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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (38660)	5/30/1999 11:01:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Christopher, I understand what you are saying. I do think slavery was really bad karma for the United States, and has had a hugely destructive influence on our society, continuing into the present. And there were many "do gooder" and religious types in the North who sincerely supported the war as a way to end slavery, even though there may have been other, more complex issues for the politicians. But what I was saying in my post is that for the mostly poor and unsophisticated soldiers in the ranks, I believe that they thought they were fighting about slavery. Is that true? Has anyone studied what they were being told the war was about, or how they perceived it? Soldiers usually have a very, very simple understanding of the conflict; that is how they are motivated to kill each other, after all.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (38660)	5/31/1999 6:59:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, lets replay the Civil War! There is simply no question that the extension of slavery and political control of Congress lies at the root of the Civil War. In 1857, the Dred Scott Decision not only deprived slaves of any civil rights, but deprived African-Americans of any hope of citizenship. It also overturned the Missouri compromise (of 1820) forbidding Congress from banning slavery in teritories and preventing free states from banning slavery from their territories. This drove the Abolitionists to frenzy -- some of them wanted to succeed. Developments (like the Kansas-Nebraska acts and Bloody Kansas, drove most Southern politicians to frenzy (even though they had won everything and more they could wan't in the Dred Scott decision. Southerner politicians, stupid as any one could be, provoked Lincoln in to preserving the Union. Firing on Fort Sumpter, seizing federal arms and forts in the South were intolerable. Many intelligent Northerners were willing to let the errant brethren go in peace, but they wouldn't go in peace. Lincoln did not want to free the slaves, but his hands were forced by Northern Commanders who put escaped slaves to work and effectively freed them. African-American troops were needed to win the war, at first a trickle, and then many were recruited. Abolitionists (still a minority) pushed Lincoln in emancipation. Note that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in territory in rebellion against the Union (i.e. where the Union writ didn't run). No one really knows the sentiments of Union soldiers about slavery. There were fights and dispiutes between white and black union troops. It is well known that Union troops idealized their mission to free people from slavery, and sang "John's Brown's Body" at every opportunity. In retrospect, anyoine who thinks about that war knows that it started over extension of slavery and ended with its abolition.