Myths about the Civil War (1 Viewer)

[Cardigan600]

Yo Troopers, very interesting thread, I have enjoyed every word of it from both sides and really impressed with your knowledge of the ACW. But think Louis has the best answer, so to quote an old Buddy Holly song.
"I guess it doesn't matter anymore"

But just think guys if there had been a North & South America would it have been the mighty America we know today, I dont think so.
Look at any Country in the World that has been divided into a North & South and what do you get, the same race of people wanting to go to War with each other at every drop of a hat.
Bernard.

 

[trooper]

I believe it was Shelby Foote who said that prior to the Civil War the phrase was always "The United States are...." but following that the phrase became "The United States is..." Trooper

 

[Rutledge]

Rutledge,

You're a lucky man to have been to Stratford to see a performance and I'm sure going to Oxford must have been something special

You know what 'they' say: "Better to be lucky than good".

And, just to be clear, I was not at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship ^&grin^&grin

 

[theBaron]

I believe it was Shelby Foote who said that prior to the Civil War the phrase was always "The United States are...." but following that the phrase became "The United States is..." Trooper

You're correct, Trooper. He gave that as an example of how our view of ourselves had changed, from viewing ourselves as a federal union of sovereign states, in which most people considered themselves first as Pennsylvanians or Tennesseans and so on, to considering ourselves first as Americans.

Prost!
Brad

 

[PanzerAce1944]

One thing is not a myth about the Civil War. It was a total breakdown on our part as a country. Going from fighting together and declaring our independence from England in the Revolutionary War to killing each other less than 100 years later was a total loss of control of the government back then to quell the situation at the time.

 

[jazzeum]

Regarding point 4 in the Washington Post article, about slavery, emancipation, etc., I'd like to recommend The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner, which traces the evolution of Lincoln's and the North's thinking about slavery. The book has won the Bancroft Prize, not to mention the Lincoln Prize. Highly recommended.

On emancipation itself, I came across the following article this morning in Civil War Book Review, A Look at Lincoln: Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered. The article can be accessed here, for those who may be interested.

 

[Jay]

Regarding point 4 in the Washington Post article, about slavery, emancipation, etc., I'd like to recommend The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner, which traces the evolution of Lincoln's and the North's thinking about slavery. The book has won the Bancroft Prize, not to mention the Lincoln Prize. Highly recommended.

On emancipation itself, I came across the following article this morning in Civil War Book Review, A Look at Lincoln: Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered. The article can be accessed here, for those who may be interested.

Very interesting link. Thanks.

 

[jazzeum]

Pleasure. Besides Civil War Book Review, other good sites are Civil War Books and Authors (http://cwba.blogspot.com) and H-Net Reviews (https://www.h-net.org/reviews/review_browse.php?browse=revdate&type=Any&list_id=12&revdate=0&page=1).

 

[Combat]

If you look at how Lincoln managed his own cabinet, it's apparent that he often manipulated individuals into acting in a way that would then justify the actions that he had already decided upon. The same holds true on slavery. He recognized that it was impossible, politically and maybe legally, for him to end slavery on his own initiative. In 1860 the public - even in the North - would not willing have supported a war and sacrificed lives to end slavery. And Lincoln found ways to disavow that was his purpose while allowing or manipulating events to move in a direction that would permit him to do so. For example, taking little or no action to preclude the South from seceding from the Union or negotiating with them to return. Manipulating them into firing the first shots of the war. This allowed him to sell the war as an effort to "preserve the union" rather than ending slavery. Just as the war is often spun from the Southern perspective as protecting "states rights" rather than preserving slavery. Both sides had reasons to spin the cause of the war as something other than the issue of slavery and they have often have been taken at their word to this day. But Lincoln was a calculating fellow who rarely left events of such importance to chance. The Emancipation Proclamation is a good example of how Lincoln addressed the issue of ending slavery by slight of hand. Freeing the slaves only in those states that had not returned to federal control. But in effect ending slavery with a union victory while still couching this as a necessity of war rather than on moral grounds.

 

[Rutledge]

Just as the war is often spun from the Southern perspective as protecting "states rights" rather than preserving slavery.

Gosh, we southerners come from such morally repugnant and inferior stock, dont we? Especially compared to high minded 'yankee folk'. Shoot, ya'll were committing acts of righteousness and piety even as we southerners could barely spell our own names! ^&grin

Its funny how yankee folk cant talk about the war without attempting to demean the south. Must be an inferiority complex. Probably jealousy as we enjoy further economic ascendency while the north continues its perpetual demise.

Now you know why we call it the "war of northern aggression" -- with wry smiles.

 

[jazzeum]

Sorry but I don't agree with you Doug. Lincoln had no desire in 1860 to end slavery as he recognized that he had no authority to do so. This is an excerpt from his April 1864 letter to Senator Albert Hodges that I had reproduced on page 4 of this thread:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery."

There is also his August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, as follows:

"Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New—York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft—expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

Note the italics, they are President Lincoln's, not mine.

Being a free soiler, he, like many moderate Republicans, wished to prevent it from expanding to the unsettled territories.

As far as negotiating with the South, many Southern states were hell bent on seceding and by the time he became President in March of 1861, there was little he could do. He felt that he had the time to work out a solution but on the day or the day after his inaugural, he was told that Fort Sumter had little provisions left. It would have to be abandoned re-provisioned. The crisis was upon him. He attempted to do what he could to find a solution but none could be found and gave the Confederacy adequate warning that he was going to send a ship to only provide supplies to Sumter; the Buchanan Administration had tried to do this and the ship they sent, the Star of the West, was fired upon and had to withdraw.

This was unacceptable to the Confederacy just as abandoning the last vestiges of Federal authority in the South was unacceptable to the North. Had Lincoln done so, he probably would have lost his party.

 

[Jay]

Very briefly in response: to say he had no desire to end slavery because he realized he had no authority aren't the same thing. The fact that someone knows that he has no authority to do something doesn't mean he doesn't have the desire.

 

[jazzeum]

That is quite true. As pointed out in the quoted statements he had always been anti slavery but distinguished between his personal wishes and what he, as President, could constitutionally do.

A misstatement on my part :redface2:

 

[Combat]

Interesting story here on how slavery and war considerations intertwined:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

 

[jazzeum]

Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the shooting at Sumpter, the lead article in the Time Magazine that has just come out is "Why We're Still Fighting the Civil War: the endless battle over the war's true cause that would make Lincoln weep." The covers shows a clean shaven Lincoln, with a superimposed tear on his right cheek.

Haven't read it yet but I'm sure it will be interesting ^&grin It has an interesting features. It show re-enactors in places where battles took place but which have now been built over. For example, it shows three re-enactors advancing through what used to be Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg. Now, the cemetery is next to a motel.

If anybody can't get a copy of Time, let me know :wink2:

 

[Rutledge]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo206.html

"The memo has gone out. Since 2011 is the 150th anniversary of the start of the War to Prevent Southern Independence the Lincoln Cult, aided and abetted by the many worshippers of the centralized, bureaucratic, Leviathan state that he founded, has been hard at work since the first week of January endlessly repeating the politically-correct version of the one sole cause theory of the "Civil War."…..

Everything about this politically-correct fantasy is patently false, regardless of how many times it is repeated in the New York Times and Washington Post. Some Southern politicians did indeed defend slavery, but not as strongly as Abraham Lincoln did in his first inaugural address, where he supported the enshrinement of Southern slavery explicitly in the U.S. Constitution (the "Corwin Amendment") for the first time ever. Coming from the president of the United States, this was the strongest defense of slavery ever made by an American politician….

….It is unlikely that anyone even dreamed of invading Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and bombing and burning Boston, Hartford and Providence into a smoldering ruin while murdering thousands of New Englanders, women and children included, if New England were to secede. Indeed, when Jefferson was asked what would happen if New England seceded, he said in a letter that New Englanders, like all other Americans "would all be our children" and he would wish them all well. More recently, all of the Soviet republics, and all of Eastern and Central Europe peacefully seceded from the Soviet Union. Secession does not necessitate war...."

 

[Peter Reuss]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo206.html

"The memo has gone out. Since 2011 is the 150th anniversary of the start of the War to Prevent Southern Independence the Lincoln Cult, aided and abetted by the many worshippers of the centralized, bureaucratic, Leviathan state that he founded, has been hard at work since the first week of January endlessly repeating the politically-correct version of the one sole cause theory of the "Civil War."…..

Everything about this politically-correct fantasy is patently false, regardless of how many times it is repeated in the New York Times and Washington Post. Some Southern politicians did indeed defend slavery, but not as strongly as Abraham Lincoln did in his first inaugural address, where he supported the enshrinement of Southern slavery explicitly in the U.S. Constitution (the "Corwin Amendment") for the first time ever. Coming from the president of the United States, this was the strongest defense of slavery ever made by an American politician….

….It is unlikely that anyone even dreamed of invading Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and bombing and burning Boston, Hartford and Providence into a smoldering ruin while murdering thousands of New Englanders, women and children included, if New England were to secede. Indeed, when Jefferson was asked what would happen if New England seceded, he said in a letter that New Englanders, like all other Americans "would all be our children" and he would wish them all well. More recently, all of the Soviet republics, and all of Eastern and Central Europe peacefully seceded from the Soviet Union. Secession does not necessitate war...."

You have successfully built a straw-man in order to tear him down. I'm not quite sure who is advocating that 'slavery was the sole casue of the Civil War.' Nearly every argument that I've seen is much more nuanced.

 

[Rutledge]

You have successfully built a straw-man in order to tear him down. I'm not quite sure who is advocating that 'slavery was the sole casue of the Civil War.' Nearly every argument that I've seen is much more nuanced.

Its a bit broader than that. The point is, the picture so often portrayed by the "liberal media" et al, of the South as the big bad guy and the North as the enlightened and heroic defender of all that is good and just, doenst jive with reality.

As has been pointed out before, history is always written by the winners. Doesnt mean it represents the truth.

 

[jazzeum]

Anything DiLorenzo says you can take with abut 20 grains of salt.

 

[Jay]

You have successfully built a straw-man in order to tear him down. I'm not quite sure who is advocating that 'slavery was the sole casue of the Civil War.' Nearly every argument that I've seen is much more nuanced.

I don't know who this Dilorenzo guy is, but he certainly seems to have an agenda. The War to Prevent Southern Independence? Never heard it called that one before.
As far as it being about slavery: bottom line, yeah it was. The new Southern "political correctness" is that it was fought simply for "States Rights," and gosh darn it, the slaves sure loved the massa. Read, don't just see, Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" to get a revised perspective on how good it was to be a slave, and gosh darn it, them **** Yankees sure messed up a good thing.
Honestly, I believed that States Rights story for a while also. But the more I reads the more that it becomes clear that what ever reason they claim now, it was exclusively about slavery. Heck, even before and during the war they claimed that it was about. The 'states rights' thing was an invention after the war to justify it, and continue to excuse the war.
Just as it was for years after to disenfranchise Black citizens of the Southern States and prevent them from schooling, voting, and just about every other right Whites Southerns had.
I suspect we'll have to put up with extreme theories for another five years or so. Some just can't let it go. Sadly, they never seem to go away.