The Civil War Drags On

The Civil War, it seems, lives on. More than any other event in our country's history, it has apparently taken on a life of its own. Many events are planned in, well, it doesn't seem right to say commemoration of the clash between the states, as it nearly rent our nation asunder. Yet the War has become something recalled with a fondness which, quite frankly, borders on the bizarre.

It is understandable that conflicts such as the Revolutionary War and World War II are remembered for their courageous stands against tyranny, even to the point of a certain fondness for the bravery of our forefathers. Still, those conflicts arose from circumstances not really of our own doing. We did not, in any direct sense at least, cause British tyranny or the rise of Nazism.

We did, however, fail to satisfactorily address the root cause of the Civil War, slavery, from the very beginning of our Republic. And try as you may, take slavery off the table and we would not have had a Civil War. That there were myriad factors involved which influenced what decision making there was about the issue, sometimes and regrettably made necessary by circumstance, cannot assuage our national guilt about allowing the peculiar institution to continue for so long. The War was over slavery. Period. It is, bluntly and unequivocally, foolish to assert otherwise.

So much so that when you have a gala in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of that State's secession this past December 20th, complete with period costumes, intended to affectionately recall the 'courage' of the then leaders of Palmetto State, one must question the inspiration of the participants. They assert that it was all about State's Rights (an admirable and somewhat forgotten creed in itself) yet it ignores what was the essential 'right' at hand at the time: the 'right' to hold people in bondage.

"We recognize and stated in all the media interviews that slavery was an issue in the war," Mark Simpson, commander of South Carolina's division of Sons of Confederate Veterans said. "But this would be like taking a book that has 10 or 15 chapters and tearing all the chapters out except one. While slavery was an issue, it was by no means what brought about the war."

Such arguments must try the patience of any credible historian. That there even exists such a group as the Sons of Confederate Veterans insults the valor of those who fought them. If there are any heroes from the American Civil War who merit remembrance, they are from the Union. They are the Joshua Chamberlains and not the Robert E. Lees. One was fighting slavery while the other defended it, no matter how much pathos you wish to draw into the picture.

It is high time we Americans stop the incessant, almost pleasant clamor about the heroism of the bad guys in the Civil War and call it what it was: a horrible time in our nation's past, made necessary only by the human avarice of Southern leaders. The North was right: the South was wrong. Remembering the Confederacy in any other light begs the ultimate and final questions of right and wrong which history if it is to mean anything useful at all must answer.

So long as we have apologists for the Confederate States of America we will not be fully reunited. Insofar as we have a much more intrusive Federal Government today we have the South to thank, for many of the things which, in the long run, caused power to be concentrated in Washington deliciously and ironically sprung from the conflict.

So long as people insist that there is heroism in defending evil (however inadvertently) we cannot have a virtuous nation. The only thing to be thankful for is that today's allies of the CSA are less lethal in their defense of error than their great-great-grandfathers. It is small comfort for the believers in true liberty.