A sense of proportion, please. The Civil War caused hundreds of
thousands dead. The Mississippi Freedom Summers of 1963 and 1964,
in both of which one of my sons participated, cost under a dozen
white dead, and several times that number of Black. To call that
a civil war is to render words meaningless. Moreover, it was won
not by the stronger military of one of the participants, but by
the political will of the nation, ultimately formulated in
actions by all three branches of the federal government.
William Mandel
robert wrote:
>
> At 01:03 AM 6/22/00 -0700, you wrote:
> >As Jeffrey Blankfort and others have pointed out the freeing of the
> >slaves takes on many facets in the dynamic of the Civil War. 40 years
> >ago in Jr. High we were taught (in Kerman, CA) that the Civil War was
> >not fought over slavery, but over states rights.
> >
> >I found that a disingenous interpretation of fact considering that the
> >issue of states rights arose over slavery and the apportioning of slave
> >holding status among newly admitted states. Of course it is a
> >convenient interpretation for southern apologists.
> >
> >On the surface the war was fought over slavery, even if the actual
> >freeing of the slaves was done in steps and in response to other
> >concerns. Of course beneath the surface flow the economic reasons which
> >may have been the real precipitators of the conflict, but whatever the
> >underlying causes, slavery was the prominent issue and an end to slavery
> >was a fortunate result of a Union victory.
> >
> jerry,
>
> i should doing other stuff, but can't help point out what most historians
> of reconstruction have: that the war did not end de facto and pernicious
> forms of slavery and that the feudal position of sharecroppers in the Miss.
> Delta Counties did not change essentially -- as the SNCC field workers who
> risked their lives to walk into still existing "plantations" there in 1963
> can testify. Thus, the second civil war of the 60's.
>
> robert houriet
> >--
> >Jerry West
> >Editor/publisher/janitor
> >----------------------------------------------------
> >THE RECORD
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> >
> >
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