AgentR11 wrote:Personally, I think this is the wrong way to look at it. It'd didn't remake the constitution; it settled the last argument concerning the constitution that couldn't be settled by peaceful diplomacy or compromise.
Right, agreed.
The Civil War was the culmination of many years of an irreconcilable difference. Slavery. So many in the north were vehemently opposed to it, on moral and religious grounds.
Let's not forget the time period.. UK had slavery too.. but they were able to end it without upending an entire economy and turning it inside out.
That was the situation with the American South.. the aristocracy could not just let slavery go, that was the bedrock of the economy. There were many years of attempted compromises.. new states being split, slave and free to keep the balance at 50/50. Then some new territories / states had little civil wars in them, as immigrants from north and south fought each other over whether they'd be a slave state or free.
Then Lincoln got elected.. and the South said okay that's it, we're out of here.
It was the South that fired the first shots, at Ft. Sumter. Some try to say that the civil war was about states' rights, but that's nonsense, of course the issue was slavery.
The states' right to have slavery. That had been boiling the whole history of the republic, from the beginning. It had to come to a head, and go one way or another or the nation split.
Southerners were wrapped up defending their homelands, their culture, their localities -- but that went hand in hand with slavery too, which obviously had to end. Majority of whites of course did not own slaves, but human nature being what it is, one group always likes to remain superior over some other right? Like the caste system in India.
Peasantry, caste system, feudalism -- it's all systems of tyranny and of the past. Slavery just got slipped into the American democracy because it was just there already. Most of the founders knew at the time, that it didn't really jive with the words they wrote in the dec of independence. Can't hardly fight a revolution and a civil war too though, at once, so the issue was put off.
Now there is no slavery, but rather, banker and 1% and peasants.
That doesn't excuse slavery, at all, but it has to be noted that immigrants in the north lived in horrific conditions too. The line can get blurred, what is a "slave," what is a "peasant." Weren't peasants in Europe feudal property as well?
p.s. there were of course other political divisions between north and south, ever since the beginning (and still today, red state vs. blue state), federalism versus looser democrats, strong central gov versus weak, whether to have a "national bank," or not. But the BIG difference was slavery. And then all the other little differences added on, to always make it north vs. south. Like Republican vs. Democrat (parties which changed regions over time of course, R is now the southern party).
2nd ps -- whoever posted the white flag -- the South fought very well. They almost won. They had superior officers, good fighting men. What they lacked was the industry of the north. Slavery was horrid and evil, and then the Jim Crow that came after reconstruction, yes, but it's a complex picture. General Lee was still a good man and hero. You have to remember people still identified most with their STATE back then, too. So right or wrong, if Virginia goes to war, then you go to war -- if you're a Virginian -- whether you agree with it or not.
Truly national identity took some time to fully form.
