COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
I fear HBO’s
Confederate could be a flag waver for today’s neo-Nazis
This is beyond being silly.
The Civil War was the most titanic event in American history
with twice as many soldiers killed in the early 1860s (over 600,000) as
Americans lost in WWII (near 300,000), and that despite the huge advances in
technology over 80 years.
It was also a huge social and economic event. It destroyed
an old settled society in one part of the country, but it also raised a new
industrial giant in another, a giant that would before long go on to become a
world imperial force.
The Civil War was a true revolution, unlike the so-called
American Revolution which was in fact a revolt by a local group of aristocrats
against a foreign group of aristocrats. The Revolution, as few even realize was
a minority event, too, with the colonial population estimated at about
one-third rebels, one-third loyalists, and one-third indifferent. It succeeded
only because of the intervention of France at key points, and otherwise would
have simply deflated.
The Civil War more closely resembled a modern all-out war,
especially for the South.
I cannot say how important it is to keep in mind the Civil
War was not about slavery. Lincoln himself said he would gladly end it with
slavery intact were that possible. He only finally issued the Emancipation
Proclamation because the outcome of the conflict was not certain and he wanted
to hurt the South.
It was also very much about British sympathies with the
South which were seen as a danger. British merchants did good business with the
South, helping finance their fight. Lincoln needed to put the moral force into
the war, something which had never been there explicitly. Otherwise, slavery
would not have ended.
The Civil War was about the power of the federal government
versus the power of the state governments, an issue left undecided by America's
Revolution and its Constitution. Lincoln forged America into a country rather
than a set of quasi-independent states.
All the noise over an event like Charlottesville loses sight
completely of what the Civil War was about, with people trying to impose modern
ways of looking at things on events not governed by those ways of looking. It's
all a bit pathetic and certainly lacking historical truth.
It should be emphasized that none of the key figures of that
time in America was a defender of minorities, just as none of the founders
were. It wasn’t even part of the world view. If you impose that today on a
historical series, you only turn it into propaganda.
