Never again

[wausaubob]

The meaning of the Civil War was never again.
The US won a rebellion from England. Then won a commercial war against Britain.
Then it participated in a slave trade which exploited the weaknesses of the African tribes.
The Native Americans were subjugated and uprooted.
The US sponsored an insurgency against Mexico and then fought a straight imperialist territorial war to follow up on that insurgency.
Slavery had disappeared in the North but was thriving in the deep South.
The willingness of the South to resort to violence to protect their successful form of wealth against the rising tide of free labor in the world was inevitable. It was a violent, but incredibly successful society. It had won its wealth by violence, in a violent world.
But the war that was fought was so dreadful and violent, that the issue behind it all, chattel slavery, disappeared even before the war was finished. Emancipation was the universal law. The nation was entirely free.
And at Appomattox the message was, its over and never again. They are our countrymen was again,...
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were not successfully implemented. But neither were they repealed. Slavery was never re-implented.
And when the time came, it was implemented, without a war.
Never again.
No trench warfare with machine guns, and heavy artillery and airplanes.
The North did not bomb Montgomery or invade Memphis with Tiger tanks.
The South did not get to wait until the boll weevil made the blacks superfluous, and then try to exterminate them, so what happened in the 20th century in Europe did not happen in the US.
It was good that it was so awful, the result was worth it.

 

[huskerblitz]

Can't answer the question. For me personally, it's not my place to suggest that the restricted life of one man was worth the blood of another. It simply happened and we should learn the lessons that came from it.

 

[Drew]

The North did not bomb Montgomery or invade Memphis with Tiger tanks.

No, but it did torch Atlanta, Columbia, etc. So there's that.

The South did not get to wait until the boll weevil made the blacks superfluous, and then try to exterminate them,

I'm not sure where the South thought blacks "superfluous" or tried to exterminate them. In the early 20th century, there was an effort to prevent black people from leaving the South. Sorry if this doesn't fit the requisite Narrative.

 

[WJC]

The meaning of the Civil War was never again.
The US won a rebellion from England. Then won a commercial war against Britain.
Then it participated in a slave trade which exploited the weaknesses of the African tribes.
The Native Americans were subjugated and uprooted.
The US sponsored an insurgency against Mexico and then fought a straight imperialist territorial war to follow up on that insurgency.
Slavery had disappeared in the North but was thriving in the deep South.
The willingness of the South to resort to violence to protect their successful form of wealth against the rising tide of free labor in the world was inevitable. It was a violent, but incredibly successful society. It had won its wealth by violence, in a violent world.
But the war that was fought was so dreadful and violent, that the issue behind it all, chattel slavery, disappeared even before the war was finished. Emancipation was the universal law. The nation was entirely free.
And at Appomattox the message was, its over and never again. They are our countrymen was again,...
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were not successfully implemented. But neither were they repealed. Slavery was never re-implented.
And when the time came, it was implemented, without a war.
Never again.
No trench warfare with machine guns, and heavy artillery and airplanes.
The North did not bomb Montgomery or invade Memphis with Tiger tanks.
The South did not get to wait until the boll weevil made the blacks superfluous, and then try to exterminate them, so what happened in the 20th century in Europe did not happen in the US.
It was good that it was so awful, the result was worth it.

I find your comment interesting, but also puzzling. Can you please further explain what you mean by, "The South did not get to wait until the boll weevil made the blacks superfluous, and then try to exterminate them, so what happened in the 20th century in Europe did not happen in the US." Thanks.

 

[wausaubob]

The Jim Crow era was a great denial of civil rights. But the North would have intervened if things had gotten worse.
The South did not try to round up the blacks and put them in concentration camps, and nations were certainly capable of killing Armenians or Jews by the millions.
Eventually the black population became mostly equal, though handicapped by poverty.
The course was set towards a multi-racial society. Abraham Lincoln once speculated that slavery might last another hundred years. **** lasted another one hundred years, but it wasn't chattel slavery and it wasn't genocide.
In the 21st century it is easy to minimize the achievement of United States during the Civil War. It is easy to write on the one hand, that the violence was unnecessary, or that the US did not do enough in the aftermath.
The people who lived through it knew the nation had been building to that war for 25 years. The people who lived through it knew that the had done all they could by force, and that the nation needed peace and prosperity and unity, before further equality could be achieved.

 

[OpnCoronet]

The meaning of the Civil War was never again.
The US won a rebellion from England. Then won a commercial war against Britain.
Then it participated in a slave trade which exploited the weaknesses of the African tribes.
The Native Americans were subjugated and uprooted.
The US sponsored an insurgency against Mexico and then fought a straight imperialist territorial war to follow up on that insurgency.
Slavery had disappeared in the North but was thriving in the deep South.
The willingness of the South to resort to violence to protect their successful form of wealth against the rising tide of free labor in the world was inevitable. It was a violent, but incredibly successful society. It had won its wealth by violence, in a violent world.
But the war that was fought was so dreadful and violent, that the issue behind it all, chattel slavery, disappeared even before the war was finished. Emancipation was the universal law. The nation was entirely free.
And at Appomattox the message was, its over and never again. They are our countrymen was again,...
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were not successfully implemented. But neither were they repealed. Slavery was never re-implented.
And when the time came, it was implemented, without a war.
Never again.
No trench warfare with machine guns, and heavy artillery and airplanes.
The North did not bomb Montgomery or invade Memphis with Tiger tanks.
The South did not get to wait until the boll weevil made the blacks superfluous, and then try to exterminate them, so what happened in the 20th century in Europe did not happen in the US.
It was good that it was so awful, the result was worth it.

The thrust of your post is, IMO, correct enough(although I can quibble over some of the exact details of your facts).

 

[wausaubob]

I would probably adjust the details, also, if given more time.
Second guessing the Confederates, who were a product of their time, and criticizing the North from a 21st century morality, is a form of intellectual conceit.

 

[Reb]

The Civil War should have never happened, but it did. Was it worth the cost? No. Did something good come of it? Yes. Could there have been a better way? Of course.