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

To: The Philosopher who wrote (38662)	5/30/1999 11:06:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Okay, fair enough, Christopher. Any historians out there who have a handle on the perceptions of common soldiers in the Civil War, as to what it was really about? The ditties they chanted would probably be very revealing--does anyone have a source for those?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (38662)	5/30/1999 11:58:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, then, let me step into the breach. At its core, the Civil War was about slavery, and the fight was to contain slavery, and only later on to eliminate it. The reason that most Northerners fought against slavery was economic at heart -- slavery represented a competing economic system that was inconsistent with rapid industrialization. If you are arguing that the motivation was based on ideas of racial justice, then I would agree with you. Even the Abolitionists had no notion of racial equality. They simply argued that it was wrong and many believed that the slaves should be returned to Africa. Much of the South's wealth was tied up in an uneconomic plantation system. Slaves accounted for a significant portion of that wealth, but could not be freely traded. Thus, the South was compelled to fight against the tariffs that the industrial North wanted in order to protect its fledgling industries. The South wished to trade its cash crop -- cotton for finished goods from England, while the North wished to use that crop to manufacture textiles. So the stage was set for an economic confrontation based on the system of slavery. While many in the North railed against slavery, there were many in the South who were equally vehement against what they called "wage slavery". A little known fact: Jefferson Davis tried to get the CSA to free slaves who were willing to fight against the North. Another little known fact: the emancipation proclamation was aimed only at rebellious southern states -- not border states where slavery was still legal. Slavery was not ended in these states until the end of the war. An excellent one volume history of the war is MacPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. The book stresses the economic and political dimensions of the conflict, rather than battles won and lost. TTFN, CTC