as the War of the Southern Planters, been fought only by Southern slave owners, it would have been over in weeks rather than years.
As it was, brilliant and charismatic Confederate Generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson led armies of poor, non-slave-owning Southerners into battle and came dangerously close to winning the war.
My mother's and father's ancestors were Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. I'm pleased that their side lost.
As a young man I fought for passage of civil rights laws that would eliminate the vestiges of slavery and the continued denial of equal rights to black Americans. What, I wondered, could my Confederate ancestors have been thinking?
I did not find the answer during my tour of the White House of the Confederacy or in the next-door Museum of the Confederacy.
A curator at the museum understood my state of perplexity but could only tell me that it's impossible to judge the decisions of my Confederate ancestors based on todays standards.
Although slavery was central to the decision by the Southern states to break away from the Union, many causes over the years led to conflict.
Sectional rivalry developed as the North became industrialized and gained population with European immigration.
The North wanted to build roads, canals and railroads to accommodate growing industries. Without personal or corporate taxation, revenue was raised by tariffs, which protected Northern products and increased prices of imported goods needed by the nonindustrialized South.
Southerners felt they were being gouged by their Northern brethern. They also felt that the states, not the federal government, had the authority to regulate commerce and other affairs. They also felt that the states had the right under the Constitution to separate from the Union, an idea that had strong supporters in both the North and South.
Deciding whether new territories and states would be slave or nonslave became a North-South fight for power in Congress and within the federal government.
Northern abolitionists demonized the Southerners and backed them into their own regional corner. Many Americans in the early years of the nation felt stronger regional and state pride than national pride.
Lee, who did not want to break up the Union, declined an offer to command the Union Army. He chose fight for Virginia and the South.
There must be lessons to be learned from the Civil War that can be applied to current and future conflicts.
;>)
Walt
780 posted on 2/28/02 10:49 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa
Clinton AND Gore?
ROTFLMAO!
;>)
Had to have been Dave Marcus....
What would he have been driving that year?
;>)
Bowtie appaloosa of course...
; ^ )>
Where do you think he'll 'find a home' in '04 - Lieberman?
Or maybe Feinstein?
;>)
Now, I hate to admit it, but I would have to leave that kind of horsepower to guys like Dave - way to hot for me...
;>)
*Don't answer that.
*Don't answer that.
Sorry Arnie, I can't resist...
Old Mule Hockey??? C'mon man work with me here.
I'm havin' crown and sprite...Cheers back at ya...
Or maybe Feinstein?
If I were a gamblin man, and I am, I'd bet he's a Mckinney man...
; ^{/>
Left off that /I>...sorry...
My ancestors were slave owners in Cuba. Slavery was a cancer in Cuba and it was a cancer in America.
It would have been much better if Southern Americans had picked their own cotton and Cubans had cut their own sugar cane. It would have been much better if we had not grown either cotton or sugar cane. The North's blessing was the fact that it had poor agricultural land that forced it into manufacturing as the road to wealth.
Slavery undermined free labor and created a perpetually embittered underclass that later contributed to a Communist Cuba and to blighted American inner cities. Over a century later, we are still paying the price.
That being said, it must be pointed out that neither Lincoln nor the North initially saw the Civil War as a war to end slavery. The initial war aim was to “preserve the Union”. Only later was the Civil War portrayed as a war to end slavery.
And I have never said that it was. What I have said is that it is was by far the single, most important reason why the south launched their rebellion.
And, as usual, having never been able to prove secession unconstitutional, you revert to your foundational assumption: that the withdrawal of the Southern States from the union was "rebellion."
To which I will respond as I have in the past:
* If secession was in fact unconstitutional (something you have been perennially unable to prove ;>), then it didn't matter a whit whether the Southern States seceded over slavery, or because they wanted to donate their entire economic output to the support of charities: the action was illegal.
* And if secession was constitutional (as suggested by the ratification documents, the Tenth Amendment, etc., etc., etc.), it also would not matter whether the seceding States were motivated by the slavery issue, or even a desire to re-institute the Aztec religion and mandate human sacrifice: their departure from the union would have been completely legal.
In other words, motivation is entirely irrelevant to the issue of constitutionality – and the actions of the federal government must be based upon the Constitution, or they are entirely illegal. If you can quote the constitutional clause that specifically 'delegates or prohibits' the right of secession, you're 'home free.' If not - well, your arguments and assurances won't amount to a hill of beans.
In fact, the advocates of 'union-at-any-cost' tend to focus on slavery for one reason: they can find no justification in the Constitution for the federal invasion of the seceded States, so they must necessarily look elsewhere. And morality provides wonderful window dressing: just ask the D*mocrats about their unceasing efforts "for the children"...
;>)
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