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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (119721)	12/27/2000 3:35:13 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Slavery was the immediate cause of the Civil War – Part Three By the late 1850’s the slavery issue had become explosive, with riots occurring over it in some western territories. Indeed open brawls over slavery happened in the U.S. Senate. On May 19-20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered an anti-slavery speech in the United States Senate. A few days later, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a cousin of Sen. Andrew Butler, whom Sumner ridiculed in this speech, beat Sumner senseless with his cane on the floor of the Senate. (see members.aol.com When the anti-slavery Republican presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected to office, many Southerners were shocked, having little thought him a viable candidate. By 1860, many Southern leaders began to advocate secession purely because Lincoln had won office. Their primary concern was the preservation of slavery. encarta.msn.com (section II) Many rebel supporters refer to actions and quotations by President Lincoln and General Grant to prove the nature of the Confederate Cause. They also refer to the lack of slave ownership by many who fought for the Confederacy, as well as the views of Robert E. Lee and other such people. It is true Lincoln appears to the uninitiated something of an enigma on the slavery issue. And most of those who fought for the Confederacy, being but poor butternuts, did not personally own slaves (though, assuming that most Southern children, and even women did not officially own slaves, when the total number of slave owners is compared to the total number of families by state, a truer picture of southern slavery emerges. The number of slave owners as a fraction of families is as follows: in Alabama 35% of families owned slaves, in Arkansas 20%, in Florida 34%, in Georgia 37%, in Kentucky 23%, in Louisiana 30%, in Maryland 13%, in Mississippi almost half, in Missouri 13%, in North Carolina 28%, in South Carolina 46%. In Tennessee, Texas and Virginia the numbers of families owning slaves was 25%, 29% and 26% respectively. Essentially, about one third of the families in the South owned slaves, and that is quite significant.) (See fisher.lib.virginia.edu Nevertheless referring to such men and facts to give meaning to the Confederacy is to appeal to inappropriate authority. The least perceptive individual will readily see the defect in relying upon Union leaders and soldiers to determine the Confederate purpose. And whatever their beliefs, soldiers are but rooks, bishops and pawns. At the very best they are but queens. One cannot study meaning and philosophy by observing such pieces. One must study the king-- more accurately, those who control the king. The average soldier fighting in Desert Storm owned no oil refineries and had no real interest in Kuwait. Indeed the top soldier in the country at that time (Colin Powell) even lobbied against engaging the Iraqis. Yet he and other American soldiers did engage them. As was the case with the Confederate butternut, they fought for personal glory, to eliminate boredom, from curiosity, peer pressure, machismo, naïveté and duty. The net effect was that they fought for their country, the rulers of which determined when and for what they fought. To find meaning then, we must refer not to grunts and butternuts, but primarily to rulers. To find Confederate meaning, we must refer to the views of those who crafted the philosophy and political infrastructure that propelled and sustained the Confederacy. We must give attention to the purposes of those who had power to make the decision to secede. (Continued…)