The American Civil War is anything but. Over 150 years ago this April this conflict began after Lincoln ordered the firing of Fort Sumter, South Carolina. After four years, this nation, this continent had experienced the bloodiest war it has yet to know: around 670,000 deaths; about 50,000 of these were Southern civilians. The South was ravaged and raped, the North somewhat scarred. The world was shocked to learn that Union generals were allowing their soldiers to rape and pillage (New Orleans, in particular). Cities such as Vicksburg and Atlanta were devastated, and all sorts of things incidental to commerce and industry in the South were destroyed. The much-ballyhooed Tecumseh Sherman led a scorched earth campaign that he openly said amounted to war crimes. Lincoln himself suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which is an old legal and moral right that states that one may not be imprisoned without being charged with a crime. This allows people, such as dissenters, to be imprisoned without reason and for an indefinite time (sound familiar?), and this is just what he and others did. He ordered the summary execution of soldiers who went AWOL; he initiated the draft and the income tax. There are others, but these are sufficient. All these things are anything but civil, in a certain sense.
Yet, the sense in which "civil" is meant in the phrase "civil war" is not the same as above. A cursory search yields a definition that states, in general, that a civil war is a war between inhabitants and/or factions of the same country. The American Civil War supposedly falls under this, but to be called a "civil war," as I have learned, requires one group to actively overthrow and replace another. This was not quite the case in 1861. Southern states simply seceded from the Union; they did not take siege of Washington D.C. or the like to replace the government, but rather separated themselves from it. In effect, they did what the Second Continental Congress did in 1776, and declared themselves, with a list of grievances, independent of their oppressors. Just as King George III would not have it, so too Lincoln. Just as colonials declared themselves free from Britain and defended their position (more or less), so too the South. It only became necessary later for Southern armies to move into the North, for political and survival reasons. Therefore, it is more appropriate to call the conflict the War for Southern Independence or the War of Northern Aggression.
Most would object to comparing the War for Southern Independence with the American Revolution, and therefore do not call it that. For one, many do not find the Southern states secession at all legal. There is a long argument for why it is, but it can be summarized thus, known as the "compact theory": when the U.S. Constitution had been drafted and was being sent around for state approval, the states were led to believe that they were, in essence, signing a contract, in which they were combined for their mutual welfare, but otherwise separate; that they granted to a federal government certain powers which, however, could be taken back; and that, just with any contract, parties are either free to leave (after giving up whatever benefits they had gained) or have the right to leave if another party reneges. This is how the seceding states saw the matter; Lincoln did not.
For another, though, and this is the main issue associated with the Civil War, people cannot see this as a fight for independence when those demanding it are involved in slavery, and this was certainly a major issue then. Yet, it was part of an even larger issue, which was continued Northern political aggression, through tariffs and such. Foreign observers saw the stakes at hand. It is no mistake or embarrassment that Lord Acton corresponded with Robert E. Lee, for he and others knew that if America's shining example was to continue and be proven, it had to pass this test by a Southern victory. That if the right of certain people and people's to determine their own fates was to thrive, the South must win. Lincoln saw differently, and he moved Earth and Hell to achieve his obsessive goal of forcing the Union to stay together, and he did it not caring if slavery was dissolved or not.
Despite all this, the concern of slavery remains. "Well," many counter, "perhaps all this is true, but the Civil War did end slavery." That it did indeed, and that is the lone good. But the history of abolition is rather clean, aside from the War of Northern Aggression. In all other countries which had institutionalized slavery, it was ended relatively peacefully; there were some riots and uprisings, but nothing on the scale of what America went through. Slavery in America was on the way out when the Civil War began.
So was it worth it? Did 670,000 people have to die to end slavery in America? Again, I say, foreign observers saw with the greatest clarity the import of the war. It was not just the right to self-determination, but a Southern victory would prove to the world that the American Revolution was more than a fluke, that it could be repeated; that an oppressive central government could be abandoned; that the overweening powerlust of said government could be curtailed.
For these observers, the concern was not the peculiar institution of particular (Southern) slavery, but the common institution of general slavery, the subjugation of individuals and peoples by an oppressive force. Again, I ask, did all those people have to die to end slavery? No. It was already dying itself, and would have vanished soon enough. But the further and more bitter reason that they did not have to die was that their death-for-abolition has proved to be meaningless; less than meaningless, for Lincoln's victory was the start of the ever-growing federal government. Today, the President declares the right to summarily order the assassination of
American citizens abroad; to imprison "enemy detainees" indefinitely and tortuously; to declare war as he pleases, making the Armed Forces a veritable Praetorian Guard; the draft, though not in force, continues to be an issue; the income tax is still around. Before the Civil War, the United States of America was referred to in the plural, but now it is singular; the original concept of having different states to suit the needs and desires of different peoples is gone, as the states are little more than departments of the federal government. America has become an empire, who now spreads its force to other peoples, such as Iraqis and Afghanis, and essentially rules much of the world. The people who died so that the Union may stay together and that the enslavement of a portion of people were actually sacrificed in the name of strengthening the general bondage of
all people. Lincoln waged a war for continued union no matter the resolution of slavery, and he won; the United States of America remained together, and we are all the more oppressed for it.
