re: How are you remembering Union Soldiers that died in the Civil War

quote:

---

...

So if someone from Mississippi or South Carolina wants to fight to preserve social stability in his state against a Northern aggressor and terrorist-sympathizer who he feels might one day turn his home electorate majority black, then I don't blame him for that. Full emancipation of a dependent class of people is best done gradually. Bringing democratic self-governance and civilized freedom to people not accustomed to it is a task that can only be carried out over multiple generations, as we see in the Book of Exodus, as we saw with Indian reservations, and more recently, as we see in Russia and Afghanistan and Iraq. We still don’t have great answers about the best way to make such transitions.

In the 1860s, nobody had a good answer either. Many in the North saw no need to meddle in Southern affairs. Reconstruction eventually turned into a political disaster for the Republicans, who soon lost control of Congress in the 1874, 1876, and 1878 elections. People say that the North turned its back on blacks from 1877-1900, and they would be right, but what system could they offer as an alternative? Immediate enfranchisement and majority control of state governments by ex-slaves? That was too revolutionary to be politically practical, and due to its impracticability, a lot of hypocritical arrangements and legal fictions were erected in its place.

And let's not throw the genteel plantation owners under the bus either. They were not as bad about racial issues during the Jim Crow era as other whites. The KKK was not primarily a creation of the rich, old slaveholders. It was mostly a creation of small town whites, many of whom were either vaguely pro-Union or ambiguous about their Civil War loyalties. They simply wanted segregated cities, white dominance, and an end to Reconstruction, same as most people in the North did.

By the 1960s, full enforcement of voting rights had been a long time overdue, but few people care to admit that this could only happen, even then, because so many blacks had already moved away to the North, thus finally making the electoral system in the South more stable, and more capable of managing full enfranchisement over the coming generation.

Those favoring the North tend to resort to arguments asserting that the ends justify the means, but the question that must always be asked: Had Lincoln listened to some of his advisers and negotiated a monetary settlement for Fort Sumter, rather than resupplying a fort in an independent state, what would have happened to slavery in those 7 states? What would have happened to slavery in those other slave-holding states? Would better state-level solutions have been worked out for gradually enfranchising former slaves? Maybe.

Generally speaking, by the time 1861 came around, the Southern slave states had been so polarized that being defeated in war might have been the best thing for them. Life for freed blacks under Jim Crow was still an order of magnitude more dignified and less brutal than life under the whip in slavery (and cotton productivity statistics prove it). But that doesn't mean that the Southern states were not morally justified in defending their sovereign rights, until that time that the North could present a coherent moral case for their own aggression. Arguably, the North never really did that until the House passed the 13th Amendment in January 1865.

In any case, I don't think emphasizing either side of the Civil War is a particularly compelling focus for the Memorial Day holiday, which is better suited to honoring those who died serving the country as a whole against other nations. It's an odd thing, of course, because the precursors of Memorial Day grew out of practices honoring the war dead from both the North and the South after the Civil War. However, Memorial Day as a formal U.S. holiday was not enacted until during the Cold War, mainly to honor those who had died overseas defending American freedom. Even when viewed its 20th and 21st century context, though, it hearkens back to an ancient and eternal reminder that the price of freedom is blood, has always been blood, and will always be blood.

---