If DU was around at the time of the Civil War....?

[kentuck]

After John Brown's rebellious act, after Ft Sumter was fired on by Southern troops, after Lincoln suspended "habeus corpus", after the first Battle of Bull Run, how would you have reported it? Consider that Lincoln was about as hated by some people then as George W Bush is now. He was not a popular President everywhere. And it was not really about slavery. That was an issue that came about much like Bush's "democracy for Iraqis" came about - after the fact. How would you have reported it?

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. I think, in the case of the Civil War, it would have depended upon

where one grew up. More so than current events. That war was on our own soil...and it involved all of us (ancestor-ly speaking) in a visceral way.

It's impossible IMO to answer something truthfully in hindsight.

[jhrobbins]

2. This is absolutely the case, because I grew up in South Texas..

and I have relatives that still fight the Civil War - excuse me, the War Between The States (as I have been reminded a million times). I'm not sure what they have against the term Civil War, but they prefer the other- no, they demand the other actually.

[damntexdem]

7. Don't you mean 'The War of Northern Aggression'?

At least that's how some of my older relatives from the South used to refer to it, although I don't hear that nowadays in north Texas.

[jhrobbins]

22. Thank you - that is another one I heard a million times too

[kentuck]

24. Do you think some thought it was truly "Northern aggression"?

:) Why would they think that? Since both sides were fighting on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, hence "Dixie"...Remember Gettysburg?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. the same damn way... I'd have attacked suspension of Habeas Corpus...

Jumped in to defend freedom and equality for EVERYONE,

INCLUDING GAY/LESBIAN PEOPLE

and cried about the war a lot, just like Lincoln did.

[damntexdem]

4. Well, as a Democratic Party site, it would likely have been very critical of Lincoln.

But what if it were Protectallrights.com? Chances are, antislavery sentiment would drive support for the Union in the war, whatever Lincoln thought the purpose of the war was. However, chances also are that concern for rights, including habeus corpus, would have led to criticism of the suspension of habeus corpus.

A better question would be what if DU had been around during WWII, when the government interned Japanese Americans. I would like to think that, notwithstanding strong support for all the progressive things that FDR had done and militant support for the war against fascism, majority sentiment on DU would still have been to condemn the internments.

Now, I'll go back to what I whimsically thought when I first read the question: Wow, if depleted uranium were around during the Civil War, Lincoln would have been sorely tempted to use DU munitions against Confederate troops; but I would like to think that he would have not used nuclear weapons (implied by the existence of 'depleted' uranium) on Southern cities. ;-)

[LeftHander]

12. And Colonel Angus...nt

[applegrove]

5. I read a stat that almost 1 in 9 USA families owned a slave in 1790.

That is 47,664 out of 410,636 American families were slaveowners. Too bad the DU wasn't around then. But it was the same in so many places. Was still another twenty years till Britain made slavery illegal.

Facts and figures on Page 269 of the book - Benjamin Franklin, An American Life by Walter Isaacson.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. I wouldn't be on DU.

I'd be dead, wounded, or still fighting for the Union.

That said, I'd be supporting Lincoln, and skeptical about his suspension of habeus corpus.

I think it's a terrible comparison to compare abolition with "democracy for Iraqis."

People were really for abolition, including Lincoln. Bush doesn't give a fiddler's fart about Iraqis or democracy.

[kentuck]

11. There is no proof that Lincoln gave a 'fiddler's fart" about slavery...

In fact, I think there are reports to the contrary. However, I posted this to try and get people to understand a little different perspective of our history. Just because the Civil War happened before any of us were born, it seems like ancient history to all of us. In fact, it was not that long ago in the scheme of things. Yong folks that post here think of the Vietnam War in the same context. If it didn't happen in our lifetimes, it was ancient history. There were some people still living from the time of the Civil War when many of us were children. The generations over-lap and give a false sense of time in historical context. It was not that long ago.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Baloney.

Yes, Lincoln was wishy washy on slavery before and during a part of his slavery.

But Lincoln became an adamant abolitionist during the course of the war.

[kentuck]

17. Yes, I think that is true...

But Bush became an adamant "pro-democracy in Iraq" during the course of his war also. We can only know what we have read about the civil war and from an historian's perspective.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. Now that's total bullshit.

[kentuck]

19. Well, thanks for your informed opinion..

:)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. You're welcome.

Now...

Did Gandhi really want the British to oppress the Indians?

and

Did Rosa Parks really want to sit at the back of the bus?

[kentuck]

29. And what's your opinion of Rebel flags?

??

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

30. They're basically swastikas.

What's your opinion on swastikas?

[kentuck]

32. I think it's also a Buddhist symbol...

for happiness.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. You must be right.

Look at all the happy buddhists.

[kentuck]

34. You must love the History Channel?

judging from your collection of artwork?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

35. Never watch it. Do you?

judging from your knowledge of history?

[kentuck]

38. tit for tat..

tat for tit...

[eallen]

8. It was about slavery. Don't swallow the Lost Cause propaganda....

In the decades just prior to the war, American politics was focused on the issue of slavery. The division of the nation into free states and slave states heightened rather than muting the political conflict. Free states did not want to be involved in enforcing slavery or returning escaped slaves. Slave states wanted to maintain their half representation in the senate. Battles were fought over the issue of whether new states would be free or slave. That's why Kansas was bloody.

The Republican Party was founded under the principle of limiting slavery: no more slave states, no more federal concessions to it, and economic policy oriented to free working men. The GOP slogan in its first presidential campaign was "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont," the last being the name of their candidate. When Lincoln was elected, the south knew that they had lost their political struggle to maintain a place for slavery in the US. No, Lincoln did not and would not issue an emancipation proclamation prior to the War. But the writing was on the wall. And that was reason for secession.

[kentuck]

13. Since none of us were there at the time...

We can only choose to believe what we have read in our "history" books. None of us can state so matter-of-factly that we know for sure what was happening and what the majority of people may have thought about it. We can only interpret the history we have read.

[H2O Man]

27. There are plenty of sources

from that era that make very clear that slavery was indeed central to the Civil war.

[eallen]

40. 19th century US was literate. We know as much what people thought then, as what people think now.

I only know what you think, by virtue of reading the words you write. The works of antebellum American writers fill many libraries. Anyone with an interest can read: the volumes written by the abolitionists, the laws passed in southern states banning abolitionist literature, the newspaper clippings on contemporary events, the plans by Confederate leaders to reintroduce slavery into Mexico and the Caribbean, the many tracts, sermons, and books written by southern defenders of slavery, the disputes between northern and southern Baptist churches over the Biblical view of slavery, that eventually led the Southern Baptists leaving the Triennial Convention in 1845, the Congressional debates leading to the Missouri compromise, and later to the Kansas-Nebraska act, the diaries of individuals caught up in the politics of the time, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the writings of Frederick Douglass, and much, much more.

Yes, history is complex. Yes, it admits a variety of interpretations. But no, you don't have to rely solely on your history books to know what people were thinking in 19th century America. They left us their own words.

[kentuck]

41. That is true..

also true that history is complex. Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Bookmarked for later ...

I've had *massive* discussions centered on this what-if, but it's always included a lot of conservatives (real ones) and more liberal folk, but people who have a professional interest in Civil War era politics and history generally and approach the question from a somewhat unique angle that those politics might not suggest, which yields interesting results.

After work, I'll have to check back and see where this goes.

[meegbear]

10. I'd proably be connected on one of these ...

or this ...

[swimmernsecretsea]

15. This kind of hypothetical presupposes that the circumstances are identical

or at least similar. They are not, with almost too many details to mention. Yes, indeed, Lincoln was hated by some during his term, and it has been argued that the slavery issue was considered of less importance than the divided union. However, we are talking about a country under civil war, our own, not the US intervention of a foreign soil, in a conflict that has killed our soldiers for reasons that are arguably, false. Slavery was a deciding factor in the choice of civil war, despite some who would lessen the importance of it.

Presidents have had their critics through the ages, and some of the most beloved ones have been honored later after their term ended. President Truman, of the "buck stops here" motto, had an extremely low approval rating. When Kennedy was in Dallas, an editorial was launched by a local newspaper against him. Reagan is called "the great communicator." What is different? Perhaps not much. Perhaps history will suggest that George W. Bush was a great leader, but I sincerely doubt it. His term has been marked by frequent scandal, duplicity, political parties in a wartime situation that were increasingly divided and antagonistic, erosion of personal liberties, acceptance of torture and suspension of due process...the list is long.

What is different now, is that we have open discussion of it through public forums such as this one. There, words, pictures and actions can be reported on on a national level. Edward Curtis, during the Civil War, photographed the corpses of troops killed in battle and left to rot on the field. That had some influence, but not on the worldwide level it does now. And that has proven to be a point of irritation for the current administration, as attempts to "rewrite history" and block reporting, such as preventing photographs of the flag-covered coffins of our US casualties in Iraq show.

We have a dishonest administration, whose need to be become the very states that we would occupy is what I would report. Suspending the thought that the situations and history are so far apart, I still wouldn't have reported the same during Lincoln.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. It was about slavery. The "states rights" being fought for was for slavery.

The cry for secession didn't come about with the advent of Lincoln. It had been smoldering for decades. And, it was always about slavery. The question had been there since the revolution and the Declaration of Independence had to be adjusted to keep the south in line by retreating on the question. The nullification debates even led President Andrew Jackson to threaten John C. Calhoun, and the other nullifiers who championed states rights to protect slavery, with hanging.

Lincoln wasn't hated for suspending habeus corpus. The populace was restive because of the incompetent generals who managed to lose battle after battle against usually inferior Confederate armies. But, when Grant took over, despite the utter carnage of the battles, he won. So did Lincoln.

[underpants]

20. 1/3 of us would have supported the East, 1/3 the West , and...

the other half would have been preoccupied with a breast feeding thread.

[kentuck]

21. yep...

:)

[ThomWV]

23. I'm Glad To See Someone Who Understands How Small A Part Slavery Played

as a cause to the civil war. It was about far more than slavery and in fact slavery was just a rallying call used to incite two different ends of the northern and western political spectrum. Slavery as an issue in the civil war was far more about new states entering the union with a slave- or non slave- status. There was also a false issue of the times that insinuated that Ohio and Pennsylvania might both become slave states if the unruly south were not brought back into line.

As long as slavery myths are on the table here's another one. There is some notion that slaves were only considered to be 3/5 of a man for voting purposes. Somehow people seem to think that meant that for every 5 slaves voting in the same way only 3 votes would be indicated. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What it meant that is if a man who had the vote also had a slave his vote would then be worth 1.6 votes. Black men did not have suffrage at some lessened degree - it was that white men who had slaves had even greater voting power with witch to insure the safety of slavery as an institution. It was worse than most people thought.

[verse18]

25. If DU was around back then,

I wouldn't be able to say much about the situation considering I would have been a slave on someone's plantation.

[kentuck]

26. Thanks for putting it in perspective, verse18..

:)

[grizmaster]

31. I would have been on the side of the North

and against Lincoln suspending habeus corpus.

[Orsino]

36. White men fighting over the land they stole.

Women and people of color were not contacted for this story.

[hfojvt]

37. John Brown was certainly about slavery

and I think the Republican party was strongly abolitionist as well. I think Lincoln was pragmatic about it, hoping for a way to end slavery which would not destroy the Union or cause a war.

I'm not sure why you want to compare racists and supporters of slavery who hated Lincoln, to those of us who hate Bush for being a liar and stooge for the rich and corporate interests as well as a warmonger/war profiteer. Which are you trying to say, that they were right to hate Lincoln, or that we are wrong to hate Bush?

[kentuck]

39. I believe...

that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle of your comments. Lincoln may not have been as pure as history may have depicted and the South may not have been as evil as portrayed. History says that Lincoln saved the Union. But he almost destroyed it in the process. I'm not certain that everyone that hated Lincoln were "racists or supporters of slavery"? Were they right to hate Lincoln and are we wrong to hate Bush?? History will let us know.

[hfojvt]

42. Yet history has already decided on Lincoln

and you wanna revise it? Based on what - a southern POV? I grew up with one of those. I still think, for example, that William T. Sherman was a terrorist. I grew up liking Lee and Stonewall and despising Grant, even though it turns out he is related to me, and I have a great great grandfather who died in Andersonville. I did not think about slavery.
I expect Bushists to try to write their own revisionist history. Of course, they believe we are the liars, and that our statements are just lies motivated by hate. I'm dealing in math though, in regard to the tax cuts, and I don't think the math is deceiving me. Objectively, Bush has been lying about that since 1999. No historian can HONESTLY say otherwise.

[kentuck]

43. I believe the victors write the history...

always have and always will. I suppose we have read much the same history.

[hfojvt]

44. the victors did not write the history of John Brown

"In the 1920s the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of Union veterans, complained that American history textbooks presented the Civil War with 'no suggestion' that the Union cause was right. Apparently the United Daughters of the Confederacy carried more weight with publishers. The UDC was even able to erect a statue to the Confederate dead in Wisconsin, claiming they 'died to repel unconstitutional invasion, to protect the rights reserved to the people, to perpetuate the sovereignty of the states'. Not a word about slavery, or even disunion.

History textbooks still present Union and Confederate sympathizers as equally idealistic. The North fought to keep the Union together, while the Southern states fought, according to "The American Way," 'for the preservation of their rights and freedom to decide for themselves.' Nobody fought to preserve racial slavery; nobody fought to end it. As one result, unlike the Nazi swastika, which lies disgraced, even in the North whites still proudly display the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy on den walls, license plates, t-shirts, and high school logos. Even some (white) Northerners vaguely regret the defeat of the 'lost cause.' It is as if racism against blacks could be remembered with nostalgia. In this sense, long after Appomattox, the Confederacy finally won."
"Lies my teacher told me" pp 192-93

[DivinBreuvage]

46. The victors certainly did not write the history of the Civil War

Unless by "victors" you're speaking of white Southerners who triumphed over Reconstruction.

The North quite clearly won the war and everybody knew it. Northerners had no need to refight the conflict in books after the fact; indeed, one Civil War historian (I can't remember whom, unfortunately, as I read the comment some time ago) has stated that for about 20 years after Appomattox the North manifested a strong desire to forget about the war's unpleasantness altogether and focus on a happier future latching onto as much money as possible in an economy that was booming from industrialization and westward expansion. It was only after time had soothed memories to a bittersweet nostalgia that the war revived in the Northern consciousness and veterans sought to reminisce and recapture the cameraderie of their youth.

In the South, on the other hand, the signs of loss and ruin were everywhere; its economic resources were devastated; there was nothing whatever to celebrate; and the literate gentry of the South, steeped in a planter aristocracy culture in which God was both the original proponent of slavery and the staunchest defender of the Southern cause, a culture in which it was almost a scientific principle that one high-born Southern cavalier was worth ten Yankee mudsills or mongrel hirelings, had in the anguish and disillusionment of their utter defeat to find answers and explanations for it, and from their pens erupted a torrent of justifications, excuses, and apologiae which, still being carried on by their spiritual descendants, has never ceased down to the present day.

This relentless propagandizing was never matched by an equivalent response from the victorious and mellow North, and as a result the Southern cavalier mythology has infected the American psyche to such a deep and pervasive extent that it haunts us still. In the early 20th century you hear it echoing in the voices of Woodrow Wilson and H. L. Mencken; you see it shimmering on the silver screen in Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. Today it is reflected by (among other things) the fact that even on forums or blogs like DU, where a majority of the posters are progressive Northerners, you frequently find many of these same progressive Northerners asserting as a matter of common knowledge that:

John Brown was insane, a terrorist, or both, who viciously murdered innocent men in Kansas for no reason at all;

the Civil War had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery;

Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant, and had no interest at all in the moral or social ramifications of slavery;

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were great military heroes of which all Americans can be proud, whereas Sherman was a war criminal and Grant was a butcher;

The Civil War could have been avoided if men of reason had ignored the extremists and been able to compromise;

The only reason the North won was because it had more men and materiel.

[sweetheart]

45. The war itself would have been transformed

Not DU per se, but the internet technologies. The official records of the civil war are telegraphs between
commanders, some taking months to arrive. In this tide of darkness, a war was fought in the fog, where
the war fighters themselves did not know what was up. To postulate an internet then, doesn't work.