Posted on 02/17/2005 1:55:46 PM PST by quidnunc
Q: After having read many accounts of the Civil War, I still don’t understand why South Carolina fired on Ft. Sumter, galvanizing the North into war. What do you think might have happened had the South continued to let these coastal forts be manned by the Union for a longer time?
Hanson: I think conflict was inevitable, because the South had little appreciation of Northern industrial power nor of the competence of a number of formerly nondescript Union officers. The best officers of the Mexican War had joined the Confederacy and there was an erroneous general impression that all superior commanders had left the Union, and with vaunted Southern courage, a big victory or two would teach the Yankees that going into the Confederacy was simply not worth the trouble, especially for the increasingly controversial idea of emancipation. …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
That's like saying that the bombing of Pearl Harbor gave Truman all the justification he needed for nuking Nakasaki. The south initiated the war by firing on Sumter. Lincoln purued the war, and yes, most of it was fought in the southern U.S.
In the South's defense, there was no way for them to appreciate the nature of the new type of war they were about to wage. Lee might have been the greatest general of the Napoleanic era, but Grant and Sherman were the first generals who really understood the new age of total war.
I'm sure that their mouths are foaming even as we speak.
Grant was quoted as saying "If this war was over slavery I would offer my sword to the other side"
The elite all the way down through the middle class were slave-owners, and it is the elite that set political policy in the state capitals. The elite explicitly acted to protect slavery as an institution and said so openly. The key issue to them was an effort by the north to make future western states free-only. They knew that this rigged the game and that they would very quickly be outvoted if they allowed that to happen.
The Civil War was fought, then, over the western territories. This is why Lincoln's offer to leave slavery untouched in the southern states was not sufficient to stop secession.
The poor farmers who made up the bulk of the southern army fought because their leaders led them to, and they fought for the honor and sovereignty of their state, and they fought to keep outsiders from dictating how they would run their societies. The oligarchy made war for slavery; the officers and men fought for honor, but the practical effect of that obviously was that they also fought for slavery.
FACT- MOST of the white southerners were not slaveowners. In fact most of the whites were very POOR farmers.
100% Correct. Some sanity at FreeRepublic.
They only had Southern newspapers to relay one side of the story. About over reaching, meddling federal government and a loss of their way of life.
Of course, tradition had a lot to do with it.
>> Why did they fight? <<
Hint: it wasn't slavery... 8^>
He saved many lives. He was the equivalent of a Hiroshima as his actions in saved Confederate and U.S. lives and accelerated the inevitable.
He saved many lives. He was the equivalent of a Hiroshima as his actions in saved Confederate and U.S. lives and accelerated the inevitable.
Not true.
Questions like: Why are conservatives such racist pigs?
Wouldn't that qualify as stupid? :) Hehe!
Just finished reading, "Born Fighting," by James Webb, it was very enlightening on the topic of why the South fought. It is well worth the read for those wishing to understand this issue.
You are correct on your answer. The book's main emphasis is on the Scots/Irish and how they are the invisible ethnic group that made the South and Midwest what it is.
Anyway...a good read.
By definition, the civil war was not really a civil war. The South was not fighting for control of the US. They were fighting to secede from the US.
Jefferson pointed out, accurately, that slavery tends to create arrogance in the masters. The South over-estimated its own prowess and under-estimated that of the North. But it was a very close thing. The South could easily have won.
Interestingly, the war took place during a very narrow window of opportunity for a long, bloody war.
In 1850 the infrastructure, especially railroads and industry, necessary to support the invasion of the South did not yet exist. And the disproportion in manpower was significantly less. The South wins in a rather short war.
By 1870 the preponderance of power on the Union side would have resulted in a short war, with the Union winning.
This is actually the most logical reason that you can come up with for secession. Southern leaders could read the handwriting on the wall -- it was now or never. Their chance of success could only deteriorate. This is also perhaps the major reason Germany flung itself into WWI, leading to the conclusion that wars launched for this reason have a habit of turning out to be a poor idea.
Please refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression.
An outstanding answer. And what I was trying to get at. Thanks, marron.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
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