Slitherine

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Charles M. Blow has a disappointing column in today's New York Times:

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Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did NOT have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans. To say that southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from Great Britain. One cannot be right and the other wrong. If one is right, both are right. How can we celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then turn around and condemn the Declaration of Independence of the Confederacy in 1861? Talk about hypocrisy!

In fact, southern states were not the only states that talked about secession. After the southern states seceded, the State of Maryland fully intended to join them. In September of 1861, Lincoln sent federal troops to the State capital and seized the legislature by force in order to prevent them from voting. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested Democrats and anyone else who believed in secession. A special furlough was granted to Maryland troops so they could go home and vote against secession. Judges who tried to inquire into the phony elections were arrested and thrown into military prisons. There is your great “emancipator,” folks.

And before the South seceded, several northern states had also threatened secession. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island had threatened secession as far back as James Madison’s administration. In addition, the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were threatening secession during the first half of the nineteenth century--long before the southern states even considered such a thing.

People say constantly that Lincoln “saved” the Union. Lincoln didn’t save the Union; he subjugated the Union. There is a huge difference.
In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

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In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

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I take a certain amount of pride in contributing to the ongoing effort; no one can honestly claim to be completely unbiased, but I attempted to report fairly on both the battlefields and the chambers where decisions were made.

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ORIGINAL: Capt. Harlock

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In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

I wanted to handle this one separately, since I can't claim to be neutral. Cleburne was actually wildly off base. The American Civil War is easily the most written-about war that human beings have ever fought, and there is good reason to think that it will hold this record until humanity ceases to record history. It is also one of the few wars in which the losers wrote as much or more of the history as the winners. Nearly everybody who survived wrote memoirs (with the disappointing exception of Robert E. Lee), and of course most of them tried to make themselves look good (and their opponents look bad). The Southerners wrote such a huge number of works that it became known as the "Lost Cause" school of writing, and the textbooks of the great majority of Southern schools followed the line. George C. Marshall once remarked that when you compared Northern and Southern books it was hard to realize they were about the same war.

When I first started the thread, I only expected to write until the bombardment of Fort Sumter. (Or even less, since many of my other threads ended up locked.) I thought that the ground had already been well-covered by better writers than myself, and indeed there have been some superb works over the years. But the encouragement I received, and the realization that there was also an enormous amount of biased and less-than-accurate writing on the subject made me decide to keep going. One of the reasons for my including so many of the speeches and documents of the time is that the writing during the war is more trustworthy than the writing after the war. (e.g. the contemporary accounts of the Fort Pillow massacre compared with later material.)

In a real sense, the struggle over the Civil War is not over. The questions of "why?" and "what did it all mean?" are very much with us. I take a certain amount of pride in contributing to the ongoing effort; no one can honestly claim to be completely unbiased, but I attempted to report fairly on both the battlefields and the chambers where decisions were made.

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805