Nice essay, that was a great read Trope.

This knife cuts both ways. I think while many people were attempting to rehabilitate the South with arguing that the Civil War was about States' Rights and not Slavery, what they unfortunately ended up doing was making the "States' Rights" term be understood as code for "anti-Civil Rights". I say unfortunately, because I think there's a lot of merit in giving States more rights, although obviously there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.

Different people fight fought the Civil War for different reasons.   Some, e.g. Robert E. Lee, fought for their state and not for the priniciple of states' rights or for slavery.  Lee thought of himself as a Virginian and so defended his state.  That is what happens during war.  If some idiots start a war and the loss of said war threatens your own people and property, likely you will sign up to defend it.  Look what happened to Lee's property.   

As far as I can tell, the same hot heads on both sides are still around; still enjoy stirring things up; and still do not want a peaceful resolution  It is let's you and him fight with them.  Ignoring their bait does not seem to work all that well and I do not know what else to do. 

As for the states' rights issue.   I thought the European Union would eventually be confronted by it and might even manage to resolve it amicably.   In a way, the financial crisis has brought elements of it out but I do not think the EU is yet sufficiently federalized to consider what is happening comparable to our own somewhat unresolved states versus federal rights conflicts.

I don't think it was just the civil war and the loss of slavery that pissed off the south so much. Reconstruction which put very heavy limits on what the south could do, taking away land and giving it to freed slaves and restrictions on who could hold office did as well.

And make no mistake reconstruction was as much about punishment of the south for having the impertinence to leave the union in the first place.

I think you've said it much more carefully and nicely than I would, but your point is absolutely spot on:  the idea that people who consider themselves liberals would join in the century-long project to whitewash slavery out of discussions about the Civil War, and to portray the North as the more morally culpable side in that war, is mind-boggling. 

And the fact that most of those joining in the whitewashing, and arguing for a more nuanced view of that history, are the same individuals who denigrate the current president for failure to ram through their agenda, and for his penchant for taking all points of view onto account, should give rise to a psychological treatise. 

First off, just let me say, SLAVERY SLAVERY SLAVERY. Slavery, first, last and only. (There. That should keep the loons of my case.)

In discussing this question, I find - for certain fairly obvious reasons - that Americans have (because of their experience) almost completely welded together the issues of:

1) Secession/Union, and,

2) Slavery.

Canadians have had to think these issues through separately, so it gives the debate a different feel from here. But the logic seems clear to me:

Yes, the Southern States pulled out of the Union, seceded, because of slavery. So slavery was absolutely central to the historical dynamics of the launching of the Civil War. And to most folk, they then feel happy in jumping to the conclusion that - "Slavery caused the Civil War."

But. And I say this NOT in defence of some goofy Rightwing position, or because I'm personally pro-slavery (gee....), but because, there is a simple piece of logic here:

Namely, that secession can be treated as its own issue. This has happened many times before and will again, where secession and slavery are not welded together. Nations can simply split. Civil War is not a logical requirement.

Now, if secession had been treated as its own issue, then it is entirely possible that the North could have said to the South, "We Northern states are against slavery, and have abolished it locally. Now you Southern states are separating. That's fine, that's your right - just as we all separated from Britain. But although we don't think you should keep slavery yourselves, that's now no more our concern than would be the ongoing existence of slavery in Canada. Because you are no longer part of our political decision-making processes."

So, in order to "cause" a Civil War, you needed - in a really central way - not just for slavery to exist, but for the North to take a certain stand ON THE UNION AND SECESSION. The North could have simply let the South go, and lo and behold, slavery would NOT have "caused" a Civil War.

And yes, I think slavery was the driving force in this story, one which spun out dozens of problems and dynamics that sooner or later appear likely to have come to a head. But could it have caused the War without Union and Secession issues? Not likely. To be blunt, and please do stop and think about this, if Canada (not part of the Union), had had slaves in 1860, would it have led to a War? Not likely. That could easily have been the case with the Southern colonies.

I would say is that slavery was the primary reason for the Civil War, absolutely. Without slavery, there would almost certainly have been no sufficient other cause for a Civil War. But it was the fact that it slavery came to an end in one part of a political Union, and not the other, with the two players forced into close quarters and joint decision-making, and one side unwilling to break that bond, which enabled the War. Because if both sides had said, "Bye bye to the Union, best we were all left to our own devices," then no Civil War.

When you add in the grand history and the historic and moral claims that both North and South had made, together, as they fought - and died - for independence and human rights and democracy, you can see how each side needed to claim the high moral ground, claim high principle. And then... I think a measure of pure personal/religious morality, a willingness to fight to end the evil of slavery, came into play amongst significant numbers of those who fought. 

Enough people in the North cared about the freedom of the slaves to tip the balance. 

And for me, I see the story as somehow BETTER, by being driven by moral impulses amongst significant numbers of Americans, a desire to free the slaves or end slavery - rather than just by some legalistic desire to "preserve the Union," which has always seemed to me to be the weakest moral ground possible.

A large amount of the debate about what the war was about revolves around complicity. Given that slavery is evil, determining how much the participants of the conflict were committed to its destruction or preservation cannot adequately measure the extent the institution was integrated into a trans-Antlantic economy and cultural movement. That isn't to say that making distinctions between degrees of complicity is unimportant; It is to say that no sum of those parts will equal the whole.

The structure of very large very bad institutions replicate themselves through coercive participation. That doesn't mean everyone loses the right to choose but that even exercising that will can play a part in perpetuating the rejected institution.

As has been mentioned above, England was a major participant in the slave economy even though they outllawed it in their own society well before the Americans did. This is an example of what I call sending shit to the periphery.

The form of the plantation system was completely realized in the "West Indies" before it expanded through the American South.  Some have described the expansion as the only way for sons to follow fathers in their vocation without resorting to direct Oedipedal scenes of the sort generallly frowned upon by the various iterations of the Angican fold. (See Faulkner for further details).

The violence of the Civil War did't begin with the secession of the Southern States but in Kansas and Missouri. The shit being sent to the periphery encountered another expanding force.  When the Civil War ended, the "Indian wars" became the next affair of arms for the winners. That is a clue to one of the insults felt by carrying out the Reconstruction, the South as a new Frontier. Maybe Grant should be considered the first modern president, remodelling society through Federal power.

The old conflicts turn into new conflicts. The shit keeps being sent out to the furthest possible distance from the center. The frontier changes all the time. One way to read that is through Ralph Ellison: We become the periphery and the brightly lit room holding the invisible man.

Is any recap of this thread possible?  As it dribbles and gasps into obscurity, I feel oddly dissatisfied.  The OP put it up asking this question:

“Another way to put it:  People’s understanding of the past reveals their socio-political agenda.  And all too often in the blogosphere threads we will assume we understand the agendas being revealed, agendas that make our blood boil.  Maybe we are correct, maybe not.  But we rarely discuss that assumption.  Instead we just launch back responses generated out of anger or frustration.”

After reading and participating on this thread, I would also add that comments are about current perceptions of commenters, even if only based from experiences at the Café; perceptions of geographical origins, racial identification, or the acute need to pigeon-hole a commenter/commenters.

I thought I might sorta dead-blog it (as opposed to ‘live-blogging it’) and allow you to smack me around about what I get wrong, or you find offensive, inaccurate,  or whatever…

I find that in so many ways our comments sorta proved his point, and that leaves me wondering if anyone really learned anything new, either about history, or about ourselves as we made our points.  Please allow me to be a little on the snippy side; there is some irony that begs caricature, IMHO.

One strong theme went like this: ‘The cause of the Civil War was slavery, no ifs, ands, or buts, get your head straight, and anyone who says…”  Well; until the purveyors of that position admitted without fanfare that ‘there were underlying….la la la…’

Then we had the rage about ‘people here who want to whitewash slavery out of the Civil War’, which I did not see one soul advocating.  Who????  Oh; the same folks pissed at the President or something.  I can only advise: read the thread again; nothing here like that here, but you see what you want to see.

Then the blending of ‘all roads of underlying the War are either about Slavery or Anti-slavery’.  Okay, that’s cool.  But not good enough for some participants. 

And the ‘secession is a separate issue’ or couldda been’; I like that, but it just ain’t satisfying to those who see them indelibly entwined, no sir.  States rights are a dodge, always have been and now stand for Confederate Bullshit.  Mebbe.

A few brave souls said it was about economics, land grabs, economics and expansion of the Union.  Oddly, not one of them got their clocks wiped.  Why?  No former history?  That’s my guess.  Or the dissenters were absent?  Nah.

This one series of exchanges keeps bothering me.  About whether or not some slaves from some roasting hot and humid area might have almost enjoyed a visit to ‘the Hamptons’ with his/her ‘masters’.  Now I get it sounds almost disgusting on the surface, but wait.  Think.  Imagine how in life many things are experienced and compared to what’s the norm in daily life.  I kept imagining that somewhere there are actually a story or two laid down in which a writer remembers her grammy telling her just that.  A brief reprieve, valued for a suspension of everyday hardship and heat and sweat…I swear I could write it believably. 

But instead, it stood as the icon for a dickish Southern slavery apologist (now I admit he may be a dick about other stuff, like Free Trade deals…but still.   ;o)

Along the way, I was told Lincoln’s thoughts on slavery were fairly irrelevant, and I thought ‘WTF’?

'Can' t reason with idiots' or something made it in.

Disagreement arose over what rights Lincoln had to enforce holding the Union together…or not.

And last, I thought I read a sense of moral superiority from those who would brook no nuances, and kept to the ‘the North fought the War on moral grounds’.  Again; it made me think the OP was right on the money.

For some, it’s a relatively academic conversation, for some, it defines our identities.

It would be interesting to hear from you, too, Trope.   ;o)

What do you experience when you hear this tune by The Band, for instance?

I find this thread fascinating. First and foremost for what I'm learning about the war. And secondly as a case study in what Trope was talking about.

Most simply put, there are two kinds of restraints we should be putting on our dialectical impulses. On the one hand not to make the fundamental attribution error, not to put one's opponents arguments and positions down to his or her character flaws - in this case, not to thread together the search for nuance on the Civil War question with opposition to the President in ways that insinuate it's all just motivated by (or skewed by) some unnoticed back-burner bigotry, as Brew does. On the other hand these "seekers of nuance" should be aware of the kind of narrative they are allying themselves with. To claim merely a curiosity concerning historical accuracy is naive at best, and sometimes deliberately dissembling.

To take the most flagrant case, in the middle of a discussion of how the northern states had laws against treating people as property which inconvienced southern slaveholders on holiday in the Hamptons, Desi argues against these laws on the basis that they prevented also the said property - the slaves - from enjoying a nice summer at the beach. Sure, I mean one could argue that maybe modern east-european sex slaves sometimes enjoy it when they're taken out of the basement and taken for a ride, so lets throw that on the table as well shall we as we discuss the nuances of the sex trade? And when someone finds it offensive that such details - perhaps true perhaps not, dunno lets go rent a sex slave so we can ask her - are injected into the conversation, it is doubly offensive when the response is those feelings are slapped down as mere oversensitive political correctness. There are some choices of details, facts, formulations, that get thrown in and are far from constructive. They are clearly chosen for the heat they carry, and not the light they shed on the matter at issue. Labeling all outrage at such choices as political correctness does more harm to the political discourse than the excesses of political correctness itself ever did. Such choices tend to signal that one's aim is to rile up one's opponent rather than arrive at some constructive mutual understanding.

I don't mean to single out Brew and Desi here, but I find it more respectful to say outright who I have in mind when offering examples of certain claims than to make vague broad-brush claims. Hope no one gets offended. And I'm sure Brew and Desi have got their big-boy pants on today and can take it. To which I should add that my own comments about the North as aggressor and the rest of it may be seen as offensive as well, but one is always most oblivious to what lies behind one's own perspective and how that perspective is perceived from other angles. So apologies if any offense was caused.

that's all I got.

Slaves, Seminoles and the Obama DoD in the news:

From Emptywheel:

Carol Rosenberg has been tracking another telling example of the Obama Administration’s flexible interpretations of terrorist-like activity: DOD’s citation of a legally suspect ruling about an attack on Seminoles as precedent for trying material support for terrorism in military commissions.

In other words, our government is siding with slavery, genocide of Native Americans, and Andrew Jackson’s illegal belligerency–it is citing our own country’s illegal behavior–to find some support for the claim that material support is a military crime."

Wow.

I posted the poll because I wanted to include it when I saved the entire post to One Note.

There were some interesting links that I wanted to save. The CNN article just added some new polling data. I figured the post was dead, that's why I didn't include a link.

Just plugging the post into One Note. Have a nice day.