
Why The American Civil War Is Important - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/05/why-the-america.php
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edw519
"Instead of thinking how different people were in the 1800s, it's much more
useful to view mankind as basically the same species that came from the
savannah eons ago."

Oddly, that's the biggest thing I've noticed when studying the Civil War. Even
though our DNA hasn't changed much since then, _we_ certainly have.

Life was so different then, it's hard to imagine. Most of the soldiers had
never been more than 20 miles from home before serving. And without much
technology, they only know a few dozen people before the war. This was
supposed to be a great adventure for many of them. But...

Their sacrifice and suffering are unimaginable today. They marched through mud
for days on end, eating only salt pork, hardtack, and coffee. They fought
brutally with obsolete technology. The numbers are staggering (by American
standards): 1/2 million casualties, Gettysburg 50,000 in 3 days, Antietam,
30,000 in one day.

Every American should visit at least one Civil War battlefield. As I walked
down Bloody Lane in Antietam, I imagined the thousands who had died in the
same spot, a very sobering experience.

Somehow I can't imagine something like that happening today. I don't think we
Americans would put up with that much pain and suffering, for any cause.

We have it pretty good now in our air-conditioned homes with a table full of
food and a broadband connection. It's easy to forget that we got that because
of the sacrifice of so many others.

Great post, even for hackers, on Memorial Day. Thank you.

~~~
grandalf
Thanks for your big number statistics. Many other countries around the world
abolished slavery without going to war. That makes our heroes seem like they
were a bit foolish, doesn't it?

Let's not get sentimental about it, war is ugly, and the civil war was about
"good vs evil" about as much as the Iraq war is.

~~~
anamax
> Many other countries around the world abolished slavery without going to
> war. That makes our heroes seem like they were a bit foolish, doesn't it?

In other words, they waited until they could abolish slavery without going to
war. While waiting was good for not-slaves, it wasn't much good for the folks
who were slaves during that time.

~~~
spectre
The British Empire beat the US to abolishing slavery by nearly half a century
(1807). The British forced many other countries to give up slavery soon after.
If the US had lost the revolutionary war or the war of 1812 slavery probably
would have been abolished much sooner.

~~~
anamax
Maybe/probably after the war of 1812 but Britain didn't abolish slavery when
it had the US.

When it abolished slavery, Britain (proper) didn't have slavery and had lost
the only colony with significant slavery, so abolishing slavery throughout the
empire didn't cost much.

Like I said, the US was willing to go to internal war to abolish slavery. Not
many countries were.

It's one thing to do good when it doesn't cost much, it's quite another to do
said good when it costs a lot.

------
tokenadult
"When it was over, it was over"

This is important and astonishing to people from other countries. I was an
interpreter for some official visitors from China some years ago, and we took
a day trip out from Washington, DC to a very near place in Virginia
(Alexandria, if I remember correctly) where United States Highway 1 has a
monument right in the middle of the highway to Robert E. Lee. And the
monument, significantly, has Lee with his back turned to DC and facing the
state of Virginia. My Chinese companions were AMAZED that such a monument
would be allowed so near to the national capital. The United States allows a
lot of expressions of dissent, so even actual civil wars can calm down over
time so that people can get along. The contrasting situation in many other
countries, where wars from hundreds of years ago are still the basis for
grudges today, is a large part of what makes those countries less stable and
less prosperous.

~~~
handelaar
"When it was over, it was over"

...is also far from correct. The US political system subsequently basically
mirrored the conflict, and it continued until both major political parties
underwent profound changes in the 1970s.

In much the same way (but more pronounced) Ireland had a civil war in 1922-23
and the two largest political parties today are the two opposing sides of that
war. They really don't differ on any substantive matters of policy but each
party _loathes_ the other.

Ring any bells?

~~~
dkarl
The difference between war and politics is trivial from certain theoretical
points of view but very important to real people who have to live through one
or the other.

Besides, even the hatred between Democrats and Republicans is tame by most
standards. Democrats and Republicans normally engage in fair, peaceful
commerce with each other, and a Democrat plaintiff arguing in front of a
Republican judge isn't doomed to lose -- in fact, the judge will not consider
it essential to figure out the plaintiff's politics if the case has no
personal political implications for himself. James Carville and Mary Matalin
is just a cute story, not a shocking breach of loyalty. Hell, go on Match.com
and see how many people describe themselves as "very conservative" or "very
liberal" but are willing to meet someone from the other end of the spectrum.
Street brawls? Violence? The most-publicized violence from the last election
was imaginary -- the loony McCain worker who carved a "B" in her face and
claimed an Obama supporter did it.

Hutus and Tutsis it ain't, nor Northern Ireland or the Balkans. The biggest
problems people have with partisanship in the United States is that it's
embarrassingly stupid and it probably results in a lot of bad policy. Maybe
it's inferior to multi-party coalition politics, or maybe it isn't, but the
difference between two styles of peaceful democratic government is bupkus
compared to the difference between peace and violence.

------
grandalf
Here's a question for everyone to help exercise the critical thinking muscles:

What makes you think that the civil war was any more about slavery than the
Iraq war was about freedom?

... pause ...

I'd argue that any political group waging war is well served by ideological
window dressing that they can adopt so that the war can be sold as something
other than humanity acting at its worst or the crude law of the jungle being
realized.

Meanwhile, the soldiers are systematically trained to stop thinking of the
enemy as human beings. Occasionally there are incidents of extreme atrocity
(massive rapes, massacres), which are not isolated incidents, they are simply
a consequence of the standard training that arise under certain types of
emotional duress. The idea of these broken people being heroes is absurd. They
are at best pawns and at worst monsters.

So if you are AT ALL skeptical of Bush's propaganda about the Iraq war, why
are you not the least bit skeptical of the standard American propaganda about
the civil war?

Why do you think the Iraq war was about oil but the civil war was a grand
ideological struggle of good vs evildoers?

~~~
bilbo0s
"...why are you not the least bit skeptical of the standard American
propaganda about the civil war?"

Because it is not propaganda it is true. They tried to fight the Civil War for
political and financial reasons, it didn't work. No one wanted to fight. The
feeling, particularly in the West of the then US, was "Oh . . . the south
wants to leave? . . . Well good riddance to bad garbage!" This was the
nineteenth century equivalent of "Don't let the doorknob hit ya' where the
Good Lord split ya'". So they had to switch, mid stream, to fighting over
slavery. Believe me, the people doing the fighting after the switch DEFINITELY
believed the war was about slavery. If you believe for a second that those
Lutheran fanatic farm boys from Minnesota and Wisconsin gave a hat about
political expediency . . . actually if you even believe they could spell
political expediency, you are probably mistaken.

The reason Princes and Presidents go to war don't mean anything, what matters
is why peasants go to war. In Iraq, afghanistan and in the Civil War the
peasants went to war for RELIGIOUS not political reasons.

What won the Civil War was Lincoln freeing the slaves with the Emancipation
Proclamation. Why? Because even though it meant very little to anyone else,
all of the Lutheran fanatics in Minnesota, Wisconsin, northern Iowa and
elsewhere in the upper midwest joined the fight in earnest. Just like when the
Ba'ath party all of a sudden found religion and convinced the unwashed muslim
masses to send their sons to Iraq.

In both cases, these poorly educated, but deeply religious young men believed
that GOD told them to go fight. In one case to free the slaves, in the other
to fight the Crusaders who had come to eradicate Islam. Getting your peasants
to fight and believe is how you win wars. Its just that most of the peasants
in the American North weren't satisfied with Lincoln's word that he would free
the slaves. They waited until he actually did it, and then they joined the
cause.

As a bonus they were rough and tumble farm stock, who did their own work. They
didn't have slaves doing it for them. They planted, harvested, bailed hay,
picked stones, and all manner of other back breaking manual labor. They did
all of this in deep snow and often sub-zero weather before the advent of
central heating, electricity, tractors,or other modern conveniences. Now tens
of thousands of them, at a time, could be sent south to take up the slavery
issue with plantation gentlemen who caught cold if the temperature dropped
below 40 degrees. Do you see where this is going? Add to this the fact that
they all believed that God had sent them on a divine errand, and you begin to
get an idea of why Lincoln was so sure he could save the Union by freeing the
slaves.

The south lost the war with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now here is the thing, the reason for any war, is NOT the reason the leaders
claim. In the end, it is whatever reason the peasants are fighting for. So for
Bush to continue talking about freedom and Democracy, when the enemy is
recruiting millions by talking about the annihilation of Islam was foolish.
The same was true of the leadership of the Civil War south. They kept talking
about State's rights. Have you ever tried to explain the primacy of State's
rights to ten thousand poorly educated religious fanatics with firearms? I
suggest you refrain from doing so.

What the south was faced with were old school jihadis. The Christian kind,
which are far more dangerous. Think about it, they would give their lives
WITHOUT the promise of 72 virgins in heaven. All of a sudden, the northern
armies went from being armies that marched well, and looked pretty, to being
armies that fought well, and looked terrible. Just for shits and giggles
Google yourselves a picture of General McClellan . . . Then Google yourselves
an image of William T. Sherman's ugly mug. Lee himself commented on this
change. What do you do against an army that, suddenly is willing to
countenance enormous losses just to kill you? You run, which is what most of
the southern armies spent a good part of the last half of the war doing. And
it was smart of them to do so, maybe with time that fighting spirit will wear
itself out in the North. It's just that time ran out for them.

~~~
grandalf
I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

My take is: Of course religion is a motivating factor -- it's been the
favorite method of getting the masses to do one's bidding for thousands of
years.

So _of course_ any serious war effort will have a significant "good vs evil"
component to it -- the people have been listening to clergy preach about good
and evil since they were children, and so all it takes is a simple hijacking
of this meme and you have a grand effort for the cause of good.

Framed another way, religion weakens the citizens' defenses against war
propaganda.

I think we're actually saying the same thing... When George W. Bush would get
on TV and read a speech about evildoers, he would make the hearts of the
faithful flutter with devout feeling. He said those words because he knew what
effect they would have -- people, trained to idealize an abstract fight
between good and evil, would support his policies.

------
ckinnan
"If you want to see American democracy under great stress, the Civil War is
the prime example."

Yet the author misses the best example-- that in the middle of the war, in
1864, the U.S. held an election for President, even though it looked (in the
beginning of the race) that Lincoln might lose!

~~~
javert
"This was the first time any nation held a national election in the midst of a
civil war." -from Wikipedia.

------
swombat
Why is it important to non-americans?

~~~
aswanson
I wonder...do any of our compatriots in the UK or any other part of the world
for that matter hold old wars and battles in reverence? Are there reenactors
of prior battles and such in your parts of the world? I am partial to
believing this is more of an American cultural phenomena.

~~~
queensnake
Oh no. You've heard of the Protestant marches in Ireland commemorating some
battle, that used to stir up trouble. Also, I was in Lexington MA on some
round-number anniversary of the Revolutionary War, and re-enactors of the
British side came over from Britain. All that way, to be on the losing side!
Thanks guys.

------
lucumo
Well, more like: Why the American Civil War is Important ... to Americans.

~~~
access_denied
Default setting is <America>, no qualifier needed. Also, <America> == <U.S.>,
please learn to live in Ascii ;-)

------
TriinT
Quoting Richard Feynman:

 _"From a very long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten
thousand years from now - there can be little doubt that the most significant
event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of
electrodynamics. The American Civil War will fade into provincial
insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same
decade."_

~~~
edw519
Providing mankind is still around ten thousand years from now. Not a given
thanks to another significant event of the 19th century: the discovery of how
to harvest, refine, distribute, and use oil as an economic product.

~~~
TriinT
Why would mankind be at risk because of oil? Mankind may be at risk because of
nuclear weapons, sure, but oil? When oil is over we may have to start riding
horses again, but I don't see that as such a huge catastrophe.

~~~
jibiki
I suspect that he is referring to the dreaded AGW (I have no idea whether
burning oil contributes more to carbon levels than deforestation or burning
coal. In the long run, I think coal reserves contain similar carbon mass to
oil reserves, but it always seems like the data is changing.)

~~~
TriinT
But isn't oil carbon neutral? ;-)

It's widely accepted that oil has a biological origin (some people dispute
that). The carbon absorbed by plants millions of years ago had to come from
somewhere, and that is the CO2 in the atmosphere. If oil is derived from those
plants, then burning oil simply releases the CO2 that was sequestered
underground for millions of years. If there was life before, I think there
will be life despite AGW. The number of humans may drop dramatically, of
course.

~~~
enomar
The world's coal and oil supplies represent millions of years of carbon
absorption. If we burn through it in a thousand years, we've likely put more
carbon into the atmosphere than has ever been there before (at one time).

~~~
jibiki
Doing the calculations is a major pain, but I really don't think that's true.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#Earliest_atmos...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#Earliest_atmosphere)

Wikipedia says that the earth's earliest atmosphere was a stunning 10% C02.

Total coal reserves are 930 billion (non-metric?) tons:
<http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/coal.html>

But the earth's atmosphere is 5 quadrillion metric tons:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Density_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Density_and_mass)

So getting to 10% is impossible. Adding in oil, bitumen, and natural gas
probably won't get you past 1% (which is still pretty bad:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity> .)

