https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNc4ahjS0jM
There’s a lot of talk about the United States Civil War this year its 150th anniversary. This is a song I wrote and video I made some time ago about the Battle of Nashville 1864 which was the point of no return for the Lost Cause, when Confederate military resistance was finally snuffed out in West.
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From what I see people today are pretty ignorant as to some critical historical facts about the war. In the foregoing I aim to dispel some myths and misconceptions and make some sensible observations.
Probably #1 myth is: “Slavery was the cause of the war.” This is incorrect. What caused the war was secession. President Lincoln, loyal to his oath of office and Constitutional duty was the man who triggered the war. Fort Sumter was fired upon and Lincoln responded with a blockade and invasion of the South rather than capitulation to the rebellion.
A year and a half into the war Horace Greeley, the editor of the NY Tribune and rabid abolitionist complained that Lincoln hadn’t done enough about slavery. The President explained precisely that secession, disunion, not slavery, is what drove him to make war:
“… I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union.. the shortest way under the Constitution. …..If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them…… If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them….My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”
Another incorrect assertion is that “states rights” was the issue that cause secession. Again Lincoln himself said in many campaign speeches and most succinctly in his 1st Inaugural speech:
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
The issue of slavery that motivated secession was about its expansion into the federal territories and whether the federal government had authority in the matter. If indeed it was about “states rights” you could say that it was the rights of Northern states to prohibit slavery in their own states. Like the recent Same-sex marriage decision by the US Supreme Court which vacated every state law, Constitutional amendment etc outlawing it, the Dred Scott decision vacated all state laws prohibiting slavery as in many state Constitutions in the North. Dred Scott nationalized slavery.
It is largely unknown that Gettysburg that greatest of victories was disastrously misplayed by the Union Generals as again Lincoln clearly describes in his letter to General Meade the Commanding Union General who is deservedly much less famous than Lee the general he defeated.
“You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg…He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him… You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones … all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him…..I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would….have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely….. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.”
“War is cruelty. You can’t refine it.” General Sherman in my opinion was wrong about that. He himself in fact could have refined it right then and there but chose not to. His March to the Sea was an unnecessary cruelty visited upon the ignorant Southern white civilians who happened to live in the seceded states. It left a deep scar on the Southern psyche which has never healed. At that point in the war they were entirely ineffectual and irrelevant to the Lost Cause and never really knew what was going on from the beginning. After Atlanta Sherman should have marched to Richmond. That would have really shortened the war.
History Channel has done a program on it and Ken Burns* is re-releasing his incredible documentary.
