Forbidden history: looking back on the Civil War

Lincoln could have let the southern states go and chose not to.

Whether the world is a better place, all things considered, today as a result is impossible to say.

Slavery might have persisted in the South and in the world longer than it did, had Lincoln let the Southern states go in peace.

But maybe neither the United States of America nor the Confederate States of America would have got involved in The Great War.

Maybe there would never have been a red Russian Revolution.

Maybe there would never have been a Second World War or both the US and the CS would have stayed out of that, too.

And even if there had been a red Russian Revolution there could well have been no cold war involving either the US or the CS.

How’s that for a peace dividend?

The only clear good resulting from the Civil War was the destruction of slavery in the South and its end in the whole United States of America.

Maybe that sped its end elsewhere in the world, but maybe not.

The negative fallout has been the entire history of America’s rise to globalism in which were squandered enormous treasure and oceans of blood, plenty of both being American.

And what about Lincoln’s decision, at the time?

Secession per se was not worth a war to prevent and an altruistic war fought by the boys of the North to save the slaves of the South was foolish and unjust to the people of the North, including but not only the draft dodgers and rioters and the men who went when Lincoln called to meet their early doom.

Anyway, water under the bridge, no?

Split milk?

But it’s an issue today because some Yankee Democrats are intent on blackening the memory of the Confederacy and its defenders in the South while foolish conservative neo-Confederates are only too glad to rise to the bait.

In the long run, and maybe not even that long a run, defending the Confederacy is a suicidal policy for Republicans, nationally.

It all too powerfully strengthens their image as a basically white, Southern, and rural party and the image of the Democrats as a national, multi-racial, and urban party.

And right now the image and the reality behind it appear both to be strangling the Republican future.

Hence the Democrats are only too glad to provoke them into such defenses.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the street, even when alert conservatives take steps to alter that image there are others who slap them around for it, heroically standing tall for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.

Lincoln on the Defensive

Lincoln Defended

And the Democrats smile.