Book Review - "How the States Got Their Shapes"

How the States Got Their Shapes
        -by Mark Stein-

In conjunction with Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It, I also heartily recommend How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein.  It details the crazy journeys our wonderful 50 states took in order to end-up in the shapes that we know and love today.  For example, did you know that Washington (before it got the D.C. moniker) was supposed to be a square city, made up of equal parcels of land donated by both Maryland and Virginia?  Well, the city wasn’t growing that fast and Virginia was eventually able to reclaim their gift.  I bet D.C. really regrets that now!  Also, you were probably not aware that Illinois owes its possession of “Chicago” to slavery, in particular, New England hatred of slavery.  Illinois businessmen sold the federal government on the idea that by giving Illinois a toehold on Lake Michigan they would be able to connect the goods of New England to the markets of the midwestern states, all without having to go through the South-controlled Mississippi River.  All of these stories and more are presented in How the States Got Their Shapes in short little stories that do an excellent job of illuminating this very important, though much overlooked, portion of United States history. 

Book Review - "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It "

 Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It
              -by Michael J. Trinklein-
        
        Who wants to live in the breakaway territory of Nataqua?  Apparently no women did, so it failed to acquire the population necessary for statehood.  Anyone favor living in “Transylvania”?  It was a failed state, in what would later become Kentucky, proposed by Daniel Boone.  How about the state known as “Chicago”?  You read that last sentence right, the great city of “Chicago” once had aspirations of becoming its’ own state.  This was mostly born out of anger at not having enough representation in the state government (being outvoted by farmers makes one think of revolution).  This book is full of many more cases of states, some crazy (like Boston as a city-state) and others rather logical (such as a better division of Idaho, Washington and Oregon) as well as the details behind the division of the Dakotas, the reoccurring attempts at New Jersey and Maine divisions and the desires of Long Island to separate from New York and become its own state.  “Lost States” is a walk down the popular Historic Lane of What Might-Have-Been.  It is a series of engaging, interesting, funny and surprising tales, all contained within a book less than 200 pages long.  Each “failed state” has the pertinent details behind its creation attempt described and also includes either a map of the period with the state on it, or one of the author’s own creation.  These short little snippets of our forgotten history help to illustrate the parts, politics, population, foreign policy, state and federal governments, environment, human temperament and sheer randomness played in the creation of the country we know today as the “United States of America”.

South is Rewriting Last 150 Years

The really South is a bunch of sore losers.  The have spent the last 150 years rewriting their own history in order to justify both their eternal support of a losing idea and the foundations of that idea.  This country needs to get over this love-affair with a bunch of racist-cry-baby-bullies who withdrew from the Union because they didn't get their own way.

To that end, I have a few suggestions:

1) Strip the Confederate flag off of EVERY SINGLE fraking state flag that still includes it

2) Ban showings of such films as:  "A Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind", south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  They merely help perpetuate this stereotype of "happy slaves" and "the Lost Cause".  After the obsession with the Confederacy has passed away, future southern generations will one day be able to enjoy these films again.

3) Outlaw the "Daughters of the Confederacy".  It is groups like these that helped push the "Lost Cause" myth into the public conscienceness after the war and have spent the last 150 years keeping it firmly there.  If
banning the group is too extreme, then state that for every dollar they spend "glorify" Confederate war
heroes, preserving plantations, and promoting the "Lost Cause", they have to spend an equivalent dollar on
something that helps the descendants of the slaves those plantations and great warriors fought to keep in chains.  This could be anything, donated to the NAACP, black scholarships, preservation of the documents and homes of notable black artists, or even on educating the public about the first black legislatures during Reconstruction. 

Here's hoping that one day we can rid our fair country of the stigma of participating in the fraud that is "The Lost Cause" and STOP glorifying the the racists who almost destroyed our nation all in the name of slavery. 

Can you celebrate secession without celebrating slavery? | Need to Know

Since the 150th anniversary of the civil is upon us, questions involving the cause of the war and the reasons each side chose to fight it have come to a head.
This article is interesting.

Can you celebrate secession without celebrating slavery? | Need to Know

Civil War in Historical Memory

I have read a variety of accounts, written from all different perspectives, of and about the Civil War.  However, the ones to really catch my ire are the ones that seek to glorify the Confederacy and "return Southern honor", as if there could be any honor in attempting to overthrow the legitimately elected government, merely because of what the chief executive "might do".  There are a whole horde of reasons why certain people chose to support the Confederacy over the Union:  slavery, economics, hatred of Lincoln, fear of abolition, and favoring a  government with strong state governments and a week federal one.  Choosing one as the "soul" reason for the war is ludicrous, they all played their part.  However, the South, in attempting to rewrite their own history, has chosen to downplay or even ignore the part that slavery played in sparking the war and keeping it going.  They favor blaming the politicians for causing it. as Rodger Pryor does: 

"The bloody business of secession, with all its disastrous consequences, was wholly the act of the professed men of peace --- the politicians."

Pryor also divorces the Confederacy from supporting slavery as well:

"True, the material interests of the South were essentially implicated in the maintenance of the system; but philosophically, it [slavery] was the occasion not the cause of secession.  For the cause of secession you must look beyond the incident of the anti-slavery agitation to that irrepressible conflict between the principles of State sovereignty and Federal supremacy,"

Confederate General Jubal Early, has nothing but criticism for all those attempting to write histories of the Civil War, but most of his scorn is for the Northern writers:

"In the former character [as criminals --- rebels and traitors seeking to throw off the authority of a legitimate government to which we were bound by the lies of allegiance] our enemies are seeking to present us, not only by their historical records, but by their literature and by the whole scope and tendency of their legislation and governmental policy."

Early is incapable of even considering that the victorious side might write a "fair and balanced" account of the South's actions during the Civil War.  However, he is not really interested in an accurate accounting, he only cares in exonerating Confederate soldiers of any wrong doings and in insuring that any history written of the war portrays Southerners as a "honorable and valiant people". 

I am with General Sherman, in that there was  a "right" and a "wrong" in the Civil War and the Confederacy was clearly on the "wrong" side.

"There are such things as abstract right and abstract wrong, and when history is written human actions must take their place in one or the other category.  We claim that, in the great civil war, we of the National Union Army were right, and our adversaries wrong; and no special plending, no excuses, no personal motives, however pure and specious, can change this verdict of the war."

However, though Sherman wants history to be written to CLEARLY show that the Union victors were on the "right" side during the war, he does counsel that  the negative feelings experienced by the country from 1860-65 should not be allowed to linger in the present.  He believes that the lessons of the Civil War need to be remembered, not glossed-over or altered so as the make American history more palatable.

Finally, I am in Sherman's corner that we should not be censoring or editing history in order to make ourselves feel better about the past or to present a better face to the world.  The events that happened, good and bad, happened and denying their occurrence or altering them serves only to distort our past and is truly beneath us as American citizens.  However, I also agree with Walt Whitman who speaks of the "untold and unwritten history of the war". 

Gender Inequality

I was reading the Perman and Taylor readings for today and was suddenly struck by something.  Now I don't consider myself a bra-burning feminist, but I couldn't help but notice that none of people campaigning for civil rights for blacks, made any mention of rights for women.  I know that the fight for women's suffrage would take another war in order to accomplish this.  But when awarding women the right to vote, President Wilson used the service that women did during World War I to justify it.  But what about all of the work that women did during the Civil War?  Without the support of the home front neither side would have had the moral to fight, the South in particular needed this.  So why did it take yet another war where a yet another generation of women endured losing husbands, sons and brothers to slaughter for them to be seen as equals? 

I meant for this blog to be about how the black man failed his white sisters, mothers, wives and daughters but instead I just ranted.  So sorry because I wish that I had answers for my question.  When the State Colored Convention Addresses the People of Alabama with words such as:

"Color can no longer be pleaded for the purpose of curtailing privileges, and every public right, privilege and immunity is enjoyable by every individual member of the public." 

I cannot help but scream, "NO THEY ARE NOT!"  What about the curtailment of privileges based on gender?   I will never truly understand how black men can cry for freedom for themselves and not yet not care about 1/2 the population still being second class citizens.

Reconstruction

I guess that I have lived under a cloud of optimism concerning the post-Civil War South for the past few decades.  Upon reading the documents in Chapters 10 and 11, I was struck by how little was really accomplished, either in word or attitude.  Though the 14th Amendment freed the slaves, it truly did nothing to guarantee them freedom or to help give them a leg-up in the society that they suddenly found themselves a part of.  It was left to private organizations, many of them religious in nature, to try to bring education and aid to the ex-slaves.  The federal government did NOTHING with further legislation to protect these newly freed persons and left them to the mercy of smaller governments, from the state governments down to the local city councils, to manage as they saw fit, which usually meant they were either ignored or worse still actively abused and discriminated against. 

It was as though the North expected the South to just meekly give-up the idea of Black inferiority and passively turn-over the new leaf of equality.  I have not decided if the members of Congress were racists, or ridiculously ignorant, apathetic or merely hopelessly naive. 

It was interesting to read about the Georgia planter who is demanding that Negro woman should work in the fields same as their husbands.  What about his wife and daughters?  Why aren't they out working in the fields?  Or in as seamstresses in a milliner's shop in town?  Why is it that he signals out "Negro" woman for such admonishment for laziness?  He still sees himself as the plantation owner directing his slaves on when they should work, who should and what tasks they should do.  He presumes to know what is best for these people's families and his racism is easily to spot in the opening paragraph:

"Their husbands are at work, while they are nearly idle as it is possible for them to be, pretending to spin --- knit or something that really amounts to nothing for their husbands have to buy them clothing I find from my own hands wishing to buy of me --- "

He also makes an appeal to nationalism as to why the woman need to work: 

"their labor is a very important percent of the entire labor of the South" 

He means it will be to the benefit of the "White South". 

However, towards the end of the passage, this Southern Planter does come down hard on poor Whites as well, stating that they also should be forced to work, because obviously if they are NOT working than they MUST be stealing.  Could this "unspeakable word here" make any more sweeping generalization without having any fraking clue of the circumstances of the situation?  What an arrogant piece of dog excrement! 

No "patience with idleness and idlers"???  Then he must want the entire planter class imprisoned under the vagrant act, since every single member of that class were lazy, idle people who did NOTHING but live off the work of their slaves.  You want a definition of "idlers" and "lazy" then he should have looked no further than his own damn class!  What a fraking hypocrite!

 What "Henry Adams Reports" is even more monstrous and is the beginning of the re-institution of slavery, albeit under a different name, in the South.  Plantation owners forcing black women to work in the fields in order for the families to receive food?  How monstrous!  These plantation owners were still acting as slave owners.  I am really surprised that there weren't more uprisings, considering how the black population outnumbered the white. 

Too Many Chiefs...Not Enough Indians

I found Governor Brown's statement denouncing Confederate policy to be emblematic of the major problem with the Confederacy as a whole.  The combination of a week central government and strong state governments makes it extremely difficult for even the most basic of governmental duties to be accomplished, lit alone  successfully making war on another country at your technological level.  The Union and the Confederacy both needed strong central governments in order to manage the affairs of the individual states for the mutual benefit of them all as a whole.  This government could take a variety of forms, but it was a VITAL necessity to the successful persecution of a war.  There are examples of this from other eras in history:

1)  Ancient Egypt, ruled by the pharaoh, a divine king, conquered or controlled an area of territory that stretched through modern-day Sudan to the south as well as the Sinai Peninsula, parts of modern day Lebanon, Syria, and into Southern Turkey to the East.  When Egypt had internal problems and lost that strong central government, they descended into chaos and lost their empire. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kingdom


2)  Even Rome as a republic, in times of war, the Senate would appoint a dictator with absolute authority to run the country during these times when action had to be taken quickly and with no time for the Senate to deliberate and reach a consensus.  The practice was solid and mostly successful, view the success of Roman in the Punic Wars. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator

3)  From America's earlier history, the original documents that established the United States as an independent country from Great Britain, were the "Articles of Confederation", this document gave the new country strong state governments and a week federal government.  Its' creators feared that if they created a strong central government, then Americans would just be trading one dictatorship for another.  However, it didn't take too long (at most 12 years, but since ratification didn't take place until 3 years after passing into law by the Second Continental Congress, it probably didn't see much actual use) before another governing document was passed, at the urging of such luminaries as George Washington, who felt that the "Articles" "lacked the necessary provisions for a sufficiently effective government. There was no president or executive agencies or judiciary. There was no tax base. There was no way to pay off state and national debts from the war years."  Thus our Constitution was born, which firmly placed the Federal government in overall control of the country, with the State governments playing supporting roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_confederation

Sorry there, I got off on a historical tangent there.  But though many strong central governments throughout history have equated to monarchies or dictatorships, that does not need to always be the case.  Unfortunately, Southerners of the 1860s tended to hold this erroneous viewpoint, seeing Lincoln as an American Catiline, someone attempting to usurp the rightful governmental order.  But what the Southerners also failed to realize was that though some powers of the individual states were invariably lost to the federal government, as a WHOLE country they gained larger abilities (more men to muster for war, a larger population to pull from, more tax money with which to fund civic improvements and technological advancements) which made the whole country greater and more powerful as a result, then each individual state could ever be on its' own.  The confederacy was a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians.


I find it pretty interesting that Governor Brown is complaining about the excesses of the military in matters of taking control away from the civilian authorities (I presume that he was NOT a fan of the draft also) when he was a master of hording the supplies that his state accumulated and insuring that they went only to Georgian soldiers, content to let soldiers from other states starve and freeze to death.  If the state governments and the Confederate Constitution tie the federal government's hands from acting in the country's best interest, then it is up to the military to do so.  The states are mostly concerned with the well-fare of their own constituents and have lost sight of the wider goal.....independence for them all.  For the only way a country's military can successfully defend the entire country is to have the backing of the entire country regardless of where the individual soldiers hale from.  Since the federal government has no state support, the states have no control outside their own borders, who is left to maintain law and order...the military.  Chaotic situation in the country and no firm governmental control in time of war is what leads to military dictatorships.  Perhaps Governor Brown is right to fear military despotism.  If so, then maybe that would have been the best thing for the Confederacy, forced unity fight have brought them success in their war for independence.

General "Beast (with a soft heart)" Butler

As much as slavery was a divisive feature of the pre-Civil War United States, how to end it and what to do with the freed black people divided the nation even more.  Among the South, the ending of slavery meant an end to their way of life which was obviously something to be avoided.  However there was little agreement among Northerners either in the matter.  At the beginning, perhaps Lincoln sought to avoid having to deal with issue all together, but a pair of blinders on and just concentrated on military matters.  But General Benjamin Butler (a general of questionable military ability, but one good with logistics and politics), unlike Lincoln, found himself forced to deal with the matter of runaway slaves who were escaping from their masters and fleeing to the Union lines.  No fan of slavery himself, he was loath however, to step on any political toes (such as General Fremont did a few months after this letter was written) and thus directed a letter to the Secretary of War Simon Cameron, asking for orders.



First. What shall be done with them? and, Second. What is their state and condition? Upon these questions I desire the instructions of the department.

The first question, however, may perhaps be answered by considering the last. Are these men, women, and children slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the constitution and laws, we all know. What has been the effect of a rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in so far met, as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis.

Butler has recognized that his actions in refusing to surrender escaped slaves back to their masters and his thus utilizing them to aid in the Union's military struggle was an act of military necessity and though it was nominally supported by the federal government, it was a stop-gap measure at best. 

But now a new series of questions arise. Passing by women, the children, certainly, cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the incumbrance rather than the auxiliary of an army, and, of course, in no possible legal relation could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. Their former possessors and owners have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and, to carry out the figure, practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation.

The regulations under which Butler had previously seized runaway slaves and used them as labors, he states cannot now be applied to all of the 900 Negros who have fled to his lines.  For these numbers include women, children and older people, all of whom could not be expected to the kind of labor that Butler had initially claimed the runaways for.  What Butler is clearing asking for is an official ruling by the federal government, something with legs to stand on in order to JUSTIFY his keeping runaway slaves, this time ones not of any great use to the army, from their masters.

But we, their salvors, do not need and will not hold such property, and will assume no such ownership: has not, therefore, all proprietary relation ceased? Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind, the fearful relicts of fugitive masters, have they not by their master's acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God's image? Is not every constitutional, legal, and normal requirement, as well to the runaway master as their relinquished slaves, thus answered? I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women. If not free born, yet free, manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to be reclaimed.


I have no personal knowledge of Butler's thoughts on slavery and black people in general.  He may have first refused to return runaway slaves to their masters out of a need to both use their labor to help the army and to hurt their masters.  However, this last section certainly seem to me to be the words of an abolitionist.  With:  "Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind" he gives the runaways a status as "human beings", NOT as "property".  He further goes on to say that by making the runaways free men and women, all requirements of a society:  "constitutional, legal, and normal"  are fulfilled.  For the Constitution supported keeping them away from their masters under articles of war pertaining to "contraband".  In legal matters, if a person is living on free soil (as territory under Union military control could be considered) then slavery is not allowed.  As for "normal requirements" what could be more "normal" then a desire to be free from bondage?  And with many of the runaway slaves already working in a multitude of capacities for the Union army and earning wages, or simply food and a place to stay, who could not argue that they were doing the work of "free men" not slaves?

Lincoln's Speeches

President Lincoln wrote some powerful speeches in his day.  I sure do wish that we could have a Chief Executive with that kind of way with words again. 

Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" was very much focused on the "good of the many outweighing the good of few or the will of the majority taking precedent over the desire of the minority". 


"A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."

He uses the Constitution in attempts to show the South that though he has no intention to mess with slavery where it exists, he also has no LEGAL way of doing so.

 "There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

 Lincoln is speaking directly to the South throughout this entire speech.  The paragraphs that talk about slavery, the references to protecting the rights of individuals and states and the comments on respecting the rulings of the Supreme Court were all designed to address certain fears that the South had regarding rule of the country by the Republicans.

1)  Slavery comments dealt with southern fears that the radical Republicans, who included such vocal anti-slavery proponents as Secretary Seward, would not only prohibit the spread of slavery into the territories, but also seek to make it illegal in the South itself. 

2)  Paragraphs about the rights of states and individuals, also referred to slaves, since the South wanted stronger enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, as well as protection of their property from the institution of slavery being outlawed. 

3)  The comment about the Supreme Court was to assure the South that the federal government was going to abide by the rulings of the court who dictated that the slaves had no rights and that the federal government had no Constitutional authority to prohibit ANY one from taking ANY property ANY where in the country. 

Throughout the Inaugural Address, Lincoln makes references to the founding of the United States: 

"Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

Saying in effect that the concept of "Union" might be enforced by the Constitution, but it exists by the will of the people, in order to express their will.  A point which I found myself agreeing with. 

Though Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" is a well written speech, which ends with those evocative words:

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

It very much seems at times to be more of a civics and law lesson than an inspirational speech.  I know that Lincoln is trying to impress upon the South the need for unity and that they have nothing to fear from his administration, but is not, other than the last few paragraphs, a beautiful speech.

"The Gettysburg Address", is a breathtaking and haunting speech, but I am not going to to discuss it in this post.  Instead, I wish to compare Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" to his "Second Inaugural Address".

Lincoln begins by essentially agreeing with my thought that his "First Inaugural Address" was a tad long-winded, but necessary in order to fully explain to his dissatisfied countrymen the state of the Union.  Now, such a statement is not needed, since the entire country knows the state of affairs, after having survived the past four years of war.  No reminders of the cause of the civil war are needed. 



However, Lincoln still fixates on slavery, pushing it front and center as the cause and reason for North and South fighting it out on the battlefield. 

"These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war."

He even invokes "God" into the war, taking some of the blame off of the South, by stating that God may have brought this conflict about in order to make the white race pay for the degradations of slavery they inflicted onto the black race.

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."


Though Lincoln's tone in this speech is not one of outright condemnation of the South, in particular for causing the war as seen in the last excerpt, he doesn't completely let them off the hook:

"While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."

Yet despite the horrors of the last four years of war, Lincoln is trying NOT to look towards the past, to who caused the war, to the battlefields of slaughter, to slavery.  Instead, he has his eyes on a hopeful future; one in which both sides are united again and working together to heal the wounds, both physical and spiritual, caused by this civil war.  And he is saying it with some of the most beautiful words ever written:


"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Whenever I read these lines, particularly when reading them carved on the Lincoln Memorial, I always get misty-eyed.  Lincoln was such a naive and idealistic man, just the type of statesman we need more of right now, who's words cannot help but inspire hope for the future in all who read them, regardless of when or where they live.  

General McClellan and his Ego

The unmitigated gaul of General George McClellan never ceases to amazing me.  This entire letter is one HUGE lecture to President Lincoln instructing him on how to do the job of President, when any student of history knows that McClellan is the one who needs a lesson in how to do his job.  Contained within the paragraphs are several criticisms are Lincoln's policies.

1)  McClellan, on one hand, says that "The Constitution and the Union must be preserved, whatever may be the cost in time, treasure and blood."  Yet he later on puts conditions on how Lincoln should be executing the war.  "It should not be a War looking to the subjugation of the people of any state, in any event.  It should not be, at all, a War upon population; but against armed forces and political organizations."  How exactly does McClellan expect to win the war?  The "high principles of Christian Civilization" just aren't going to cut it. 

2)  With his comments against the military confiscation of property, McClellan shows himself to be trying to live in the storybook days of "chivalry".  In the American Revolution, the colonial government freely took possession of the property of the Tories (those colonists who chose to stay loyal to British rule) and never compensated them for it.  War is made by a whole civilization on another whole civilization.  This means that ALL members of the society are involved in either fighting, supporting or governing the waring countries, thus ALL members of society have to face the consequences of living in a state of war. 

3)  McClellan is also rather pro-slavery.  He goes to great lengths to stress that slavery is protected by the government, even detailing how the dealings between the Union government and slaveholders should go, with the government compensating the slave owners when they need to make use of slave labor.  McClellan even charges that a "declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present Armies".  In fact, as the Democrats learned to their dismay in the election of 1864, the soldiers overwhelmingly supported Lincoln, which included is issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.  McClellan consistently, and throughout his entire military career, managed to completely, and totally overestimate everything!

However, it is worth questioning whether he would have moved beyond those politically expedient beliefs (necessary for a Democrat to have) after being elected and realizing what was needed to secure victory is open for interpretation.  Personally, I say, oblivious in battle......oblivious in the Presidency. 

McClellan goes down in my personal record book as the most over-rated General the Union ever had.  I know that the Union had quite a few BAD generals:  Hooker and Burnside spring to mind, but none of them had such systematic delusions that McClellan had.  He had delusions of grandeur over-estimating his own ability as well as delusions of fear, over-estimating the strength of the enemy.  Putting up with him in command for as long as Lincoln did is one of the few faults I can find with our President.  I would have given him the sack at least after the Peninsula Campaign.  Then again, U.S. Grant is one of my heroes, so I am probably more than a tad biased.

*** Side note, if this essay is a bit chaotic and not as well put-together as my previous ones, I apologize.  I am sick and perhaps not in possession of my full faculties.  But I still have more of them, even in my weakened state than McClellan did! ***

Ordinary Soldiers and War

When considering the amount of both correspondences and journals written during the Civil War and the vast quantities of personal accounts of the war published after the fact, I am struck by the high literacy numbers.  This is particularly surprising among the common enlisted men.  I would even be willing to bet that the percentage of literary men in the Union and Confederate military was the highest in history up to that point; something that I would also consider to be an example of both a modern military and a modern country. 

Of even more interest to me personally, was trying to get a handle on the reasons individuals chose to fight for either side.  Though it has often been painted in strict black and white, the reality is one of a hundred+ shades of grey.  Though there were many Southern soldiers who fought to preserve the institution of slavery, there were many more who found a cause in the protection of their home state from the Northern invaders.  And in the North, just as there were many abolitionists among the Union soldiers, there were just as many who were fighting strictly to preserve the Union and who didn't give a damn about the "darkies".  I found the examples of letters with "Perman & Taylor" to cover a range of reasonings and attitudes towards the War, their opponents and even towards their supposed compatriots (who oftentimes didn't share the same opinions). 


When reading "John Cochran's Letter" I was appalled (but not really surprised) that he would be so willing , nay, really so EAGER to see the blood of "contending brothers" drench the land than live under Republican rule.  He would be willing to sacrifice his "family" in order to preserve his "property".  Things can always be replaced, but people (especially one's family) are irreplaceable.  Now, Cochran may have been speaking metaphorically about "brothers", but still, his willingness to sacrifice living breathing people, in order to guarantee his right to own a certain type of property I find particularly repugnant.  (p. 179)

In "Charles Brewster's Letter" the writer shows that he is just as willing as Cochran to defy the law (military law in this instance as opposed to civilian) in order to do what he feels to be right, which is very much anti-slavery.  I find his cause to be more just, since he is defending people from enslavement and possible death for running away.  He is defending "life", while Cochran is defending "property".  (p. 180)

The "Charles Wills Letter" presents the reader with a Union soldier, who is conflicted about slavery and is unsure what to do with the contraband that made their way to the Union lines.  Wills doesn't appear to care very much about the slaves, he even states the belief that they are "better off with their masters 50 times over than with us".  Yet at the same time he doesn't feel right in sending them back, "I couldn't help to send a runaway nigger back.  I'm blamed if I could."  He also mentions that the military commanders had made promises to the local slave-owners assuring them that the blacks would be returned to their owners.  But in the next sentence he seems to take joy in the "trick" that his leaders paid on those slave-owners, by NOT returning the runaways.  Wills' concern is focused more on the day-to-day activities of being a soldier, such as the desire to survive the war and the need to begin saving some of his money in case he must face a future that includes a missing limb or two.  (p. 181-2)

It is the "Charles Wills Letter" which I find to be a likely example of the beliefs held by most soldiers on both sides of the Civil War.  Though I am sure that there were many "die-hard Abolitionists" and staunch "Slavery is Good proponents" on either side.  I really feel that most soldiers held a myriad of beliefs and a wide variety of thoughts on the reasons for fighting and the causes of the war itself.  It is thus a very good thing that so many people involved in the war, observing the war or even simply affected by it in some way, were able to record those thoughts, share them with others, and thereby insure that the Civil War will be remembered from a wide variety of viewpoints, guaranteeing that the conflict will be seen as a battle between shades of grey.

Response to Alexander Stephens' Speech

Let me begin by stating that I found Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' speech in Savannah to be beyond distasteful, to be beyond disgusting and to be beyond repulsive; in fact I have wracked my extensive vocabulary and have failed to discover a word that adequately describes the utter loathing I feel for Vice President Stephens and his loathsome soliloquy. 

The thing that really grabs my attention is how Stephens makes use of both the Constitution of the United States and the Founding Fathers. He claims that during the time of the writing of the Constitution:

"It [Slavery] was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error."

He goes on to reference Jefferson as stating that slavery was the "rock upon which the old Union would split."  Though there is some truth to this interpretation of Jefferson's thoughts on slavery, this is a man after all who said about it "We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." as well as "believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves." 

In addition, Jefferson intended to roundly condemned the British for the colonial slave trade in his Declaration of Independence, by stating that the Crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere."  However, this last statement was later struck from the Declaration.  Jefferson was continually expressing wishy-washy statements on slavery throughout his entire life, they spanned they full spectrum from racist southerner to supporting colonization to even questing the to justice and viability of the entire slave system.  To use one tiny snippet of this man's writings as an expression of his thoughts on anything, is impossible and does a disservice to both Jefferson and Stephens' audience.  

In addition, though Stephens' takes care to REPEATEDLY overemphasize the support that the Constitution gives for the existence of slavery, he never quotes a single word from the Constitution.  Might it be because, other than counting slaves as 3/5 of a person in order to help determine the number of Representatives a state will have, the Constitution is rather mute on the subject.  It is chock full, on the other hand, of statements, phrases and Amendments guaranteeing personal liberty.  For example, the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Also, Article 1's intent to prevent abuses by Congress:

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

 In addition, there is a section in Article 4, which is designed to insure that the citizens of all states are treated equally:

"The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States."


Finally, there are the Amendments.  Amendment One is the most obvious one, guaranteeing a whole multitude of personal rights:


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Then there is the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The 9th and 10th Amendments also serve to protect people's rights, stating that anything not listed in the Constitution belongs to the people and that just because something isn't listed in the Constitution DOESN'T necessarily mean that the people are deprived of those rights. 

In short, the Constitution speak a whole HELL of a lot about person liberty and individual freedom, both freedom "from" and freedom "for".  What it doesn't speak about is slavery.  Does anyone here not find it rather puzzling then that Alexander Stephens chooses to use this venerable document to "support" slavery???



It is really easy then to say that the NUMBER ONE thing I took away from this speech was Stephens' absolute fixation with slavery from his need to justify its existence and thereby justifying the South's act of secession.  He really is downright obsessed with being right at all cost.  I would feel sad for someone so pathetic that he can't handle ever being wrong, if I wasn't so bloody pissed off at him!

Uncle Tom's Cabin

I am of two minds on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.  On the one hand, it did serve to draw Northern attention to the horrors of slavery and the plight of slaves in the South.  On the other hand, it is inconsistent in its' portrayal of slavery, much of this is probably due to Stowe's unfamiliarity with the South's "peculiar institution" (she was a Northern woman who spent no time in the Lower South and little time new the North/South border) and in the nature and character of the slaves.  

On the first point, Stowe did do an excellent job in detailing the common occurrence of family break-ups, due to slavery.  Uncle Tom's last night with his wife and his good-byes with his family this next morning, brought a tear to to this reader's eye.  (Chapter X)  Also, the ease with which the trader Haley sells Lucy's baby, while the poor girl as gone to the side of the boat to try and see her husband, is monstrous.  (Chapter XII)  The desperate straits that Eliza is moved to go to in order to prevent her son being sold is something that a mother should never have to experience.  (Chapter V)  Cassy's life story (one of degradation, abuse and familial separation) in Chapter XXXIV is also harrowing.

In addition, the details dealing with the internal slave trade, the Middle Passage, the abuses heaped on slaves by their masters, and some of the inner-workings of the aid that slaves had in getting to Canada were also well presented.  Though Haley, Marks and Tom Loker are a bit stereotypical, they proceed at their jobs of slave dealing and fugitive slave tracking matter-of-factly and with a certain degree of professionalism, (Chapters VI, VIII) even if they are all rather like scoundrels.  The portrayal of the Quakers, who help Eliza and George Harris on their way to Canada is also interesting, particularly the character Phineas and his willingness to bend the Quaker's rules on pacifism in the pursuit of a greater good, namely preventing the slaves he is hurrying away to freedom from being recaptured.  (Chapter XVII) 

However,  it also seemed as though Stowe was trying to appeal to both the Abolitionists and the Anti-slavery contingents.  Her descriptions of the Africans made it clear that though she was in favor of the total ending of slavery and couched its' wrongness in the religious words of the fervent abolitionist, she was also careful to never state that she was in favor of political and social equality between Blacks and Whites.  While personally, she might have been in favor of this, the book is less absolute on it.

In addition, Uncle Tom's Cabin seems to show Stowe's support for the colonization movement in Africa.  This is most obvious in Chapter XLIII with George Harris' thoughts on the new colony of Liberia:

1. On the shores of Africa I see a republic, - a republic formed of picked men, who, by energy and self-educating force, have, in many cases, individually, raised themselves above a condition of slavery. Having gone through a preparatory stage of feebleness, this republic has, at last, become an acknowledged nation on the face of the earth, - acknowledged by both France and England. There it is my wish to go, and find myself a people.

George Harris no longer considers himself an American and rather sees himself as an African, which is anathema to what abolitionist profess to believe in.  It is rather the Anti-slavery contingent that wish to send the black people back to Africa; out of sight, out of mind, no longer America's problem, thereby ending the problem of what to do with the Blacks once they have been freed.  For if they are considered "free human beings", then it can no longer be argued that they are NOT worthy of the same rights as White men:  "The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", included in this of course, is the right to have a family, own land, businesses and property, earn money however they wish, vote and hold public office.  Both sides, abolitionist and anti-slavery, desire to see the end of slavery, but for different reasons and with different results for the ex-slaves.  


In short, Harriet Beecher Stowe, though obviously outraged over slavery, seems to have written Uncle Tom's Cabin as a novel with appeals to both sides of the anti-slavery argument.  Both Abolitionists and Anti-slavery will find sections of the novel pleasing to their belief structure and thus I believe that either Stowe was masking her true feelings in regards to the nature of Negroes or she was perhaps attempting to provide both sides with a common rallying point, something they could both agree and unite behind.

Perman & Taylor (Chapter 4: Sectionalism & Secession)

First, in regards to the Preston Brooks caning of Charles Sumner, please see my previous post.  I became so incensed regarding that incident, that what was just supposed to be a few sentences ended-up taking over the whole posting, so it was posted separately.  Anyway, I find the whole incident to be yet another example of the lengths to which Southerners would go to forcibly push their beliefs onto others.  Just like in Kansas, if they cannot get their way by "fair means", then they are perfectly willing to use "foul" ones, such as fraudulent elections, arson and in the case of of Brooks, assault.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was right on the money with his condemnation of the South and the questioning of how a "barbarous community" which could support such actions (South) could exist along side a "civilized community".  Though Lincoln expressed the sentiment better in his "A House Divided" speech, Emerson's statement that "I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom" was a point well made also. 

In matters of secession, I feel that South Carolina, and any other slave state for that matter, can cloak their reasons for seceding in any language they like and pretend that the actions of the North can somehow justify their actions, but that they cannot obfuscate the simple fact that keeping "slavery" as an institution was their TRUE motivation for their act of secession.  Just consider the these paragraphs from "3.  South Carolina Declares and Justifies its Secession, December 1860": 

1. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

1. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

South Carolina is fixated on slavery, even to the point of misrepresenting President-elect Lincoln's words on the matter and assigning future federal positions and actions to a government that has yet to take power. 

Historian Manisha Sinha also reinforces this point in the essay "The Political Ideology of Secession in South Carolina", but also states that the desire to protect slavery is also a desire to protect the power of the white planter class at the expense of not just the slaves or Northerners, but at the expense of other Southern whites.  The conflict was not just a racial divide, but also a class and gender divide, with the South afraid of the growing progressivism in the North towards the enfranchisement of not only blacks, but also of middle class, poor and immigrant white men, and even of women.  These were the people who would be less likely to have anything in common with the Southern slave-holding elite and thus less inclined to vote in support of this "American aristocracy" down south.  And the South was firmly against any concept of either social or political equality.  (p. 129)

Though secession was seen as inevitable by some, other Southern politicians attempted to keep the union whole, albeit with sharp divisions between Southern and Northern government. Calhoun, had in fact, proposed the concept of "nullification" as an attempt check the actions of the federal government.  By allowing any "ONE" state to nullify "ANY" federal law it considered to be unconstitutional, this would have led to a "rule of the minority", one in which the desires of any one state would take precedence over the needs of the whole country.  (p. 124)  This is a gross distortion of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people", which would permit abuses by individual states, at the expense of the others.  As Spock said so elegantly in Star Trek II:  the Wrath of Khan, "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few".  The federal government should not be held accountable to the whims of any individual person, state or region.  The United States, only truly works as a country when there is majority rule. 

In fact, just look at how well the United Confederate States of America did as a government, they were besieged by the concerns of the States and ultimately doomed by their lack of a strong central government.

Southern Honor is a myth

First off, I find the Southern defense and heroizing of Preston Brooks' vicious and unprovoked assault on Senator Charles Sumner to be particularly appalling.  How could any man of honor, as all Southern men claim to be, find honor in the beating of an unarmed man nearly to death?  If Brooks felt that Sumner's political speech, critical of slavery, and given publicly before Congress, was an affront to the section of America he called home, then he should have called him out and challenged his fellow Senator to a duel.  Southerners placed great store in their long tradition (one still occurring in 1857) of handling affairs of honor with duels, then why didn't Brooks challenge Sumner to one?  My answer is that a duel is a meeting of equals and Brooks didn't consider Sumner his equal at all.  Also, a duel gives both participants an equal chance for both victory and death, something that Brooks didn't want to risk happening.  He wanted to be ASSURED a victory, so he attacked Sumner unprovoked and while the man was unarmed and unprepared (really, how could he be since he was attending a meeting of the Senate, little expecting to be attacked) and kept beating on him, long after his victim had ceased to even try to protect himself and probably long after Sumner had lost conciseness.

Southern honor is not just a myth, it is complete and utter bullshit.

Ordeal By Fire - Ch. 7 (Dred Scott & Presidential / Judicial Misconduct)

The "Dred Scott Decision" was one of the greatest travesties of justice in United States history.  Justice Taney should have been ashamed of himself.  It was an attempt to settle matter of slavery in the territories, but instead only inflamed both sectionalism and the anti-slavery movement.  If ever there was a clear-cut case of Presidential misconduct worthy of impeachment, it was Buchanan's actions in this matter.  He was asked by the Southern contingent on the Supreme Court to put pressure on a fellow Pennsylvanian judge in order to get him to go along with the majority decision, which was pro-slavery, anti-Dred Scott freedom, and which ruled that Congress had no right to restrict slavery ANYWHERE.  In effect, this ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.

The ruling was obviously EXTREMELY prejudicial and tainted both by Buchanan's interference, but also by Taney's prejudices.  He was strongly in favor of Southern rights, a virulent sectionalist and hated the North.  Taney should have been forcibly recused from hearing this case and certainly should NEVER have been allowed to rule on it.  It made obvious that the Southern-run Federal government was making policy and laws that were for the good of the few (South) over the good of ALL Americans.  The South could no longer hide the fact that they were in control of all branches of the Federal government. 

On the plus side, the conflict in Kansas helped to divide the already fractured Democratic Party more and the bloodshed proved that "popular sovereignty" was defective.

Ordeal By Fire - Ch. 6 (Douglas & Kansas / Nebraska Act)

My thoughts on Stephen Douglas have never been vary deep.  I feel that most Americans think of him (if they even know who he is) in connection with the famous "Lincoln / Douglas Debates" and how he handed Lincoln a political loss.  Some might connect him also with his infamous proposal "Kansas / Nebraska Act", which contained in it the concept of "popular sovereignty", viewed by many as one of the major causes of the Civil War. 

I consider the passage of this legislation to be a major turning-point.  From the moment this bill becomes law, the Civil War is truly inevitable.  The K/N Act, by virtue of its ambiguity (designed by Douglas to have his cake and eat it too) was supposed to please both sides and stop the squabbling over which states would allow slavery.  It sought to do this through the concept of "popular sovereignty", which let the people living in the states decide for themselves the legality of slavery within their borders.  However, this ran counter to the Missouri Compromise, which stated that no land above Line 36 º 30' N, which both the Kansas and the Nebraska Territories were, could have legal slavery.  Though the statements about "the states deciding for themselves" on slavery should have solved the matter, Southerns in the Congress wanted it codified as an amendment, which appealed the restrictions on slavery along Latitudinal lines.  This concession caused more problems and more of an uproar than there had been before.  In the end, the "Compromise of 1854" served truly to accomplish only 3 things:

1)  Created many more abolitionists
2)  Was the impetus for the creation of the Republican party
3)  Fatally divided the Democratic Party in the North

As for the architect of this Kansas/Nebraska Fiasco, though I personally dislike Douglas for being apathetic towards slavery, I cannot hate him for trying to preserve unity.  He was simply trying to do his job as a "politician", but should have been striving to instead act as befitting a "statesman".  Thoughts on Douglas' motives behind the creation of the K/N Act have run the gauntlet from sympathy for slavery to the over-riding desire to see Manifest Destiny realized.  I cannot believe that he either had sympathy for the South or was so mercenary as to be willing to trade in his moral convictions for Southern presidential votes and a transcontinental railroad through Illinois.  Douglas was trying to please both North and South and the end result was that he only inflamed both sides, leading eventually to war. 

As a side note, Bleeding Kansas should have been seen as an early warning to the North that the South would do WHATEVER it took to get their own way.  They were eagerly willing to flagrantly break both Federal and State laws and even shed blood all to get what they wanted.  The fact that Senator Brook's wasn't even prosecuted for nearly beating an unarmed man to death on the floor of the Senate should have shown the North the lengths to which the South was willing to go.  No one should have been surprised that the war lasted 4 years. 

Buchanan's election as President was a double-edged sword for the South.  Though he strongly favored Southern interests and pushed their causes forward.  His obvious prejudicial thoughts and actions helped to strengthen the Anti-slavery group in the North. 

Ordeal By Fire - Ch. 5

I had always considered the belief that slavery would "die out" eventually and the idea that slavery was not "suited" to existence in the territories of the West and Southwest to be spurious ones.  Though I had never truly considered the possibility of slavery existing "anywhere" other than in the South.  Thus, I was surprised to learn about the serious consideration of the possible use of slaves in the mining operations of California and the extreme suitability of slavery to this occupation.  It was even spoken about openly, such as this statement taken from the Charleston Mercury:

"There is no vocation in the world in which slavery can be more useful and profitable than in mining."
(McPherson, 80)

However, I really shouldn't have been surprised all that much considering how hard the South worked towards acquiring more slave-owning states for their little political confederation.  Because really, deep down, it was all about politics.  Southerners wanted to control the Federal government (ironic considering the fact that they allegedly went to war for "states rights") and to do that they needed as many slave states as possible, each with as large a population as possible.  Only other states where slavery was legal could be counted on to support the legislation that the shakers and movers within the Southern community desired. 

Also, there was a great deal of desire (not only in the South, but also in the North as well) for the US to acquire more land.  Cuba was the one territory that both sides usually agreed on.  Acquiring new territories to the north was not possible, due to Great Britain's strong hold there, so it was to the South (in particular Mexico and Central America) that the US was compelled to look for new lands.  Unfortunately, any territories thus gained, would have been guaranteed to become new slave states, under the regulations dictated by Missouri Compromise.  Such a situation was vehemently opposed by Northern (particularly anti-slavery and abolitionist factions) mostly due to the increased power over federal matters it would give to the South (who already had too much power as it is).  For the anti-slavery contingent, giving slavery new territories to expand into, would allow it the space it needed to grow and flourish, thereby preventing its extinction.  Though the South never acquired Cuba (it would take a later war with Spain to win the US the dubious distinction of "owning" Cuba) or made any inroads into Mexico and Central America, these very publicly discussed aspirations helped to convince me that the South never had ANY intention of letting slavery gradually "expire".

In addition, measures taken in attempts to please all factions, eventually ended-up satisfying NO ONE and inflaming EVERYONE.  The "Fugitive Slave Act", was too much for the North to tolerate and not enough for the South.  Even ignoring the gross violations it perpetrated on Free Blacks who were forced back into slavery and the very idea of not permitting people to speak or produce evidence on their own behalf, this Federal law road rough-shod over the rules of the states.  I found McPherson's words on the irony of the South backing a strong Federal law and the North standing-up for States' rights to be right on the money:

"Thus the supremacy of federal law, supported by the South, was upheld, and state sovereignty, supported by the North, was struck down --- indeed an ironic commentary on the South's traditional commitment to states' rights."
(McPherson, 89)

Ultimately, I discovered, the only thing that the "Fugitive Slave Act" actually accomplished was to strengthen the anti-slavery sentiment and resolve in the North.

Ordeal By Fire (Ch. 1-4) - Thoughts

I found Ordeal By Fire to be very engaging right away.  I had no trouble getting into it.  However, that might be due to the fact that I very rarely ever have trouble getting into a book and also consider the Civil War to be one of my favorite time periods in history.  Regardless, it did grab me from the start.

I agree with the authors on two main points.  First, I believe that the political machinations (both North and South) in the decades leading up to 1861 had more to do with making a civil war an inevitable conclusion, then most historians for the past 150 have given them credit for.  Both sides, were heavily influenced by extremists: 

1)  In the North by the abolitionist / anti-slavery movement which insisted on seeing the cause in overly religious tones and viewed those who practiced slavery as wallowing in sin and evil (thoughts which do not lend themselves to polite discourse and compromise) had several good leaders, among them William Lloyd Garrison.

2)  The pro-slavery movement, which viewed slavery as initially a "necessary evil" and later made the radical shift to considering it a "positive good".  They came to view any attacks on slavery as simultaneous attacks on the South, the Southern way of life, and on them personally.  John C. Calhoun was one of the more influential and vocal proponent of this position.

Ultimately, in both these extremes, these groups took the situation way to personally.  And there-in lay the problem.  In addition, the vast majority of the population, North and South, was NOT represented by either of these extreme positions; their thoughts on the matters of slavery and the opposing region were consistently in the middle somewhere.  Just as their were Northerners who favored leaving slavery alone, there were also Southerners who were unhappy with the institution.  The situation was NEVER so cut and dry as the extremists wanted people to think it was (a situation as true today as it was then).

The second point of the authors that I agree with, is their emphasis on the how the changes in both the world and the US' economy affected the North and the South, but in different ways.  I have always thought that economics did more to cause the Civil War than either slavery or regional disagreements.  During the time of Industrial Revolution, the North took full advantage of the new technology available and thus the US took their first steps towards become a worldwide economic powerhouse. 

Unfortunately, the South chose to wallow in the past and was thus unable to break their collective dependence on slavery.  They really needed an intervention!  However, the way that the South had structured their economy made it pretty much impossible for them to end slavery on their own, it truly needed slavery to work.  Also, slavery was an investment; a plantation owner could make more money per year by investing in the buying, breeding and selling of slaves, then in other pursuits.  If something makes you money......Then what is the incentive to stop doing it?

The economic pressure, exerted on the South by the North, to modernize, I feel made the Southerns that much more resistant to change and that much more determined that "slavery" was both a "good" in this world and a "necessary" fact of nature.  In short, slavery went from a "necessary evil" to a "necessary good", thanks to economic concerns.