Concerning the Old South...

If you are offended by the picture above, I suggest you stop reading this post. For I am about to embark on a journey of revelation - revelation of the truth. I shall not go into great depth, but I am about to merely myth-bust about our poor old heritage, in particular, the Old South. Lovely, old, antebellum culture, so oft tainted with the sin of slavery, against the pure and courageous Northerners, who, by the way, were totally against slavery and deplored any such horrendous trade... let us explore those notions a little by way of quotes from the people themselves and some informative pictures (for the title of "meme" doesn't quite suit) courtesy of Pinterest...

Hmm. Now there's a strange thing. There is a different in the matter of slavery between a Union and Confederate, and the Confederate's is to the effect of approving the freeing of slaves. Aren't we told that the Union is the party unanimously in favor of abolishing slavery, without the slightest reserve or ulterior motives...? And if leaders on the two sides seem to have differing views from what is common knowledge, how does history work out...? Why would they fight a war for slavery if they didn't necessarily even have strong convictions on it (or even had the opposite convictions of their side!)?

The fact is, friends, that the Civil War was just not about slavery. Holler all you like, or bring up a million contemporary authors, but slavery was simply not the cause of the War.

In fact, as you can see by this quote comparison, both Lincoln (the president residing over the Union) and Davis (the president residing over the Confederacy) said very blatantly that slavery was not only an unessential element in the war, but, rather irrelevant to its motivations and cause as a whole. 

In fact, guess what else? If we are to believe yet another quote (below), the Old South did not even allow the shipping-in of slaves at all (see the Confederate Constitution on that one - you'll find that it's the truth). And the two best-known leaders of the Confederate cause were both against slavery (and Robert E. Lee was also against cessation - I am not positive as to Davis' opinion on the matter). 

Would it surprise you to know that the Union, in fact, attacked the South? Or that the South planned peaceful, diplomatic cessation (a right guaranteed by American law), and that was only in the case that they were not given the representative rights that they were being denied by the Northern States at that time (the real reason for the Civil War)? The reason the Civil War was fought was because, due to trade inequality, population inequality, and prejudice in the military and government, the Southern States were not being diplomatically represented according to the ratio that would have been fair for their influence, people, and part in the Union. Their influence had sunk within ten years from having almost half the representation of the Union to having less than a third (see Chapters One and Two of The Lost Cause, an historic overview on the subject of the Civil War). And, this, may I remind you, was not due to land ratios in North and South, but due to politics begin conducted mostly in and by the North, as well as because of the city condensations there.

Even beyond the fact that the War was not about slavery, many Southerners were staunchly against slavery. Many Southerners favored the unanimous freeing of slaves, in fact, which was more than could be said even for the leaders of the Union (as seen by the fact and quotes below and the Lincoln and Lee quotes above).

So slavery was a "moral and political evil in any country," mmm? At least, that's what Robert E. Lee says. And Lincoln says that our American republic was "meant for homogenous people," and, even more, that "[a]s long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life.... may... challenge the supremacy of the white man." So which is the racist one, may I ask...?

Once more, to disregard even that above fact, the difference in moral character between the North and the South was phenomenal. The Northerners were often secular by comparison, and often reputedly worshippers of the Constitution and American democracy, leading many Europeans to comment that Americans thought themselves the cleverest and best people in the world (see once more The Lost Cause, as well as G.K. Chesterton's Heretics). While there were Northerners who disapproved of slavery, and for and with good reason, those Northerners who owned slaves and those Southerners who owned slaves differed greatly in their treatment of them, even to the point of many African-Americans fighting for the Southern cause (without force many times, I might add). 

Even if I were to pay no heed to that fact as well, the cold, hard truth of the matter is that the Southerners did what they believed was right. And according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, as well as many, many other philosophers, ethicists, and moralists of all types, one must always act according to one's conscience, or else risk doing what one believes wrong; if one believes a thing to be wrong and does it, then, regardless of the actually material morality of the action, one has indeed done wrongly. So, the Southern leaders, in acting according to their consciences (trying to break from the Union, and then defending Southern ground), they were merely avoiding what they firmly believed to be wrong (permitting the underrepresentation of their people and then letting their lands be possibly taken, burnt, and raided). 

The Northerners seemed as invaders to the Southerners. The South had only wished for the peaceable leaving of the Union if they were not given their rights (this was, in fact, what they had requested from the start). And the North declared military attack on them, as if they had rebelled in arms, even earning them the historically incorrect title of "rebels." The Southerners merely saw themselves as acting in self-defense due to this fact.

In the end, what the Civil War comes down to is a cultural fight, between the different sensibilities and politics of the North and South, and a fight over Constitutional rights and the administration of them. Every Southern leader firmly believed this as surely as every Northern leader knew it to be true. Slavery is merely a subplot in this large story arc, I'm afraid, and, wrong or right in their association with it, the South was not ever disillusioned that slavery was what it was fighting for.

There were good things and bad things about both sides of the Civil War, and about the War in general - my focus on defense of the South is only to uproot old rumors. There were bad people in the South, as in the North, and there was slavery in the South, as in the North. But next times you think about the Civil War, do not be so quick to condemn our boys in gray - they are as much a part of our history and our heritage as the blue boys are, and they were not villains, but only human beings fighting for a cause that they believed it... a cause surely not wholly condemnable. 

What did you think? I daresay I have likely bored with three rather politically incorrect posts in a row, but I hope that this one was enlightening. Tell me your thoughts in the comments!