"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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.
> "When it was over, it was over"
> > ...is also far from correct
Political grudges are one thing. But I think we were extremely fortunate that the American Civil war did not devolve into a protracted guerrilla war. I have always heard that Lee's leadership was a major factor that prevented that from happening.
"The contrasting situation in many other countries, where wars from hundreds of years ago are still the basis for grudges today"
I don't think they can be compared. The U.S. was a very young country and the differences between the states were relatively small (mostly white christians from Europe, speaking the same language).
In other countries, you can have two completely separate ethnic groups that look different, have separate languages and completely different religions. If you combine this with a history of territorial wars where one side has dominated the other, it's hard to let the war be over.
In contrast, there was not much difference between the U.S. states. And when the war ended, all states could share the power in a democratic system.
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?
"...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.
At any rate, you agree with the parent. The reason used to sell the war to the populace is not the same as the reason the war was initiated. So, even if most were fighting for the former reason, the reason that matters is the one that started the war and compelled those who started it to find another argument to sell it to the populace.
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.
The idea that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves is dispensed with pretty early on - if not in middle school, then at least by high school, and in the worst case by freshman history in college.
"WWII was about saving Jews" may be a popular view now, but the death camps and the like were not well known during the war.
I doubt that many Russians fought to save Jews, or that common knowledge of the Holocaust would have changed the number. Maybe some French and Italians might have been more interested.
Um, what about it? That one's also taken care of pretty early in the curriculum (actually, I've never really heard that one). Are you just casting around to find something you can call someone stupid for thinking?
"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!
It was the first modern war...the machine gun, the submarine, and trench warfare were among many of the new developments that would later scourge the world in the 20th century.
More importantly, the U.S. emerged from the civil war more fully committed to universal political and economic rights in the context of a modern industrial society, a philosophy that drove the nation's explosive growth across North America and still guides U.S. foreign policy today. Clearly the world would be vastly different in 2009 had the Confederacy and the institution of slavery survived on a divided North American continent.
This is what Ang Lee, the non-american director of the Civil War movie "Ride With the Devil" said:
"I grew up in Taiwan, where older people always complained that kids are becoming Americanized: they don’t follow tradition, and so we are losing our culture. As I got the chance to go around a large part of the world with my films, I would hear the same complaints. It seems so much of the world is becoming Americanized. When I read Daniel Woodrell’s book Woe to Live On, which we based Ride with the Devil on, I realized that the American Civil War was, in a way, where it all started. It was where the Yankees won not only territory but, in a sense, a victory for a whole way of life and of thinking."
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.
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.
I think that's a great question. Quite honestly, my post should have been "Why the Civil War is Important to Me"
The lessons about democracies under duress, the nature of war, effective management styles for large organizations, and history are applicable anywhere. In fact, I'd like to see somebody pick up Lee's management style and turn it into a business leadership book. There are lots of good analogies here.
So yes, it's applicable, but the article is not slanted at an international audience, unfortunately.
"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."
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Heh. The area under the curve may add up to 1, but it's coming out a lot faster than it went in!
I used to be somewhat worried that when oil starts to run out it will leave the developing countries "in the lurch" so to speak. That is, they will not be able to develop beyond a certain point because energy will simply become too expensive. Then I realized that there is an enormous amount of coal still available. So there is a chance that the future may yet be steampunk. For a little while, at least.
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).
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.