[QUOTE=Spiny Norman]
Or, to put i other words, America was pretty unique in having citizens willing to go to war to defend the practice. Yet you say it as if it was a good thing?
[/QUOTE]
I have no problem with conceding the Civil War was fought (at least from the Southern side) over slavery (and many many other economic and social issues, but slavery ultimately THE major one). However, I don’t think it’s fair to say that most people were willing to spill their blood to protect the practice.
My own ancestors are a microcosm of Southerners of the time. Of my 16 great-great grandparents (the generation in my family in which all were adults at the time- one of my great grandfathers was about 12 when the war ended) one was from a wealthy family (her father [too old to fight] owned real estate worth $80,000 and 48 slaves, the next richest was a man who became a Confederate surgeon who owned 14 slaves and $20,000 in real estate, another was the daughter of a moderately successful Irish mule farmer [i.e. her family bred mules for a living] who owned $4,000 in real estate and 2 slaves, and the rest were non-slaveowning folk who ranged from a day laborer with no land to middle class farmers, so of my own ancestry 3/8 were slaveowners, the rest not. ALL sent troops or supplies to the Confederacy.
Of the 5/8 who fought, I cannot believe it was because they were willing to die to keep the other 3/8 as slaveowners. They fought for a variety of reasons: race would probably have played a part- they really didn’t want to compete with millions of suddenly freed blacks [remember that the carnage of Haiti was very fresh in the minds], but mostly they fought… because there was a war on, and that’s what people do when there’s a war on. Later they fought because the South was being overrun by Yankee troops.
Putting a more modern spin on it, almost 60,000 young U.S. men were killed in Vietnam. I’ve no idea how many of those joined the army voluntarily v. how many were drafted, but either way: how many do you think fought there because they were willing to die to support the freedom from Communism of the residents of a nation that probably not 1% could have pointed to on a blank map of Asia when they were in high school? Updating it to today, how many of the 3,300 Americans who have died in Iraq (all of whom were in the army as volunteers- none were drafted) do you think were there because they were that passionate in their desire to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein? Some I’ll grant probably were, but most more likely fought because there was a war on.
Same with the North: how many northerners do you think died because they were that passionate in their hatred of slavery? Of the Colored Infantry and Colored Naval divisions I’ll grant you it was one hell of a lot, but of the white draft and volunteer forces, how many would have risked their lives to help end slavery before the war? Most fought because there was a war on, and for some believe it or not the $13 or $16 or $21 per month they received or $100 enlistment bonus offered or $300 to fight in another’s place, etc., provided the incentive, and for others it seemed like a good idea at the time and Appomattox Courthouse was a place they’d never heard of and they had no idea how the war would turn out.
In any case, on the social level and the economic and political level I think the war was about slavery first and foremost. On the individual level, it was way more varied.
