June 11, 2008
The Facts
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia is considered to be on the list for Vice-President to run with Barack Obama. And as expected, the attacks have already begun. The first attack seems to be on Webb’s views relative to why the Confederacy fought the Civil War. He has expressed those views in the past, including in his book, where he says the Confederacy fought the war over state sovereignty rather than slavery. Critics strongly oppose that view.
My View
Before I began, lets get one absolute, non-arguable fact very clear; the victor always write the official history record; the defeated is never allowed to be involved in the recording. If at some time later, the defeated does try to correct any historical inaccuracies, it is always put down in lieu of what now has become “recorded” history.
What Jim Webb has argued is based on some pretty solid facts; only 5% of southern whites owned slaves at the beginning of the war (I doubt more than a few people today know this), and the slave owners in the north were not asked (or told) to give up their slaves, even after the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery lasted late into the 17th century in the northern states before it was abolished, and that was done without a war.
While even a single person held as a slave is unacceptable, I rather doubt that anyone would go to war over just 5% of people who owned slaves, especially in that particular time of our country. It would not have required an all out war to bring that to an end, as was proven later in the north. So what was it that caused Abraham Lincoln (and others) to go to war with the south?
That question was, and still is, often debated. All other suggested reasons for the Civil War are hotly rejected, mainly because any one of them would not speak very well of Lincoln, a US President, and the other power players during that time. And we Americans will not have our “hero’s” tarnished. Added to that, no civilized country wants to be thought of as going to war over any possibilities other than “making people free”.
Filed under: Democrats, Presidential Campaign
