On Mon, 1 Jan 2001, Dan Minette wrote:
> --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Actually, no. During the Civil War, everyone, North and South, >called it
> >the Civil War. The term War Between the States arose >after the Civil War
> >at the behest of a group of Southern historians ->the Lost Cause school,
> >essentially, who went on and on endlessly >about the nobility of the
> >Southern cause and how the war had to be >fought and so on.
>
> When was that? I thought that Southerners thought of things in these terms
> for a very long time. If it�s from 1900, 100 years is still close.
They have - the Lost Cause people were aides and subordinates of Lee
himself. The initial ones, anyways. The term War Between the States was
coined by them, after the war. But during the war, Lee himself (for
example) referred to the war as the Civil War.
> In what sense legitimate? My high school history teacher taught that, while
> the South was on very shaky moral grounds, the Declaration of Independence
> would tend to support the idea that the Union was entered into voluntarily
> by independent states and that there were legitimate grounds for breaking
> such a union.
It's debatable, obviously. That school of history, however, in general
argued that the war was fought over economic concerns on the part of the
south, and in general attempted to de-emphasize the overwhelming
importance of the slavery issue. Ironically enough, that position has now
been adopted by the far left of American historians, who similarly are (in
my opinion) ideologically motivated to deny that the Civil War was, in the
end, fought entirely about slavery. Probably the best book on this topic,
incidentally. is Freeling's _Prelude to Civil War_, which looks at the
South Carolina secession crisis during the Jackson Presidency, which was
ostensibly about the tariff, and quite conclusively shows that it was, in
fact, a proxy fight over slavery.
> Were there other documents that supported the idea that it was impossible to
> leave the Union? I don't remember that being explicitly written into the
> Constitution.
>
> I had the understanding that the United States was considered a collective
> before the Civil War, and a single entity after it.
Yes and no. Obviously, it depended on where you're from, to some extent.
I do think that the legal arguments holding that the Union was indivisible
are more persuasive than the Southern ones holding otherwise. It's worth
remembering that the Articles of Confederation did specify that the Union
was perpetual, and the Constitution, after all, was meant to be a
_stronger_ union than the original one. By legitimate, however, I meant
_morally_, as opposed to legally, legitimate the Southern position.
> Well, I stand corrected then. The interpretation that I�ve been taught is
> that it was very fortunate for the South that they lost, that their moral
> position was undefendable. But, forcing the states to stay united at
> gunpoint went against the founding documents of American history. This view
> was held by my Tennessee in-laws, who were definitely not apologists for the
> Confederacy. Indeed, this is the family that received death threats in the
> �50s because Teri�s grandfather worked with blacks.
>
> Dan'm Traeki Ring of Crystallized Knowledge.
At this point, the Lost Cause school has so permeated popular culture that
almost everyone agrees with some elements of it. It will be a generation
before the new (post-Civil Rights movement) scholarship on the war, which
places race issues in their correct, central position, has permeated out
through the population, I would guess. What was taught, even in liberal
places like Harvard, 30 years ago is very different from what is taught
today.
Gautam
