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I believe that the main results of the Civil War were for the good, and I see those results being the ending of slavery and the preservation of the Union. Those positives are in our awareness, but with the passage of time we have forgotten (except for Civil War buffs, of which I admit I am not one) the enormous scale of the suffering - more battle deaths than in all of our other wars combined. And of course the suffering and misery are not limited to deaths; the injured suffered horribly in an age of dubious medical care and the widows and children suffered horribly in the wake of Sherman's march of destruction through the South. The loved ones of the dead suffered those losses on both sides, of course.
With the luxury of hindsight I cannot help but wonder if it wouldn't have been more humane to just let the South secede. Yes, I admit that the continuation of slavery would not have been a humane result, but given the general trends in the rest of the world, slavery would have been abolished sooner or later. Also, I admit that thinking of our Union in its proudest moments, such as World War II, involves thinking of it as it is now. It is rather sad to try to imagine it being two nations at that time. Would the two nations have cooperated to bring the tyranny of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to an end? Who knows - I do not.
But nonetheless I continue to doubt whether the admittedly good end results of the Civil War were worth its staggering costs, and I would point out that it is so easy to just ignore those costs at the remove of almost a century and a half. How can we dare say to the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed that the spilling of their blood was justified?
With the luxury of hindsight I cannot help but wonder if it wouldn't have been more humane to just let the South secede.
The answer to your question is in the way that you framed your question. Is it any more or less legitimate to ask.."Wouldn't it have been more humane for the South to have just accepted the results of the 1860 election?"
Your framing places the moral blame on the North, as though it was their doing alone which was the difference between war and peace.
And of course in either construction, we are simply restaging the arguments which we have been having in this thread, which of themselves are a restaging of the actual arguments between the two sections in the mid 19th Century. Which side was more justified?
So, if you can think of a way to phrase your question which doesn't involve placing the burden of moral blame on one side or the other, then we could address the question.
Very few,notable exceptions being Sherman and I believe RE Lee,anticipated the war would last that long,or cost as many lives.However,once battle was joined,any chance for compromise probably vanished.The devastating effect of the minie ball and the rifled musket hadn't been demonstrated on the battlefield prior to 1861.
War by nature is a costly endeavor in terms of human and financial sacrifice. Our Civil War was no different. Most nation-states at sometime or another find themselves engaged in internecine warfare. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable but necessary way for some nations to progress the advancement of the greater good, e.g., the English Civil War, France's religious wars during the 16th century, the Chinese Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, et al. Therefore, by proof of citing the previous mentioned conflicts as examples "the slaughter of the Civil War was worth its end result."
War by nature is a costly endeavor in terms of human and financial sacrifice. Our Civil War was no different. Most nation-states at sometime or another find themselves engaged in internecine warfare. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable but necessary way for some nations to progress the advancement of the greater good, e.g., the English Civil War, France's religious wars during the 16th century, the Chinese Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, et al. Therefore, by proof of citing the previous mentioned conflicts as examples "the slaughter of the Civil War was worth its end result."
Those are good points you make.However,in one key respect the American Civil War IS different.Although originally a dissolution of the Union over the rights of individual states,it ultimately became a struggle over human bondage.It would be incomprehensible to me,as an american,to see that any victory by the federal forces,which did happen,not result in the freeing of the slaves.
The Civil War wasn't about just "freeing of the slaves"
Quote:
Originally Posted by nitroae23
Those are good points you make.However,in one key respect the American Civil War IS different.Although originally a dissolution of the Union over the rights of individual states,it ultimately became a struggle over human bondage.It would be incomprehensible to me,as an american,to see that any victory by the federal forces,which did happen,not result in the freeing of the slaves.
The Civil War was fought over whether or not States had the right to dissolve themselves from the Union. The tipping point of this dissolution was the issue of slavery. Neither of these issues was mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the "freeing of the slaves" was a military device to decimate the economic force of the Confederacy. In its final analysis, the Southern 19th century agrarian based economy, which was dependent on slavery was a knuckle dragging burden on new industrial society that the United States had embarked on.
The devastating effect of the minie ball and the rifled musket hadn't been demonstrated on the battlefield prior to 1861.
Actually they had in the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny.
I'm with Griffith and Hess in believing the effect of the rifle musket has been exaggerrated. Note that on many battlefields the longer range of the rifle musket couldn't be put to good use and that longer range came with a very high trajectory that made range estimation paramount. Yet it seems the most common instruction from officers was "fire low"; in any event instructions on setting sights for range seem rare.
And losses in Civil War battles were no worse than in battles fought with muskets; I'd venture to say a battalion of Wellington's Penisulars armed with Brown Bess was more dangerous to approach than most Civil War units armed with rifle muskets. And was more dangerous on the attack.
I strongly suspect that, regardless of the outcome of the war, the century would have ended pretty much as it did. The CSA and the Brazilian Empire were the only remaining bastions of slavery, and even Emperor Pedro II of Brazil abolished slavery within a decade or so.
Once the CSA realized that slavery was a thing of the past and they had no allies, there is little doubt in my mind that the fervor for slavery would have wound down in the southern states, and they would have reunited with the northern states. The north could have just as well let them go and do their thing, and welcomed them back when they grew up. Lo, the end result. If they didn't come back into the fold under their own volition, we could have later on devised some other contrived pretext for using war to accomplish our objectives.
The civil was was just another application of the same old dogma---If they don't yield to your instant gratification, just shoot them. Usually, not really necessary.
It certainly would have been easier, that is for sure. On the face of it, I don't believe the Federal Government has a right to disallow states from seceeding, especally if they feel they are being treated in an unconstitutional manner. After all, in some sense that'd make the US as a whole hippocrates for saying "So long" to Britian.
On the human end however, slavery was a disgusting and humiliating blight on our development as a nation. Wanting to free the slaves was certainly the right way to go. Also, the southern states also violated states rights by forcing northern states to return runaway slaves and strongarming western states to accept slavery.
Wars are a terrible thing. In the end however, it all comes down to weither or not we've gained something worthwhile in the end. I think the Civil War did.
Escort Rider:
The answer to your question is in the way that you framed your question. Is it any more or less legitimate to ask.."Wouldn't it have been more humane for the South to have just accepted the results of the 1860 election?"
Your framing places the moral blame on the North, as though it was their doing alone which was the difference between war and peace.
And of course in either construction, we are simply restaging the arguments which we have been having in this thread, which of themselves are a restaging of the actual arguments between the two sections in the mid 19th Century. Which side was more justified?
So, if you can think of a way to phrase your question which doesn't involve placing the burden of moral blame on one side or the other, then we could address the question.
Your re-framing of the question in the first paragraph above is certainly legitimate, but it is pretty much rhetorical because the obvious answer is yes, it would have been more humane had the South avoided the Civil War by not attempting to secede. However, implicit in my phrasing of the question is the decision facing the North as to how to respond to the secession, once that had been decided upon by the South. So I would be happy to re-phrase thus: "Once faced by southern secession, would it have been more humane for the North to allow the Union to split in two instead of following the course it actually took?" I am not arguing that the South was "justified", as that would imply a justification of slavery and I do not believe slavery can be justified. However, the self-determination of peoples is an established principle of the 20th century, and we often now view secession favorably because of that principle, such as in the case of the break-up of the Soviet Union. (I am not arguing that the break-up of the Soviet Union and its very real tyranny is comparable to the southern desire for the break-up of the United States with its representative government except to the extent that there was a genuine desire for a separate independent existence in both cases, the former case being more justified than the latter.)
While hypothetical counter-factuals as applied to history are fraught with difficulties to argue out, I think mine is legitimate as a position and I do not agree with your logic that I have placed "blame". I am simply asking if the end result of a particular decision made by Lincoln and the North was worth its cost in blood (a cost not knowable to them in advance - at the moment they had to make the decision - but known to us now, hence my question.)
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The Civil War wasn't about just "freeing of the slaves"
