The Virginian-Pilot
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Add the Civil War to the list of things unsuitable for dinner-table discussion in Virginia, along with religion, politics, sex. Actually, judging by the give-and-take surrounding the 150th anniversary on this page, among letter writers and in Forum, the Civil War is the one likely to spark the biggest argument.
It shouldn't be this way, of course. The Civil War is far distant in our history, before the automobile or the telephone, let alone the TV or computer. But - too sad - it also sometimes seems nearer than any other conflict in this nation's history.
We all live the Civil War, even now. It's who we are, whether we like it or not.
Partly that's because the Civil War and how we perceive it reveals the fresh wound of America's racial divisions and resentments, especially in the South. Partly it's because reminders are everywhere we look, including in the faces around us. And partly it's because the war is redolent - if stripped of its animation - to those who style themselves as fighting today against Washington's tyranny.
But it is also - in many ways - a Southern obsession.
I come at the subject of the Civil War from a strange place, figuratively and literally. I grew up in Maryland, a state betwixt and between the Union and the Confederacy. I'm the descendant of both slave owners and abolitionists, Confederates and Unionists. I'm a distant relative of Henry Clay, the Kentucky statesman who brokered two major compromises on slavery in an effort to hold the union together.
As every history student knows, Clay was killed by tuberculosis almost a decade before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, though I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been surprised by the location. What he might be surprised by, however, is the constant and lingering debate about what caused the conflict in the first place.
To my mind, there's no real question. Slavery - as an institution - led undeniably to the nation's bloodiest war. There were other contributing factors, sure. But slavery, and ending it, were the causes for which more than 600,000 Americans died.
Ask most Yankees, and there's no question about that. Ask most African Americans, and there's no question. Ask most Southerners, and there's no question. Ask most historians, and there's no question.
And yet for some folks, there are questions. And there are still issues.
That's the reason a Lincoln penny lies under the statue of a Confederate soldier at a nearby cemetery. It's why the hoary claim of "states' rights" is trotted out again and again and again - as it was during Jim Crow, as it was during Massive Resistance. Nobody today doubts that either of those last two was about anything other than the rankest bigotry, an odor that hangs today over every secessionist intimation in every Southern statehouse.
And yet for a dwindling few, the war that preceded and led to all that is still about something other than slavery. Perhaps it's easier to defend the cause of the Confederacy when it is posited as merely a reaction to federal usurpation. When the Civil War becomes the War of Northern Aggression.
Except that it wasn't.
No matter the proximate justifications for taking up arms in 1861, under it all was the cause and the economics of slavery. Individual Confederate soldiers may indeed have enlisted for noble reasons. They may have marched into battle to defend their homes and families and states. Of that I have no doubt, and I will doubt no descendant's defense of his ancestors.
But it should stop there.
The larger cause of the Civil War was - at its heart - America's original sin, the defense of slavery. The ultimate cause of the Confederacy and its leaders was neither noble nor just. It was war in the name of inhumanity.
We can pretty it up, we who live the Civil War in 2011. But we can't change that basic truth. History's judgment says we shouldn't try.
Donald Luzzatto is The Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.
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Civil war
As long as politician and self appointed leaders profit from the slavery issue the issue will never be settled. What would Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and other black and white activist do for a living if the race issue was settled.
MISINFORMED EDITOR
Mr. Luzzatto is misinformed when it comes to the civil war, states’ rights, and slavery. First, you must realize that the so called ‘Constitutional Convention’ was a congressional meeting not advertised as such. The founders wouldn’t have joined the union under a scheduled meeting or even shown up to discuss the possibility of a Constitutional Convention. Many states were suspect of a union. Keeping this in mind and fast forward to Lincoln’s Presidency; South Carolina, along with other Southern states were growing tired of Lincoln’s tyranny. Suspending Habeas Corpus rights, unauthorized trade sanctions, and several other violations of the Constitution by President Lincoln caused Southern States to question the preservation of our Union. The breaking point was the attack on Ft. Sumner. Southern States were opposed to this action and a deep seeded hate towards the union was what led to the Confederation of Southern States. The premise of joining the Union was tolerated so long as States were allowed to regulate locally and close to home. When President Lincoln usurped his designated powers enacted through the Constitution, the Southern States wanted to secede. Declaring Slavery as the sole reason for the civil war is like stating Republicans don’t like President Obama because he is black. It is the fundamentals and principles of the current policy that is not liked. As the editor you should be doing your journalistic homework sir.
Homework, indeed
Lincoln was not sworn in as President until March 4, 1861. But South Carolina and 6 other states had already seceded months earlier.
It could not have been in response to Lincoln's actions.
Also, Habeas Corpus was suspended in April of 1861, and only applied to Maryland and some mid-western states.
This order took effect after the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter and started the Civil War.
Jefferson Davis suspended it through the Confederacy.
Ask yourself: would the South have seceded if they did not have an economy based upon slave labor?
The South refused to compromise on the issue of the new western states being non-slave states.
The southern elite thought they had the power and the money to secede to preserve an economic lifestyle they could not imagine doing without.
They were wrong.
600,000 men paid the ultimate price in the effort to preserve what turned out to be a pretty amazing country.
Nice try...
... South Carolina and the 6 other states seceded AFTER Lincoln's election. I think we can all agree that the South knew Lincoln's intentions prior to being sworn in.
insisting on one interpretation makes simpler politics
My more nuanced view: states rights were abrogated over the slavery issue, which is why it's still an issue. But that doesn't fit the black-and-white opinion that allows one to smear anyone not subscribing to the 'slavery as the sole cause' theory as racists.
The problem is that the rest of the then-developed world ended slavery peacufully. The south back then was utterly dependent on slavery for their economy, and still couldn't compete with the north. Vindictive northern abolitionists, like todays global warming hawks and anti-abortion assassins, refused to consider compromise or see the slave-owner's side of the issues. Those 'wicked slave-holders' were 'damned to hell, and deserved to suffer', so let's make them give up their slaves, and let them starve. We saw the same hard-nosed attitudes towards temperance later, and in McCarthy's HUAC. It was wrong every time, yet the proponents of each case felt a pure righteousness to their cause that brooked no acceptance of shades of grey. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, we've got SINNERS to smite!
In that atmosphere, is it any wonder slaveowners turned to states rights as a legal shield against abolitionist's extra-legal tactics?
Had the abolitionists pushed for economic development of southern states with incentives to phase out slaves in favor of factories and labor-saving machinery, we might have had an easier, more peaceful transition to freedom, and left fewer scars on America's collective psyche.
What makes you think that the South
would phase out slavery. They were making a fortune selling raw products to the world.
Never mind that factories in the South would have been hell holes in the summer months.
Remember, the Deep South's heat was conducive to a slave labor economy since farming would not be as profitable if they relied on paying for labor under those conditions.
There may have been "vindictive abolitionists", but in the main the attitude in the North was not pushing for the end of slavery, just the end of the spread of slavery in the new western states.
But the South did not want any part of such a deal since it would cast a pall of illegitimacy upon their slave labor economy.
Compromise was not in the Southern agenda.
Blaming those who refused to see the slave owners' plight is a bit of a stretch, since the South held a lot of congressional power before the Civil War.
You might accuse the abolitionist's of actually seeing the slaves' point of view, and, as good Christians, that was really the only humane, civilized and right thing to do.
You say that other slave economies were dismantled peacefully.
Haiti's slave revolt against France is a rather glaring exception, don't you think?
How about Cuba and the 10 year war against Spain?