Regardless of how some might want to re-characterize it, the the U.S. 
civil war, like any war, was a continuation of politics by violent 
means.

Any survey of the decades leading up to 1860 surely shows that it was 
very much grounded in slavery as an economic and political system - and 
the terms cited in this thread are references to that system.

'States rights' was the code for maintaining legal slavery in those 
jurisdictions where it was established. That was an bloody issue as the 
U.S. formally annexed territory in it's westward expansion. Texas is a 
prime example; the periodically re-valorized heroes of the Alamo 
(Bowie, Crockett, et al) were in fact slavers interested in annexing 
Texas to become a slave state. Consider also the so-called Missouri 
Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, etc.

That the war commenced on the matter of secession only requires that we 
ask why the southern confederacy was formed in the first place - to 
maintain legalized slavery.

Between 1620 and 1860 tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of 
people were kidnapped from Africa and brought to North and South 
America. Millions died during the middle passage. Millions more were 
brutalized, raped, and murdered by their slavemasters in the New World.

What does it mean to characterize the Civil War as a 'tragedy' or an 
'unpleasantness' - to fight to bring slavery to an end?

However this might relate to quaint issues of family loyalty, in the 
afterglow, it is surely superseded by issues of human rights. To 
celebrate or commemorate the cause of slavery at any time, much less in 
2005, is not just questionable, its abhorrent.

In the present-day US political and cultural climate, it is also not 
surprising. For example the U.S. president and central government 
promote the slogan of 'states' rights' - when it suits their agenda - 
and veneer the concept with additional ideological signs such as 
'family values', 'traditional morality', and 'god'.  Meanwhile 
conservative cultural voices advocate a similar prism be used to 
re-interpret the past.

I'd rather not  ...

- L.D.


On Jul 27, 2005, at 12:02 AM, MUSEUM-L automatic digest system wrote:

> Date:    Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:04:30 -0400
> From:    Carol Ely <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Gettysburg and the Sons of Confederate Veterans
>
> The mere fact that it's the "CIVIL WAR" to Northerners and the "WAR
> BETWEEN THE STATES" to Southerners shows that each side had a different
> perception of what the conflict was about.
>
> The war initially was  not about ending slavery, at least not
> explicitly. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 made it about 
> slavery,
> and I think today we tend to adopt that retrospective view of it.
>
> For many Southerners, support was for their state, their community,
> their people, who had - as they saw it - been attacked. It was simple
> loyalty, that they saw as patriotism. Any of us might react the same
> way, regardless of the larger abstract principles involved. I'm not
> denying that ultimately the sense that there were two distinct nations
> within the concept of "America" was due largely to the fact that the
> North and South had different attitudes and laws about slavery. It was
> both about slavery, and about many other factors - AS PERCEIVED by the
> participants.
>
> Today's "Confederate" enthusiasts as individuals have many agendas, 
> from
> overt racism, to basic family loyalty. Some have learned more from the
> past than others. Some organizations may have hidden agendas. But many
> want to make "Confederate" not automatically mean shame, and racism.
>
> The artist is challenging and deconstructing all these meanings. It's
> all very complex. Maybe because I've lived and worked and taught on 
> both
> sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and have ancestors on both sides of the
> "late unpleasantness," the Civil War has come to seem to be an American
> tragedy, in which wrongs are so twisted with rights that none of us
> comes out of it with the right to be self-righteous.

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