Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Connie, I have to agree with you %100 on this statement. Instead of digging out the facts, researching, reading, why not use a flip statement like PC or just use the word "revisionism".
Now, the one reason I have grown to respect and love this board is because even when I am in a knock-out, drag-out debate, ALL the persons I have had serious discussions with have a source or facts to back up their arguments.
I have learned so much here in the past year or so, that I am actually dangerous in Civil War discussions and presentations. I am dead certain the information I have gained from this board got me a job as a historical guide and interpeter at our Ohio Historical Village here in Columbus.
That is why I will always want to know the source of any debate or fact shoved my way. I WANT TO LEARN! The one fact that my time on this board I have truly learned is, that the more I learn about the Civil War, the more I am impressed with how little I truly know about the Civil War!
Here's hoping we all continue to learn and be willing to listen.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Neil you are correct. I enjoy this board a lot... in fact I've neglected several other boards that I frequent to comb through this one. My only complaint might be about how the board is structured. I haven't figured out how to tell who someone is responding too when they post. That has managed to confuse me a bit a few times. Incidently if you would like sources for any of my info please let me know and I'll do what I can to dig them out.
As to Revissionist history I will always remember my History Prof M. Lybarger referring to Revisionist History as the habit of ignoring facts to suit political or personal views. It was a real problem at least as far back as my attendence of University and it certainly still is. His touting of certain specific authors like Mr Foote and Mr Mcperson as above such "poor research" gave our entire class the curiosity to go pick up every Shelby Foote book we could lay our hands on at the local half price books... The only reason we didn't grab up all the Mcpherson books was that we already had two as our text books.
One of my favorite ideas that that Professor pasted into my brain is that history should start you digging. "The moment you think you have all the facts and know everything on the subject is the moment you've stopped learning." He was a fascinating teacher. Dates and specifics weren't always the most imortant things... motivations were every bit as important. He firmly believed that we as "20th Century Scholars" had no right to judge a man or woman from centuries past as we would be viewing them through a Crystal ball clouded with our own opinions and views and would be judging them as people of the 20th Century which they most certainly weren't. Judging them was a moot point as they were dead and thus had already been judged by God.
It was such an idea that was hammered into me that let me approach the Mongols with such an open mind and complete my thesis without losing my sanity. And it has also allowed me to research the "Native American" conflicts with a far more open mind. The Civil War is a subject that fascinates me and I hope I can never say I know all there is to know about it. I also hope the day I approach history without an open mind never comes.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
Shane, excellent! Wonderful points to your post above! What was their motivation? How can we of the 20th century judge those of the 19th? How can we really understand 'those people'? And how can we generate such loyalty and such passion for something we have not lived or experienced? WE CAN'T!
We can form our opinions and create our OWN views, but all of use, from Union fanatic to impassioned Southern supporter, we can only view that time through that 'cloudy crystal ball' your professor spoke of.
The one thing you and he have said that makes the most sense, that provides us with the best hope of not repeating some painful parts of our history, is research, research and MORE RESEARCH! I love it when your prof says, when you think you know all about a part of history, RESEARCH! Thanks Shawn, a very valuable post and one of the best I have seen on this board.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Spencer, a point of view I have not heard much about. So the idea, as you propose from the 12th Wisconsin, was to free the slaves to stop the war, go home and enjoy the peace? That there was never any great fervor to free slaves, just get on with the war?
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
I assume so. But you know what happens when you assume things. Anyway that is a quote that I have gotten out of a newspaper in my collection. It certainly isn't a point of view that you see very often.
Spencer, I am curious then about your quote. It seems like the men from Wisconsin, at least one of them from the regiment in question, recognized the fact that slavery was a war aim and had to be overthrown, as it meant his only way home and an end to the war.
That about right?
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
I have often heard the argument that most Union soldiers fought only to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves.
Well, for your consideration, the following was taken from an article in magazine, "The American Enterprise (TAE)". The article is entiltled, Let Us Die To Make Men Free, by Harvey Rollins, a Mississippi native and a retired employee of the US Army, and Karina Rollins, his daughter and a TAE senior editor. The article follows:
The soldiers of the Union Army, one bit of conventional wisdom has it, fought strictly to preserve the Union, and were unconcerned with freeing the slaves. A dismayingly large number of people have accepted the fiction that America's ferocious Civil War was fought not over human liberty, but over "states rights." The rights in question, of course, were to own human beings as property.
So what was the average Union soldier, ready to sacrifice his life in battle, fighting for? One obvious test is to look at what the soldiers did to boost their morale in the wretched moments of wartime. Throughout history, soldiers have sung motivational songs to sustain their spirits, and so it was in the Civil War. The most popular song of the Army of the Potomac throughout the war was "John Brown's Body," an unrefined but fervent tribute to the radical abolitionist who was hanged for his attack on Harper's Ferry. "John Brown died that the slave might be free/But his soul is marching on!" the soldiers shouted out. "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" went the exhilarating chorus.
In 1861, the first year of the war, Julia Ward Howe, wife of Northern abolitionist and journalist S.G. Howe, made her first trip to the nation's capitol. While returning from a military review, she observed a procession of soldiers singing the John Brown song. Her friend, the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, suggested she write better words for the tune. Her result, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862.
Howe kept the rousing "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" but transformed the anti-slavery message from John Brown's mission to a mission of God: "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," she begins. She ends with, "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea/With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me/As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free/While God is marching on." President Lincoln, upon first hearing the song performed in 1863, had only three words: "Sing it again." It soon became the unoffical anthem of the North. The Union troops, for their part, continued to sing the less poetic but even more explicitly anti-slavery words of "John Brown" as they marched.
The importance of anti-slavery songs in sustaining Union soldiers was appreciated even by Southerners. Just after Lee's surrender in 1865, a Confederate major described hearing Union troops sing "The Battle Cry of Freedom" ("...altho' they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave..."). "I shall never forget the first time I heard it. 'Twas a nasty night....and raining. I was on picket, when some fellow on the other side struck up a song, and others joined in the chorus until it seemed to me the whole Yankee army was singing. I am not naturally superstitous, but I tell you that song sounded like the knell of doom."
During the war, the singing Hutchinson Family toured Union camps and hospitals. Lincoln, like most Northerners, appreciated them greatly, even inviting them to sing at the White House. Among their anti-slavery songs, popular with the troops, was John Greenleaf Whitter's "Hymn of Liberty," with this pull-no-punches condemnation of the South's "domestic institutions": "What gives the wheat fields blades of steel?/What points the rebel cannon?/...What whets the knife for the Union's life?/Hark to the answer: slavery."
When the Hutchinsons sang the John Brown song, they were cheered madly by the soldiers. A private from the 48th MA wrote home that soldiers' cheers reflected "a true appreciation of the issues involved; they were receiving an inspiration which would lead them to downright victory...which would leave of slavery nothing but its scars and shame and putrid corpse."
This was one cry among many. "Letters of Union soldiers," records historian Victor Davis Hanson in "The Soul of Battle", show that by 1864 a majority clearly knew that their cause was about freeing slaves and they heartily approved of it. Such sentiments grew, rather than diminished, as the war wore on and Northerners entered the South."
One a 43-year-old Michigan farmer who had already lost a stepson in the war wrote to his wife from Atlanta in 1864, as part of Sherman's army, that "The more I learn of the cursed institution of slavery, the more I feel willing to endure for its final destruction...The whole country will undergo a change for the better...Abolishing slavery will dignify labor...Let Christians use all their influence to have justice done to the black man." He was killed a short while after.
It's true: The boys in blue were willing to "die to make men free." Glory hallelujah.
What do you all think of this article?
Awaiting your comments,
Unionblue
Some members may disagree---revisionist thinking may be say---
__________________
"States Rights are about States Wrongs" - Jesse Jackson
It would be as imprudent to assume that every southern soldier fought for slavery as it would be to assume that no northern soldier went to war to fight against it.
Both statements seek to diminish the role of slavery as the root cause of the conflict, and by so doing present a slavocracy as something other than onerously reprehensible.
Unless Union recruiting numbers fell off significantly after the proclamation, it is reasonable to suppose it had a beneficial effect.
Not to over-generalize, but around 180,000 almost certainly were thus motivated.
It would be as imprudent to assume that every southern soldier fought for slavery as it would be to assume that no northern soldier went to war to fight against it.
Both statements seek to diminish the role of slavery as the root cause of the conflict, and by so doing present a slavocracy as something other than onerously reprehensible.
Unless Union recruiting numbers fell off significantly after the proclamation, it is reasonable to suppose it had a beneficial effect.
Not to over-generalize, but around 180,000 almost certainly were thus motivated.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Nice post Handler.
__________________ David
"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person" diddyriddick
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