Please don't mistake me for a Southern redneck racist -- well, maybe a redneck
sometimes. I was raised by a black nanny, who I called Aunt Violet. I loved her
to death. We lived between two churches, one Methodist, one Baptist, and I
learned to read by her taking me to the cemeteries and reading the tombstones.
It was an unnecessary war. Slavery was dying out anyway. Probably 90 percent of
the soldiers in the Confederate armies never owned a slave; they just felt they
were defending their homes.
Walt
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Joel Wilcox" <jfwilcox@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>
> On 4/6/07, Walt Wayman <hiwayman@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I've always been of the opinion that if states joined the Union
> > voluntarily,
> they should be allowed to leave it voluntarily. I'm not a Lincoln admirer. He
> invaded the South and started a war that killed nearly a million men. My
> grandmother absolutely hated him. Just go to Gettysburg and around sunset
> stand
> on the hill overlooking where Picket's charge got slaughtered. If you know
> the
> history of the Civil War, I guarantee you that you'll have tears in your
> eyes.
> There were over 51,000 casualties in that one battle. More of us Murkins were
> killed in the War of Northern Invasion than in WW1 and WW2 combined.
> >
> > Walt
>
> Yes, Lincoln was the confederacy's worst nightmare. Aside from Grant,
> Lincoln was the only other general with the determination to meet his
> goals.
>
> But your second favorite general sort of agreed with you about
> secession. In his autobiography, Grant said that he thought the
> original states should have the right to discuss secession, since they
> were parties to the original bargain, but he was particularly galled
> by Texas, for which Americans of the Union died in two wars (of highly
> questionable morality) to secure its independence. Texas, and others
> of the non-original confederate states, petitioned the *Union* to join
> and duly joined that union. They didn't create that Union, but asked
> to join it once created. Very different things. For Texas and other
> states like it to secede seemed to Grant to have moral difficulties
> above and beyond the simple question of secession itself, which
> Lincoln characterized as "the essence of anarchy." Aside from seeing
> the sheer illogic of creating a union from which secession is a
> possibility, Lincoln had the misfortune of being a more than commonly
> honest lawyer, sworn to uphold the agreement that laid out the precise
> stipulations of that union, which we call the Constitution.
>
> Anyway, being a pacifist, I like to think about what might have been, such as:
>
> 1) Had the slave states been allowed to secede peacefully
> 2) Had Lincoln lived into the reconstruction period
>
> I am dumbfounded when I ponder how many good men gave their lives to
> preserve the union (thinking purely as a northerner). As a matter of
> self-interest, there couldn't have been much to be gained. By a
> careful study of the numbers at the time, 50% of all males fit to
> serve from Iowa volunteered. The governor at the time (Kirkwood)
> ponied up the cash himself to support the enlistment because
> Washington was so slow in getting funds to the frontier. For many of
> these fellows, their service became the first actual occasion to see
> enslaved African-Americans. The idea of fighting for abolition was
> intellectual at most. Maybe that's what made it potent, I don't know.
> Consider this verse from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic:"
>
> In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea
> With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.
> As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
> His truth is marching on.
>
> The free states had that thought rolling around in their heads. The
> slave states had "Dixie."
>
> Separated from the free states, I believe the slave states would have
> become a renegade nation, being purely in existence by reason of the
> morally reprehensible institution of slavery. Joined to the North,
> the moral difficulty of slavery was somewhat diffused. I believe it
> would have been a matter of just a few years as the South (doubtless
> tariffed, embargoed, and sanctioned) would have struggled to find some
> substitution for the manufacturing of the North and a remedy for their
> loss of markets before slavery would have been abolished because of
> its own sheer, crushing weight, both moral and economic.
>
> The war probably created a quicker pathway to change in some ways, but
> its beneficial effect even for African-Americans has to be questioned.
> The pattern of emancipation in the North (you do all know that there
> were slaves in ALL the original colonies, don't you?) was gentle and
> caring. Connecticut, which was the first colony/state to emancipate
> slaves, established a social safety net for them that obtained until
> the last of them died around 1848. Had the South been left to make
> the decision for themselves, it might have created similar
> circumstances for ex-slaves, instead of making them proxies for the
> frustrations and hatred engendered by the North, first by war and then
> by the so-called Reconstruction.
>
> Once the war was over, the North was such a military monster that it
> had nothing to do but turn its attention to the complete and utter
> conquest of native Americans territory. What moral superiority the
> North might have had going into the fight it lost very quickly in an
> aftermath of brutality toward the native population that would make
> Nathan Bedford Jones blush. That's the way it is with wars, for the
> most part.
>
> I think Lincoln would have been dead by natural causes within a couple
> years of his actual death by bullet. So I don't think he would have
> had as much of an effect at achieving the reconciliation he sought in
> the second inaugural, but who knows, he might have. Other than the
> war itself, the death of Lincoln was probably the worst blow to the
> South. It was also probably a blow indirectly to native populations
> as well.
>
> I think generally Lincoln was a freethinker going into the war,
> probably a Deist much like Jefferson, who thought that God was not
> really an operator in the daily running of a free-wheeling universe.
> By the end of the war, I think he believed that the war itself was
> expressly a visitation of divine vengeance upon the entire nation.
> War is sheerly hell on earth. There are never winners.
>
> I would have liked to have tried the secession alternative. I think
> it would have turned out a lot better.
>
> Joel W.
> New France
>
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