Gettysburg at 150

One Hundred and Fifty years ago today saw the start of what may have been the most significant battle ever fought on the United States mainland. The only rival, probably, is the Battle of Yorktown, which effectively ended the American Revolution. The three day conflict at Gettysburg seems to be the most important of the two, other than that, without Yorktown, there likely would not have been a Gettysburg. But if we're going to think of history as merely chronological, we aren't really think about it contextually enough. In that sense, let's call Gettysburg the most important of the two.

What has it wrought? That's fairly easy to answer in retrospect: if nothing else, it gave the North enough of a victory to keep the Union in the game. Yet more than that; what has happened as a result of the battle?

Clearly, that the federal government was shown as superior to the several states. That has been a real mixed bag, to say the least. True, it ended slavery. Yet from our vantage point a century and a half later, it seems that Washington has become too powerful because of the War. We are no longer a nation of consensual independent bodies, and with that we don't have the amount of freedom we should.

The real shame is that the South, the Confederacy, had a legitimate enough point in fighting: states' rights. But what went with that call at that time? Human bondage. On the whole, the concept of states rights within our governing system isn't bad; yet it is almost nonexistent anymore. And why? Because it is associated with the South and slavery.

This is exactly the sort of thing which happens when men apply good ideas to bad notions. They become corrupted, even if perfectly rational (as they of course almost surely may be) seen without the taint of evil. In short, when the South went to war for the rights of the states yet with the specter of men and women in chains behind it, it was employing a good point to an evil end, and in very practical terms that has led to the loss of our freedoms today.

We would not have Obamacare today, we would not have abortion so prevalent nor gay marriage forced upon us so totally, without the Civil War, because many of these things would be left to the states. There would be a mix of laws on those and other very important matters, to be sure. But that would also mean that at least some of the states would get things right, and citizens could move into the states which most well stood for what is right and true and where they might hold the hope of one day convincing their peers to emulate them. As it is, it no longer matters, because we have a massive federal establishment telling all of us what to support. It will not be easily swayed, if ever, as it is too strong.

The Confederacy lost the battle and the seceding states lost with it any real ability to control their own destiny. The Union won the battle but, as is famously said in other places, lost the peace, as its member states have lost so much of their power as well. Evil begets evil. We are all, each of us, the poorer for it. That is the real lesson of Gettysburg.