Posted on 02/17/2005 1:55:46 PM PST by quidnunc
I'm a traditionalist. I prefer the old War of Southern Rebellion.
If the question was sincerely posed then the question would not be stupid, though the questioner would be.
It's the "Civil War" (capitalized) rather than a "civil war" (no-caps). In legal parlance, it's a defined term referring to a particular conflict. Sort of like World War I, which nobody at the time called World War I.
So what are you trying to tell me? :)
By the way, thanks for posting the commentary last night.
good distinction
The first part of your post disallows the second part.
I think Hanson's response to the original question is quite lucid; why don't you log in and ask him the question more appropriately, as in "Was it slavery or was it not slavery?".
PS: I don't think you'll like the answer.
A bunch of evil men in the Northeastern U.S. decided they could maintain power by dividing the South and Midwest who were natural partners.
They were the fore-runners of modern day Communists in that they wanted centralized power which allowed them to maintain just that, Power.
They used the issue of slavery to inflame passions against the South. This was the wedge they used to keep the two sections apart.
The fact that they were the ones who had brought the slaves to the U.S. was forgotten.
The real start of the war was when Lincoln asked for 75,000 volunteers to subjugate the seceeding states.
The South tried to avoid attacking Ft. Sumpter but it was a necessity to have control of it as it basically controlled access to the main port of the Confederacy.
Now when you say the South attacked the North do you even stop to think? Ft. Sumpter is in the South not the North. The South simply wanted to be left alone. The North invaded the South, and for awhile the South would not even allow it's soldiers to attack the North.
Lincoln used Ft. Sumter as the catalyst. He was looking for one. Had the Confederates not fired he would have found another. Lincoln had a vision that was so many decades beyond most of his contemporaries. He was the fuse. Still he needed something to be the dynamite.
I'm not positive the North had the moral "high ground" until the Emancipation Proclamation. While that was but a political document to keep the Europeans at bay, it was a symbolic one that put the fight on an entirely new plane.
I just noticed I spelled Ft. Sumter as Sumpter, not once but twice.
I don't think Grant was an alcoholic.
What an appropriate screen name.
Go back and re-read my original reply. If you can't come to a different "conclusion", just move on. Don't bother straining yourself.
Just as good...
Had Hitler the resources to conduct a sea-blockade, wage a stand-off carpet bombing as part of a strategic aerial campaign, close the borders of the Soviet Union, and conduct counter-insurgency by mobilizing Soviet dissidents and brutalized ethnic groups, in 3 or 4 years he might well have won.
That is ridiculous. Germany flatly did not have the raw materials resource base to wage a long term 'British' style war of economic attrition. It did not have the deep pockets to import raw materials on world markets so it had to conquer and enslave what it needed to keep the Wehrmacht going. Blockade ? What did Stalinist Russia import that was so vital its economy would collapse without it ? How do you blockade a third of the Eurasian land mass ? Russia has oil, gold, an agricultural breadbasket, and just about every mineral in the book. Germany didn't. Strategic bombing ? Germany never built a strategic bomber force because it knew its resource base could not win a long war. A strategic bomber force is for a long war.
Hitler knew he couldn't just sit back and give the Red Army time to recover from the Purge. Even after Barbarossa and staggering material and human losses, the Soviets by late 1942 had learnt enough from the Germans to create their own 'panzer' units. Hitler always knew Germany had no long term chance against the superior resource, demographic, and industrial resources of the Allies. He had to win before they learned how to wage blitzkrieg war and Germany still had a qualitative edge. By 1943 it was too late. Germany after 1942 was like Napoleon in 1813 facing an enemy coalition that has copied your organization and tactics so the days of easy victories are over.
And dissidents in Stalinist Russia ? Forget it.
The south SECEDDED over slavery. Because the U.S. did not go go to war with the Confederacy over Slavery in the beginning does NOT mean the cause was not Slavery.
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.
Oustanding! Every word!
Which, does not mean I'm in favor of Sherman's activities. They were undeniably effective and foretold wars to come; they were not unlike Clinton's 'war' in the Former Yugoslavia and to what Saddam's left overs and friends have been doing in Iraq for the past two years. Americans will always get a bad taste when 'war' is aimed at the bystanders rather than the warriors and war suppliers.
It DOES mean that the north did have the right leaders available even thought they did not immediately recognize that fact.
Someone else mentioned militias in southern service. OK, but had those militias been better integrated into the CS forces they'd have been far more formidable.
"FACT- The CIVIL WAR WAS OVER SLAVERY, it was also over states rights, tariffs, but a big part of it was slavery."
Fact - Some states which remained in the Union were "slave states." Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, and Virginia, specifically. West Virgina was formed when that part of the state left the Confederacy in 1863 and re-joined the Union. Lincoln even promised to not interfer with slave owners in these states in hopes that the states would stay loyal to the Union.
Fact - The Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves, was not signed until January, 1863, a full two years after South Carolina left the Union.
If the issue - before the War ever began - was slavery, these two issues would have occured/been handled differently. Slavery was the most "charged" issue that was debated in the realm of "states rights." It affected human lives, the economy, and was an tangible manifestation of the intangible concepts that were at the core of the differences.
VDH ping
Pendantic semantics - which are arguable in any case.
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