Or, as it was known in my house, the "War of Northern Agression."
There has been and will continue to be a lot of discussion about what is commonly called The Civil War (although there was nothing 'civil' about it). CNN ran a poll that said "Four in 10 Southerners still side with the Confederacy."
In fact, the poll said 38 percent of Southerners remained sympathetic to the Confederacy, which to me is a completely different thing than 'siding.'
And the results of the poll were not quite as shocking as that headline suggests. In fact, it went pretty much the way you'd figure - unless you think all Tea Party members are right wing wackos one generation removed from wearing a white sheet and hood.
But here is why I think so many people do indeed "sympathize'' with the South: it was the last stand of States' Rights.
Let's try to keep emotion out of this discussion if we can. I'm not advocating the issue that caused South Carolina and 10 other Southern states to succeed from the Union. Clearly, slavery was and is wrong.
And let's not get all misty-eyed about Abraham Lincoln. At his first inauguration, he said he had no intention of freeing the slaves in the South, only of making all new states that joined the union 'free' states. He believed the tide was turning against slavery, and that it was inevitable that right-thinking people in the South would, before long, recognize the evil of slavery and do away with it.
And if you think about the history of the Civil Rights movement and how long it has taken to get where we are, a case could be made that it might have been better had the South come to the realization on its own rather than have the issue forced. It's kind of like any change of behavior: it is always more successful when voluntary than when externally forced on you.
Slavery might have ended legally. But look at the history of Blacks in America - all over, not just in the South - and I can show you how a legal end to slavery did not bring about a practical end to the sub-standard treatment of a race of human beings.
But let's get away from emotion for a minute and remember history.
When the nation was formed, the debate was over whether we were a voluntary union of independant states; or if we were actually the United States of America.
If the union was voluntary, then disolving the union should be voluntary as well. If we were one unified country, then Andrew Jackson was right.
I bring Jackson in because as president during the early 1830s, he threatened to bring troops to South Carolina to stop that state from seceeding over the "Tariff of Abominations.'' Jackson, despite being a Southerner, believed the Union could not be broken.
The "tariff of Abominations'' was, simply put, a tax voted in by Congress over Southern objections that basically forced Southern planters to trade with Northern industries rather than make more money by trading with industries in England and France, which were paying a higher price for Southern goods than Northern industry could afford.
The tariff, in a sense, killed free enterprise by forcing Southern planters to profit less no matter which way they wanted to sell, and built up Northern factories by giving them access to the raw materials they needed from Southern planters without having to pay fair world-market prices.
That led to talk of seccession, and it wasn't the first time a state had threatened to seceed.
During the War of 1812, northeastern states whose shipping industry was hurting because of the war decided at the Hartford Convention to seceed from the Union if the president, James Madison, didn't imediately stop the war. Unfortuantely for them, the U.S. won the war before they could make their demand, and so began the end of Federalist Party in the United States.
So there was already ground work for states believing they had voluntarily joined the union, so they should be able to voluntary leave at their pleasure.
And there was already a backdrop in which Southern states had seen the United States government make laws over their objections. In fact, one of the great problems that preceeded the break was that Lincoln never bothered to campaign in the South, so sure was he that he could win the election without needing a single Southern state.
As a result, Southern voters weren't given a chance to hear Lincoln say he wasn't going to free the slaves by force.
But Lincoln's election, to Southerners, was one more sign that the United States government was going to govern without their cooperation or input. And so before Lincoln was inaugurated, Southern representatives to the United States Congress walked out - thereby losing their voice in the great debate that should have taken place in that ruling body and eliminating any chance of a compromise that might have preserved the Union.
So whatever you think about secession and the South, the bottom line was that Southern states believed they knew best how to govern themselves.
The North said no, the federal government knew best how to govern the entire country.
And that's a debate that continues on today, doesn't it?
Slavery was and is an abomination.
But this war was about so much more.
And while you're at it, remember all those Southern States that were ruled under martial law for up to five years after the Civil War; all those white Southerners who lost the right to vote during those years of martial law; and the brutal way the Federal government and Northern industrialists continued to abuse the South for decades, claiming the "spoils of victory.''
California Gov. Jerry Brown said recently that this country was the most divided it had been since the Civil War.
If he's right, the division is over the same thing it was way back then.
Not slavery, but how far government should be allowed to be involved in our every day lives.
That's just my opinion.
And, as Dennis Miller says, and I could be wrong.
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