Civil war Perspective

[Belsnickel]

We had a bit of a discussion about this topic in another thread, and so I wanted to post this for anyone interested.

How the North distorts Civil War history

Quote:With astonishing speed — and a surprising new consensus — the status of the Confederate battle flag has been altered. While a reconsideration of that symbol’s original meaning is long overdue, there is a countervailing risk that the righteous satisfaction in some quarters at lowering the flag may blind us to another large misunderstanding of the past.

The conversation in recent days has been illuminating, as many politicians from the South try to navigate a historic landscape blurred by generations of distortions. With the abruptness of cataract surgery, “Lost Cause” interpretations of a genteel Southern past have fallen away. The denials that, in the Confederacy, the impetus for war was slavery have long rung false; the minutes of the secession conventions held in Southern states make that explicit (as one Mississippi advocate put it in 1861, “slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity”). Acknowledging that the Confederate flag symbolized the fight to extend human bondage can at last put to rest an enduring falsehood in our national memory.

As important as this corrective may be, we will do our historical memory a disservice if we fail to recall how citizens of the Union regarded Abraham Lincoln’s War, slavery and even African Americans. To a surprising extent, the way the North remembers the Civil War is also deeply flawed and misleading.

Recall that when Lincoln took office, slavery had the official sanction of the U.S. government. Like it or not, slavery was a part of the economic history of the North as well as the South. Much of the nation’s cotton, its largest export, was taken north of the Mason-Dixon Line to be processed; for that matter, many of the South’s most successful planters were Yankees who adopted with alacrity the practice of slavery on their way to wealth.

In the antebellum years, there was nothing resembling an anti-slavery consensus in the North. America’s greatest philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, hesitated for years to decry what he called “the habit of oppression.” When he finally did so from the podium in Concord Town Hall, he was called a fanatic and worse. The word “abolition” made his neighbors angry. The idea rang radical even in Massachusetts, where many regarded those who espoused such views as dangerous.

It’s simply wrong-headed to presume that average, mid-19th-century farmers and factory workers in the North harbored abolitionist sympathies. They didn’t.

I was taught growing up in Yankee Massachusetts that the North went to war to end slavery, but since then I have come to understand that I was misinformed. A case in point is the story of the well-known primitive painter Robert Peckham. He had served as a deacon in the same Congregational church that I attended as a child in central Massachusetts. But archival research reveals that, in 1850, when Deacon Peckham espoused abolitionist sentiments, the church fathers excommunicated him, declaring one of their own unwelcome because they thought his ideas too extreme. Little Westminster represented a quiet majority opinion in the region.

Even Lincoln’s racial thinking evolved in a slow and ambiguous manner. Until the very end of his life, the hero of the age resisted the notion that the black and white races were equal. In his famous 1858 debates — and elsewhere — he repeatedly rejected the idea of permitting black men to vote, serve as jurors, hold office or intermarry with whites. “There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality.”

That meant that, at its outset, the war for Lincoln was explicitly about union — until it became expedient to make it about emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation was primarily intended to hobble the Confederacy’s war effort, which relied upon slaves for provisioning and other support.

Even among those who recognized that human bondage must end, few thought blacks were equal to whites. In the South, where 95 percent of the nation’s African Americans resided, slavery had been a fact of life for generations, fixing the black man’s inferiority in the minds of most whites. In the North, where less than 1 percent of the population was black, relatively few whites interacted with men or women of color; there, anyone of African descent remained very much other.

The past is no more a fixed destination than the future is, and we need to question constantly the history we’ve been handed. One encounters such proper names as Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Selma and, now, Clementa Pinckney. But even as our outrage simmers at what made possible the allegedly murderous ignorance of Dylann Roof, we would do well to consider that, aside from the color of some of the players’ skins, there is little that is black and white about our terrible Civil War and the enduring legacy with which we must still wrestle.

[GMDino]

(07-13-2015, 01:33 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: We had a bit of a discussion about this topic in another thread, and so I wanted to post this for anyone interested.

How the North distorts Civil War history

Was it 100% anti-slave vs 100% pro-slave?  No.

Are the defenders of the "southern heritage" being disingenuous by saying the South fought to preserve state's rights vs preserving slavery?  Yes.

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 01:42 PM)GMDino Wrote: Was it 100% anti-slave vs 100% pro-slave?  No.

Are the defenders of the "southern heritage" being disingenuous by saying the South fought to preserve state's rights vs preserving slavery?  Yes.

Which, you know, the article says.

[GMDino]

(07-13-2015, 01:47 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Which, you know, the article says.

Admit I skimmed it (at work).  But just agreeing in general.

Jerk.

[RICHMONDBENGAL_07]

(07-13-2015, 01:47 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Which, you know, the article says.

I agree with you (and the author in your post) that there is so much more to the Civil War.  However I feel that usually when I see a post or article like this, that someone is trying to diminish or somehow lessen the issue of slavery and it's relativity to the Civil War.  I'm not saying that is the case here, just skeptical.

I'm curious as to what the point is?

[fredtoast]

If I understand this article it seems to say that the South may have been fighting to preserve the institution of slavery, but the North was fighting to preserve the Union.

So while admitting that the South supported slavery it is also saying that the North was not really that strongly anti-slavery. While there were some very vocal abolitionist the main reason the North was fighting was to keep the United States united.

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 04:30 PM)RICHMONDBENGAL_07 Wrote: I agree with you (and the author in your post) that there is so much more to the Civil War.  However I feel that usually when I see a post or article like this, that someone is trying to diminish or somehow lessen the issue of slavery and it's relativity to the Civil War.  I'm not saying that is the case here, just skeptical.

I'm curious as to what the point is?

See Fred's

(07-13-2015, 05:13 PM)fredtoast Wrote: If I understand this article it seems to say that the South may have been fighting to preserve the institution of slavery, but the North was fighting to preserve the Union.

So while admitting that the South supported slavery it is also saying that the North was not really that strongly anti-slavery. While there were some very vocal abolitionist the main reason the North was fighting was to keep the United States united.

Pretty much. We tend to look at the Civil War through a lens of "good v. evil," which is something we do with a lot of wars. That lens creates the fiction that the northern states were fighting to end slavery, which was not the case at all. There were abolitionists in the north, but they were a small minority, and most of them still saw the slaves as inferior. They were fighting to keep the U.S. in tact.

It's interesting, because this points to something we often come across when looking at historical narratives. You take the viewpoint of all sides and mash them together to come up with something that looks more like the truth than any individual side is telling.

[RICHMONDBENGAL_07]

(07-13-2015, 05:38 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: See Fred's


Pretty much. We tend to look at the Civil War through a lens of "good v. evil," which is something we do with a lot of wars. That lens creates the fiction that the northern states were fighting to end slavery, which was not the case at all. There were abolitionists in the north, but they were a small minority, and most of them still saw the slaves as inferior. They were fighting to keep the U.S. in tact.

It's interesting, because this points to something we often come across when looking at historical narratives. You take the viewpoint of all sides and mash them together to come up with something that looks more like the truth than any individual side is telling.

I don't really disagree with any of that.   On the Smithsonian channel at 7pm tonight there is a program called "Civil War 360."  Really interesting if you haven't seen it.  And then right after it at 8pm is "Apocalypse: The Second World War".  Then at 9pm "Fall of Japan: In Color".  You can see this where all the babes will be hangin out tonight!

[BmorePat87]

The issue with this article is that the idea that the North was fighting against slavery is a misconception, yes, but there is no century long effort by Northern academia to distort the reality of the war and suggest that the North was fighting to end slavery and not to preserve the Union. I can tell you from experience as a social studies teacher that school systems are sugar coating it either. Well, at least mine isn't.

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 06:33 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: The issue with this article is that the idea that the North was fighting against slavery is a misconception, yes, but there is no century long effort by Northern academia to distort the reality of the war and suggest that the North was fighting to end slavery and not to preserve the Union. I can tell you from experience as a social studies teacher that school systems are sugar coating it either. Well, at least mine isn't.

I would disagree. I mean, think about the pedestal upon which Lincoln is hoisted as "The great Emancipator." Is it taught in schools today that he had no intention of ending slavery when elected?

[BmorePat87]

(07-13-2015, 06:37 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I would disagree. I mean, think about the pedestal upon which Lincoln is hoisted as "The great Emancipator." Is it taught in schools today that he had no intention of ending slavery when elected?

It is certainly taught that it was not his goal coming into the Presidency to end slavery.

And, yea, Lincoln will forever be on that pedestal. He was a great president and kept the Union together and ended the Civil War. But it's hard to separate Lincoln's role in the Civil War from everything else. So while the real emancipation (13th Amendment because the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really do anything) is not a part of the Civil War, we will remember it as part of the Civil War era.

But none of this suggests that the North fought the war to end slavery. Most knew it had to remain to keep the Union intact prior to the war and hoped that rapid industrialization and containment of slavery would eventually kill the institution organically.

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 07:04 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: It is certainly taught that it was not his goal coming into the Presidency to end slavery.

And, yea, Lincoln will forever be on that pedestal. He was a great president and kept the Union together and ended the Civil War. But it's hard to separate Lincoln's role in the Civil War from everything else. So while the real emancipation (13th Amendment because the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really do anything) is not a part of the Civil War, we will remember it as part of the Civil War era.

But none of this suggests that the North fought the war to end slavery. Most knew it had to remain to keep the Union intact prior to the war and hoped that rapid industrialization and containment of slavery would eventually kill the institution organically.

Curriculum must be different these days. Even in a southern school, when I went through, that sort of stuff was never talked about.

[Se ky bengal]

(07-13-2015, 07:08 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Curriculum must be different these days. Even in a southern school, when I went through, that sort of stuff was never talked about.

Same in my school,  wasn't Lincoln , one of the biggest slave owners of all pat?

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 08:01 PM)Se ky bengal Wrote: Same in my school,  wasn't Lincoln , one of the biggest slave owners of all pat?

I don't think Lincoln was a slave owner. The only time in his life he would have really had the chance would have been as POTUS since he lived most of his life in free states.

His father's family did own slaves when they were in Virginia, though. Some of the few slave owners in the Linville area of my county (high population of Anabaptists, who were abolitionists).

[Se ky bengal]

(07-13-2015, 08:18 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I don't think Lincoln was a slave owner. The only time in his life he would have really had the chance would have been as POTUS since he lived most of his life in free states.

His father's family did own slaves when they were in Virginia, though. Some of the few slave owners in the Linville area of my county (high population of Anabaptists, who were abolitionists).

Ah yes thanks for memory reboot. Sorry for misspeaken,  bbut I know Mary's family owned slaves. Which Is still bad. I guess it went the times.  Reputation for u for jogging my memory.