Civil War scholars and experts: what is your opinion?

Question

To prove that history is constantly being rewritten, I have heard some people claim recently that Abrahan Lincoln was one of our worst presidents. Their justification for this is the belief that the Confederate states would have happily returned to the in Union 20-30 years, after it became apparant that slavery was no longer tolerated elsewhere in the civilized world. They say slavery was already dying out, and that North and South could have parted amicably, and then reunited with no ill effects. Is this a realistic scenario? If our country had split in two, would France or England have tried to control one region or the other?

560,000 people died in the Civil War. Some revisionists are saying it was too high a price, and not necessary.

Answer 1

Yeah, you're right on the money.

France and England had been at each other's throats for about a hundred and fifty years by the time of the Civil War. They were the US and Russia of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. As a united nation, the US was too powerful an economic force to be the puppet of either. But as two nations, the US would not have been.

The Confederacy especially would have needed a trading partner with manufactured goods to offset its agrarian economy. It really would have become a satelite state of France.

Yes, slavery was dying out and the south was the last place in the Western world to allow it. But the realities of the time would have turned the Confederacy towards France and the North towards England. It would have stopped westward expansion by the US. It would have given the Japanese free reign in the Pacific. Lord knows what the Germans would have done.

Twenty or thirty years would have been too long to bring the Confederacy back to the fold. 1860 to 1890 was a vital time of nation-building, developments in manufacturing, railroad construction, steel and oil mining and more that could not have been done by two separate American nations.

Answer 2

First you have to realize the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

The best and perfectly clear evidence of this is the fact that even the Emancipation Proclamation allows for slavery in areas not fighting against the Union.

The fact that it is in plain black and white in a national archival trerasure and that it can STILL be overlooked is probably the most glaring example of revisionist history of all time on the planet.

The Civil War was about the North maintaining control over all commerce produced by the South. For example - all cotton sold overseas had to first go through New York. The South felt it should be able to deal direct.

Whether Lincoln was great or not, i would have to say yes to that. Greatness is measured by how you maintain your goals in difficult times. His goal was to hold the US together at all cost and he succeeded.

Answer 3

Slavery was not a matter of profitability, it was already losing money long before secession. Slavery was being maintained as a social and political institution.

The South seceded because it had found it was at a point where it was no longer in charge of everything. With the loss of equality in the Senate, Southern dominance was only being maintained through activism in the federal courts, which were packed with Southerners and what would become Copperheads. One way or the other, the South was going to secede.

If the North had not acted, the end result more likely would have been political and economic domination of the South by Britain, not eventual reconciliation. And then, the South would have had to have fought another American Revolution against Britain, who would definitely have forcibly emancipated the slaves!

Answer 4

The south did not rebel because of slavery; it rebelled because they believed you were a citizen of your state first and of the union second. Federalists like Lincoln believed that you were a citizen of the Union first and of your state second. The two views cannot be reconciled.

Lincoln did some pretty evil stuff in the name of righteousness. But unlike the dude above, there is no evidence of Lincoln being gay. The one history book that is written on the theory has been widely discredited amongst historians. Saying Lincoln is gay is like saying that the Elder Protocols of Zion proves the Jews run the world. It is a ridiculous notion.

What is true is that prior to the civil war, the south itself was debating whether or not to continue slavery. The problem is that it was not a moral objection to slavery that caused the south to have this internal debate in its legislatures prior to the War, it was issues of economic stagnation within the parameters of the agribusiness focus of the south. Even Lincoln was not a man morality opposed to slavery...in his speeches as a congressman he considered slavery bad because it competed with free white labor.

The North and South would not have reconciled. After the rebellion, more states would have followed whenever they disagreed with the union, and America would be dead.

Answer 5

It's amazing to me that Black Fedora assumes that the revisionists are "liberal commies". First of all I agree with everything else in his post and I'm mostly liberal. Second isn't it more likely revisionists are "states rights" "anti big government" neocons?

I don't agree that western expansion would have been halted. California was already a state in 1850. However, if we allowed southern states to cecede, California could have done the same thing and we would have 3 different countries instead of one.

I disagree that the south didn't cecede because of slavery. The main reason they ceceded was because they were afraid that Lincoln and republicans would abolish slavery. The states rights thing was just one of their arguements to support cession. This arguement was wrong because the the central government existed before there were any "states" , the continental army won independence for the states, The Articles of Conderation stated that the union was to exist "in perpituity", the Constituion was written for all the people of the United States "to form a more perfect union" and there is no provision in the constitution that says states can cecede.

Answer 6

Lincoln saw exactly what you mentioned, a split, divided nation would most certainly have been an open invitation for foriegn meddling and intervention by other world powers (England, France, Spain). I doubt he believed a peaceful reconciliation was possible anytime soon, if at all. He was acting in what he believed would be the greatest good for the nation, a whole, strong, unified nation free from foreign meddling. That being said, the thought of Americans killing Americans troubled him to the point of ill health.

Answer 7

Some revisionists....no make that all revisionists, are idiots...to judge someone actions based on a woulda...coulda..shoulda scenario not available at the time is not only disingenuous, it's incredibly stupid.

Hindsight may always be 20/20, but one doesn't hav ethat benefit at the moment. Lincoln saw the country disintegrating, he resolved to save it. That's exactly what the leader of any country should do.

Lincoln was one of the BEST presidients...and don't let any freakin liberal communist historical revisionist try to claim anything else.

Answer 8

I agree that you do need to do your own homework, I managed to do it without the Internet, using real books. This is the only thing I anm going to answer: Lincoln signed the Proclamation because he understood that if he wanted continuing support for the war, he would have to bring morals into it. He used seccession as the primary reason then when enthusiasum was waning, he wrote and signed the document. There are stories that he stayed up all the night before hand wrestling with the issue.

Answer 9

I believe in the end it was not necessary, recent evidence points out the fact that Lincoln had manic depression and he slept with soldiers in their bunks cause he was gay

Answer 10

Really? Hmm...that's interesting. Do you have any specific sources? I'd like to read up on that.