Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 18:50:49 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Civil War, [WSFA] Re: Interesting Inventions
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

> candymadigan at mindspring.com 04/02/02 06:06PM >>>

[Vast swaths of words decimated]

>
>Slavery was an excuse.  The war was about money and power.  When =
Lincoln
>freed the slaves, he freed the slaves in the south, but the northern =
slaves
>were only freed later.  I'm glad he freed them, but that was not the =
true
>reason that the north went to war.  Slavery that you can't get out of is =
an
>absolute evil, even if you have a 'good' master.  Even slavery that you =
can
>eventually get out of still sucks.

The war was an outgrowth of many, many  things, slavery was one.  States =
rights yet another.  Economics another.  Industrialzation another.  =
Immigration, cheap labor.  Rise of a working class that saw slaves as =
unpaid competition.  The list is long.

Even now, at this remove of time we still look for one cause, one reason.  =
Even then, people were looking for that one cause, that one reason.  =
Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe with the =
words: "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this =
great war!"

No *one* reason; lots of reasons.  All coming together in Charleston, SC =
in April 1861. 600,000+ dead later . . .

In the end the South was left as a shattered agrarian society while the =
North, mobilized for war, was able to turn it's energy to growth - =
economic and technological, leaving the South behind with their bucolic =
memories of a "lost cause."

And that's pretty much all I have to say . . .

mjw