Civil War
Dear Editor: When President Trump wondered why the First American Civil War had to happen, he has, for once or twice, actually asked a really good question. Normally, all he has is answers. In this case, the question he raises isn’t “Why the Civil War Happened”; it is, rather, “Why it Had to Happen.”
As to why it happened, Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 letter to media magnate Horace Greeley explaining – at least in the president’s mind – what the war was all about, is pretty straightforward:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it... .”
So, if the Civil War – at least in the mind of its most principal player – wasn’t about slavery, what, then, was it really all about? Which leads us back to Mr. Trump’s question as to why it had to happen, in the first place.
Which raises a potentially very interesting follow-on question: “What would have happened if the southern states of the newly self-declared ‘Confederate States of America’ had been allowed to secede unhampered from the Union, from the “United States of America?’’
One very distinct possibility is that – had they been allowed to peacefully, civilly, cordially, and consequentially diplomatically secede – war would have been neither inevitable, justified, nor necessary. And consequently, that the Civil War would not have HAD to have happened, if the South had simply bid a fond adieu, and let and left to go its own way.
What would have happened next, of course, is the task of speculative, alt-history. For example: what if, instead of a Civil War, the government of the United States had recognized the secession and the new nation it created, and announced that henceforth, any and all escaped slaves from the CSA would be welcomed, defended by force if necessary, and protected by the laws of this nation, and not that one?
Fantasy history aside, the fact is that the Civil War just might could have been avoided. And that may be what the president is at least hinting at inviting us to ponder. Then again, maybe not.
It is as often as not sometimes difficult to fathom exactly what Mr. Trump says – let alone, even oftener enough, what he actually, really means – but this one is worth a ponder. DID the American Civil War really have to have happened?
For starters: how and why was slavery peacefully outlawed in Europe and its colonies (starting with England) decades before we Yanks had to fight a war to “end” it?
All of which might, under the proper circumstances, lead one – perhaps even President Trump – to inexorably ask this question: Does the Syrian Civil War have to keep happening?
JG Moebus, Veterans Against
War (Sitka Platoon)
