I know what you mean but you may want to find a better wording than “And in addition, the United States held the moral high ground due to being the country that war was declared upon”. A lot of fairly despicable regimes could make the same claim to moral superiority based on that line and we wouldn’t want that to happen. But my claim is more near equivalency, not full. And from there we can debate specifics forever.
Or the South was maneuvered into starting the War, or the North would have willingly left slavery in place to restore both the Union and peace, or just who made the first moves to invade who ---- all the various “ors” are what has kept the War so very much alive and kept those walls Valteron mentioned carved in stone.
Lets face it; what moral high ground you see most of the world would see as a molehill. Yet some of us in the North (and in these threads) take as much pride wrapping ourselves in that mythology as those in the South do their “Lost Cause”. And keep the War alive forever; or at least our lifetimes and beyond.
Regarding the argument disputed in the OP, I am admittedly poorly read on the subject, but from human nature alone I could see just about a million ways the slave-owning establishment could have enticed poor, slaveless guys to enlist in the CSA. And of course, once the war was on, defending one’s homestead is as good a reason as any to take up arms. For example, by appealing to their racist natures and the fact that Mister Lincoln wanted them to consider the Negro as their equals (preposterous !) or better yet, their new masters - "for Mister Lincoln wants to arm these beasts ! They will murder us in our sleep yet, my good man "! Or by stating that, were the slaves freed, the now impecunious [del]Job Creators[/del]plantation owners would have even fewer jobs to give whites and the economic situation of the po’ folks would be even worse. And of course, it has always helped the unfortunate some to have some unfortunaters to look down upon - “I may be reduced to eating my own boots and thanking my boss for the privilege, but at least I’m no bum/slave/criminal !”
This of course also ignores the fact that many of the combatants in the Civil War, Yankees and Johnny Rebs alike, were hardly volunteers but rather conscripted by force.
I gladly assume any number of Confederate soldiers owned no slaves but were fighting out of a sense of patriotism for the home states.
Of course, their home states were never in jeopardy of anything other than possibly losing slavery.
It would be interesting to find a citation for anyone who has claimed that the North fought to end slavery. I am sure that someone has said it, because I frequently see odd claims that it is not true, but I never seem to encounter the actual claim. Every reputable scholar and student is aware that the goals of the North and South differed in the sense of arguing past each other:
The South seceded to protect slavery from future changes to the political power in Washington;
the North fought the South to prevent secession.
This strikes me as an argument that’s convincing only to people who want to be convinced. If the United States gave out free ice cream cones, some people would say it’s a plot to cause tooth decay.
People fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve and protect their country. The wars were actually waged to keep gasoline flowing profitably, and to enrich Halliburton. The Civil War was fought to keep the dreaded Yankees out of Dixie, but was actually waged to protect the investments of the slave-owning planter class. I think most wars have a noble, purported rationale and an actual, greed-based one.
I would say its more “to protect slavery and their economy from future changes” but we’re close enough to the same page for purposes of this thread.
But other than that, your post reflects my point; that we are still arguing past each other. Not so much among scholars (although we could debate Catton, Foote and a few other authors somewhat) as in these debates and in our society as a whole. That need for a moral highground in what was, on both sides, a very dirty and bloody war.
It’s all the same argument that’s used in most wars, and is equally true; most of the Soviet soldiers in WWII weren’t communists, and most of the German soldiers weren’t Nazis. Neither were most Confederate soldiers slave owners, and most US soldiers in Iraq weren’t warmongering oil hoarders.
The vast majority were everymen from their various countries who were either drafted, or who volunteered, but who were likely not terribly ideologically motivated. I mean, my grandfather voluntarily enlisted in WWII, but it wasn’t to go kill Nazis or Japanese per-se, it was more a recognition that the country needed men, and he wanted to do his duty, and figured by volunteering, he could do what he wanted to do, which was be an aircraft mechanic. Bad luck that he ended up being transferred to flight crew at some point, and ended up a flight engineer for a B-17F stationed in England.
even if fighting to secede and and fighting for slavery are both losing positions morally, they are not equivalent. Wanting to enslave another human being is now where near wanting to secede from a union of states.
even more important, it goes to the way the debate is framed. If the north was fighting to abolish slavery well the people they were fighting against were fighting to continue to enslave people. On the other hand, if the north was fighting to restore the union, the people they were fig hint against were fighting to be able to secede and live their lives under a serf of laws they felt better suited them, the ability to keep slaves included.
One thing that I think needs to be taken into account is that for most in the south, slavery wasn’t a moral concept, it was simply a way of life. It’s hard for us to imagine it, but they were possessions, like cattle. So, I think that for most poor whites in the south the moral dilemma and repugnance that hits us in the face probably never even got processed. I think Shelby Foot’s anecdote sabered by tomndebb was probably the truth of it for most.
If slavery was abolished (and, as envisioned by many mid 19th century Americans, the former slaves were shipped elsewhere), who do you think was going to be expected to pick the cotton?
I can easily see why poor Southern whites had a vested interest in preserving slavery, even if they didn’t own slaves.
Or sometimes, the Original Poster, if he comes back and continues the discussion. You can say “Hey, OP, about that 3rd post of yours…” and we will all understand it.
For the purposes of debate, I am willing to stipulate that Foote’s story is true. It remains true that the reason the Federal armies were invading the South was to oppose secession. Secession was instigated explicitly to protect slavery–a position the poorest Southerners would generally support simply to avoid being the lowest rung on the social ladder.
This is made clear with the treatment of black Federal soldiers by Southern troops, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations, and the implementation of Jim Crow laws. The latter occurred after the war, but were the continued expressions of beliefs held before and during the war.
I may be sticking my nose in somewhere where we’re not really all that far apart or maybe missing a woosh somewhere but – it isn’t like I haven’t done it before.
Skipping the slavery/economy tie ----- you are aware that there were Jim Crow laws in some Yankee states as well, right? I mean, skipping the odd fluke like Maine that predated the American Civil War, there are still quite a few to explain away right into the 1950s. It also seems to me that the Klan had (and still has) national membership and is/was not limited to former Confederate states or citizens thereof.
The treatment of black Federal troops by Southern troops I’ll grant you. But it would have been nice if the black troops had been paid on the same level as white troops, given the same chance for advancement, and if they had been treated better by their comrades-in-arms.
So it would seem to me that more people than just Southerners were trying to avoid being the lowest rung on that ladder. And at least IMHO that hasn’t changed as much as either of us would like. We are still very much a work in progress even 150 years later.
It was also about fear. In 1798 the black slaves in Haiti revolted and simply killed every white person they could catch – and thereafter, every white American in the slave states, slaveowner or not, lived in daily fear of something like that happening there; the larger the population percentage of black slaves in the county (and in many it was far more than 50%), the worse the fear. That was why they all regarded Abolitionists as dangerous barn-burning* radicals, much the same as later American generations would regard Anarchists or Socialists or Communists.
In the event, when American slaves were liberated, they took no violent reprisals against their white neighbors – perhaps because they had absorbed Christian morality to a greater extent than had the Haitians, perhaps because there were white and black Federal troops all over the place at the time, most likely a combination of the two.
*From a story about a farmer who burned his barn to drive the rats out.