I don’t know if I’ve discussed this before or not … If I have, well figure out which one’s written better and ignore the other one, if I haven’t then we’re good.
As some of you know I’ve recently been playing EVE Online, a sci-fi MMO in which the human race, after being cut off from earth and one another by a dark age, have re-developed space flight and made contact with one another. I mention this, not because I plan on writing a full long piece about EVE and the depth of the game, size of the universe, or differences or similarities of the various ‘races’ in the game to modern earth philosophies or governments, but rather because it got me thinking about the American Civil War.
No … I haven’t gone off the deep-end, and in all honesty it was a conversation in the game that got me started thinking, but elements of the backstory of two of the ‘races’ in the game that kept me going. People often look for those ‘turning points’ in history … those points where the directions of things change. And it is by studying those points that we can get an understanding of where we are and where we’re potentially headed.
So … what does this have to do with the civil war … or a sci-fi computer game for that matter?
In short, nothing and everything.
The civil war (yes, I know it’s incorrectly titled, but I’m going to be typing it a lot and ‘civil war’ is shorter and easier than ‘the war between the states’ … and at this point I think that certain battles are already lost and the term civil war is one of them ….) was one such turning point for the United States. So the question is, was it a turn for the better or for the worse?
Before I answer I want you to read the WHOLE answer before flipping your lid and calling me a bunch of nasty names.
As you can probably guess by the preceding sentence, my answer is that, in many ways, it was a turn for the worse in this country. Those of you yelling and screaming and calling me names can now leave the page and I’ll ask you not to return until you can learn to follow directions.
Why the worse? Well to understand that we need to examine a few things … the first of which is why the civil war was fought. No, it wasn’t slavery, it really wasn’t even about ‘preserving a way of life’ which you’ll also hear (since this usually refers to slavery) … that was an issue focused on and used to vilify the south, not the reason for the war.
The civil war was fought over the issue of State Rights …. That is the right of the state to govern itself and its citizens as opposed to being governed by the federal government. The original concept of this country was government on a local level where the further removed from the people the government was, the less power it held directly over those people. Cities towns and villages governed themselves; if a dispute came up between people from different cities then it went to the county or state level, if an issue came up between states then it went to a federal level.
The federal government, however, was starting to encroach on that system on several issues, of which slavery was one, seeking to pass laws that had a greater effect on individuals within the States than was technically within the granted powers of the federal government; with the northern states, which held a population majority, having the balance of power and, thus, effecting the rights of the southern states who didn’t have the political power to oppose them.
So a contingent of southern states withdrew from the union, at first it was a couple of states, and then as the debate increased more withdrew as the federal government said ‘you don’t have the RIGHT to leave, you must abide by our rules.’
Our forefathers must have spun in their graves … had people already forgotten? Did they no longer remember that the war for independence had been fought for the very right for people to govern themselves?
The war itself was, realistically, inevitable … The US Federal government was not going to remove it’s troops from the Confederate States, the Confederate States weren’t going to just roll back over and return to a government that was essentially telling them ‘you’ll do it our way and like it’. In that powder keg of a situation it was only a matter of time before someone blew the top off ….
States rights, however, died before the first shot was ever fired … sure they’ve sputtered up here and there, but ultimately it had already been decided … the states have no rights and, in turn, neither do the citizens of those states. Because, you see, the federal government has set the precedent … you don’t have the right to leave the union unless they let you.
Would things have been different had the war ended differently? Certainly different … better or worse no one can really say. So why did I say better earlier? Look again … I said that the war was a turning point for the worse, not that we would be better off had the outcome been different. The turning point was not the war, but rather the decision to place the power of the federal government above the rights of the States, and to enforce that power through force against an unwilling citizenry.
Since then the federal government has grown ever more powerful taking on more and more of the duties of the state and local governments … directly affecting the lives and liberties of people of whom they have no knowledge nor direct answerability. [Yes, your Senators and Representative are marginally answerable to you, but that’s 2 (of 100) Senators and 1 Representative (of about 430) …. Heck even the voting power of a single State realistically holds minimal pull within the view of the Federal machine.]
This has become considerably longer than I had intended, so I will tie this back into EVE in order to complete the train of thought and bring the discussion full circle. We had been discussing the civil war in Corporate chat one day when it struck me how similar the beginning of the civil war was to the break away of the Caldari State from the Gallante Federation … The Caldari, unhappy with the Federation rule sought the right to govern themselves and when confronted by the Federation declared their independence. A long and bloody war followed with the Federation only withdrawing because of an encounter with another race that threatened to divide their forces. Now the Caldari live, ruled by their mega-corporations with each of the controlling corporations (states) independent of the others but with an equal say in the governing of the whole.
Could it be that the programmers of CCP in Iceland have a better understanding of the American War Between the States than most Americans?
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Views, opinions, and rants regarding the world around us, its impact on us, and ours on it.
6 comments:
Interesing post, but based on some faulty data. The civil war WAS about slavery and only about slavery. I won't go over all there here, read the actual reasons for yourself.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm
But what moved me to write here is a question I've had for a long time: Everybody has a different name for the war in question. What is the difference between 'civil war' and 'war between the states?' Is it just a semantic thing, or is there a real reasoning behind it. I've been 'corrected' after using both terms.
I'll check back in a few days. Thanks.
This difference is that technically speaking a 'civil war' is two or more factions fighting for control of a single government, which was not the case in the "American Civil War" as the Confederate States sought to seperate themselves from the government not control it.
As for the issue of slavery in the withdraw of the southern states I will point out to you the end of the first sentence of your link "that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union."
Yes, slavery was a point of contention, but the fact of the matter is that slavery was, at the time, on the decline in the south due to economic reasons. The fact remains that the Federal government was acting outside its defined authority and declared by its actions that States were not free and independent, but rather 'slaves' to the federal government which was not the intent of the founding fathers in the least.
Got ya. So it's more of a war for independence than a 'war of the roses' type of thing. That makes sense. Thanks.
As to the rest, please read that document with an open mind. That's all. I don't think is says what you think it does. It's more of a 'we're leaving because the states named didn't abide by the federal law' type of thing. In other words, it wasn't caused by a lack of states rights, but by some states (the northern ones) insisting on rights that we don't feel they should have: specifically, the right NOT to have tax funded law enforcement round up another mans chattel. One quote from the time was: "do we have to pay to round up their cattle, too?"
Also, the phrase 'the founding fathers intent' is often bandied about, but the founding fathers were not a monolith. The basic political system was designed by A. Hamilton, who was trying to create a strong fed and was actively against strong states for several reasons, one of which was it could lead to internal war (ironic). His main objection was if we were a strong nation instead of a bunch of little, weaker ones, the British would have more trouble re-conquering America.
Keep you mind open and read a lot is all I'm saying. You would be amazed the things we were taught that were just plain wrong.
Anyway, I didn't want to bicker about all that. I just wanted my question answered and you seemed to have put some thought into it. Thanks.
Trust me, reading and learning history is something that I enjoy, and if I've learned anything in my years is that nothing can be unchallengable. In fact I was tought in school that Slavery was the main issue of the civil war, and yes, it is often cited as such.
What one often finds, however, is that the issue was not as strong as it stands. I point you to the Texas declaration from that same site
"... for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico;"
Speaking of the Federal Governments failure to act on one of it's KEY responsibilities ... the protections of the citizens from external agression. (As a side note it is interesting to see that our border problems and lack of any federal responce to the issue pre-dates the civil war.)
And, actually, I will grant you that if you peel back some of the layers that slavery was also behind other issues ... the issue with the defence of Texas came down to the northern states trying to pressure 'slave' states by denying them federal programs without any legal reason under federal law. And I'm not refering to the rounding up of escaped slaves.
However, none of that was, technically what the war was fought over ... those are the reasons that the southern states succeded from the Union. The war was fought over the ultimate extension of State rights ... the right of a state to be equal to and independent from laws of other States ... in short thier right to leave the Union should it be deemed that the Union was no longer a benifit to the citizens of their State.
And, for the record, Scott, I wanted to take a moment and say welcome. :) Open discourse is always welcome here so I hope that neither of my responses have led you to believe otherwise. I thank you for taking the time to comment and for the link to the site.
Absolutely not. Neither comment offended in any way. I didn't come back right away because... well, I just didn't. I wasn't on the inet for some time.
As to the discussion. I try to be careful with history. When I hear a story that leads me to believe one side of a conflict is 'white' and the other 'black', I automatically doubt it. That said, I do know, from personal family history, that slavery was THE issue for many who jointed the Union army. I have hand written letters from the time. It may not be the only reason, but, for Unionists at least, it was the biggie. The documents I've seen tend to confirm that. I don't really read history text books; I think they distort. I don't say that with venom. People wanted to put the war behind them, so they soft-pedaled some things. After 150 years of soft-pedaling, fact morphed into fiction.
Here is how I see the war. Slavery was an accepted fact of life. Nobody liked it, but everyone accepted it (the same way I hate cannibalism -- of course I hate it from the position of NOT being plane-wrecked in the Andes for more than a year. Were that situation forced on me... who knows? You can accept a lot of immoral stuff when you have no real choice. So, though clearly immoral, slavery was accepted by almost everyone). Then came the industrial revolution. In addition to replacing expensive men with cheap machines, this caused mass migrations and you wound up with a mass of hungry immigrants desperate for jobs at the same time you had slavery. Suddenly, you have a lot of people who would benefit from the abolishment of the peculiar institution. Now, we could afford the luxury of morality.
But, business is business, and you don’t pay workers if you can get the work done for free (or at least cheap, I don’t want to quibble about the price of keeping slaves fed and sheltered), so some — especially, but not exclusively, in the South — resisted what was clearly an inevitable tide of history. This lead to intransigence on both sides. I don’t really believe there were side issues in this, I think the side issues (States Rights, Economic warfare, etc.) were both sides lobbing rocks at each other. They were already hoplessly divided before these issues came up. The issue it was REALLY about was the slave economy vs the industrial economy. Everything else, on both sides, was propaganda. It came to loggerheads. Some parties, mostly in the north, ‘sold’ the conflict as a great moral crusade, making frequent references to Israelites and Egypt. Other parties, especially in the south, ‘sold’ the conflict as ‘and attack on our way of life.’ Lets be blunt, neither were true. Both parties were selling what amounted to a lie. I find it sad and disturbing that it’s the lies that we find in histories, not good analysis of the underling issues.
What I think is truly poignant about all this is: the whole damn war was pointless. The North would have won, even if they lost. The industrial economy was here to stay, we are living in it today (the future? Info economy? Bio economy? Who knows.) Had the south won, they would never been able to compete with the industrial powerhouse that the north would inevitably become. How that would have turned out is fodder for Turtledove novels. We have no real way of knowing.
What strikes me about it is how we think about it today. Northerners like me (I’m from Ohio, btw) say ‘why did the south even bother.’ Southerners say why did the north have to push so hard, it would have happened their way eventually. Both are true, but again, we have the advantage of knowing how it all turned out. What is obvious to us might not have been so obvious at the time.
Anyway, it’s pleasant talking to you. I’ve added your RSS to my reader. Cheers.
Post a Comment