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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (9897)	6/14/2001 6:47:44 PM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Cold War Not Over March 12, 2001 wofford.org A simplistic but common notion about the American Civil War was that it was a four-year affair, from 1861 to 1865. The truth is that the Civil War began years before Ft. Sumter. The Missouri and the Kansas-Nebraska debates and battles, church schisms, Dred Scott Decision, John Brown’s Raid, and a dozen other conflicts presaged formal secessions that began with South Carolina in December 1860. In many ways, James Buchanan (1857-1861) could be seen as a “wartime” president. In like manner, the Civil War did not end with Lee’s and Johnston’s surrenders in 1865. The war continued to be fought in law-making, in Reconstruction policies, in court rulings, in political appointments, in books, and in elections for years and years-even until the present day, surviving in dozens of new history books, in state flag debates, in re-enactment associations, and in national elections. Attorney General Ashcroft certainly did not escape the Civil War in his Senate confirmation hearings, nor have the legislatures of South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi avoided it in current flag controversies. Of the four U.S. presidents who have been assassinated, three were linked to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, 16th president (1861-1865) and the commander-in-chief of the Union forces, was shot within a week after Lee surrendered. James A. Garfield, 20th president (1881), who died six months into his presidency after being shot in July, served with valor in Kentucky and Tennessee and was promoted to major general. William A. McKinley, 25 president (1897-1901), shot six months into his second term as president, had risen from a private to a major. From Lincoln in 1861 to Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, every U.S. president except Grover Cleveland (whose two brothers fought while he stayed home to care for their widowed mother) had Union wartime experience. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) was wartime governor of occupied Tennessee. Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) was the Union army’s highest ranking general and commander at the end of all its armies. Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) rose to major general during the war, primarily serving in West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. (McKinley’s service was mostly under Hayes.) Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885) was quartermaster general for New York. Benjamin Harrison was colonel of an Ohio volunteers company. The American Civil War was a seismic event. Its outcomes included far more than a southern defeat and northern victory. It accelerated the pace towards cities and factories dominating the nation instead of villages and farms. It gave dramatic new direction to race relations. It opened up the west. It shuffled the balance of political power. It gave birth to the Republican Party. It advanced transportation industries. It stimulated inventions and patents. It ended American isolationism and prepared America to enter wars on foreign soils. It reconfigured the military establishment. It invigorated capitalism. It gave birth to public universities and land-grant colleges. It gave veterans a powerful voice in government affairs. It set agendas for civil rights for blacks and women that, after stalling mid-way, were revived a hundred years later. It transformed medicine and the food industry. It created dozens of philanthropic causes. It sped up expansion, settlement, and statehood. It led to organized athletics and intercollegiate athletics. It gave a martial beat to church music. It scattered the landscape with historical markers and monuments. It sustained publishing houses with a corps of memoirs writers. And it robbed the nation of a generation of male leaders and left wounds slow in healing upon two sections of the country. After the fiery four-year Civil War came cold civility, still trying to thaw. The real Cold War was not between America and the Soviet Union but between North and South, and there are invisible Berlin Walls of the heart yet to come down in our country. comments: mcgeheelt@wofford.edu copyright 2001, Wofford College, SC --- It also did much to subordinate States' Rights for the next 136 years. FT