historical question

[flea]

I've been reading about the Civil War lately, and yesterday was Confederate Memorial Day, on which the Confederate Constitution, the only copy of which my employer owns, is displayed.

One thing I haven't yet read about or figured out is why Lincoln was so intent on preserving the Union. Why not let the South secede? Was there debate about it at the time? So far all I have seen is that Lincoln considered secession to be rebellion, and the Confederacy started hostilites. Did Lincoln just not expect things to go on s long and so damagingly?

(Be gentle; remember, my historical period starts in 5000 BCE.)

Comments

[jarsy.livejournal.com]

This is weirdly timeful for me, becuase I just found out about this!

DH has been reading a lot of Civil War history lately, so I've been getting bits and pieces. As a foreigner I've only ever had movies and tv to go on, really. And I had no idea that the South wanted to secede! That completely changes every idea I've ever had about the civil war. I'd never thought of the South as the good guys before...

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Well, the South wanted to secede because they were afraid that their right to enslave millions of people would be removed. So, depends on your definition of "good guys."

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and the whole "war of northern aggression" thing always got me. Like, dudes, what event actually constitutes the first armed conflict of the war? Would that be, I don't know, Ft. Sumter? And... who assaulted Ft. Sumter, pray? It's the war of whose aggression?

Actually, I just finished a book about the US/Mexican war of 1848, and it has a lot in common with the Civil War in terms of the characterizations by the losing side. Looking at it in people and materiel terms, it is obvious who was going to win from before the first shot was fired. And yet the going-to-lose side persistently chose a belligerent path, for reasons totally unrelated to chances-of-winning. (Mostly: pride, desperation, force of compromise among warring factions, etc.) In both cases, the losing side might have shot the moon -- basically, acquired foreign recognition and allies, providing materiel and trained military assistance -- but it was totally a moonshot and they basically knew it going in, and then over the course of the war and its immediate aftermath you can see an amnestic radicalization, where they literally forget that the bellicose stance was never realistic (although they'd known it previously), and argue that it could have been viable if-only.

Amnesia in politics as in most matters of consistent goal-seeking is a very big and frustrating problem. The moreso, when the amnesia appears to be magical thinking to rescue oneself (where "self" may be as large as nation) from understanding one's role in one's own misfortunes.