High life

16 April 2011

Taki lives the High life

New York

On Tuesday last, 12 April, 150 years ago, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces fired the first shots on Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour, South Carolina. The bombardment lasted 36 hours, with Fort Sumter occasionally replying with fire of its own. Then the white flag went up and the Union troops within the fort surrendered. Not a single man had a scratch on either side. It looked as if both sides had gangs fighting that couldn’t shoot straight. If only.

In the next four years, 620,000 American lives were lost, from Bull Run to Petersburg, before the unequal contest came to an end at Appomattox, Virginia, in 1865. The figure 620,000 is a hell of a number of dead soldiers among an American population which stood at 31 million in total. Eleven slave-holding states withdrew from the Union to form the Confederate States of America over states’ rights, and Abe Lincoln pursued the war between brothers unrelentingly and in a sea of blood.

As a University of Virginia man — The University, as it’s called by native Virginians — I have always sided with the south, and not because of Gone with the Wind romanticism, either. What I learn as I get older is that, like most wars, the Civil War was pursued by so-called honest Abe because big northern business wanted to conduct big business in the Union. They wanted to build railroads and wanted interstate roads and access to markets. The south wished to remain sleepy and agricultural. Slavery did not become an issue until two years after the first shots over Fort Sumter. But that’s not what we were taught when we were young. No, siree, it was all about slavery, they told us, and woe to those who had actually been correctly taught and knew the true nature of the contest. Like the poor little Greek boy and University of Virginia man.

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Bart

April 21st, 2011 11:08am Report this comment

"...one of the loveliest societies that ever existed, the antebellum south."
So, one of the loveliest societies that ever existed was one whose economic was almost entirely based on human chattel slavery. No wonder Taki admires the Wehrmacht so much!

Tom B

April 21st, 2011 12:15pm Report this comment

Well said Bart. Taki's comment undermines the rest of his article. It is also rubbish that the slavery issue was not a key factor early on. One of the reasons why the South wanted to quit the union was because of the issue of other, non-slave states not wanting to return fleeing slaves. The South was also worried that with the arrival of states from the West, which were non-slave owning, that it would be out-numbered.

For sure, the Union, and Lincoln, had their faults, but the promise of Jefferson's Republic was brought a step closer by the removal of this barbaric institution. To describe the South as Taki does is simply absurd.

Minnie Ovens

April 22nd, 2011 11:49am Report this comment

You're wrong Tom B, slavery was never a factor in the decision to go to war.
Just in case you do not quite understand there would not have been a civil war commencing when it did if the issue had been slavery.

John Bidwell

April 22nd, 2011 9:17pm Report this comment

Jefferson was certainly a slave master, owning and inheriting as many as 250 at one time, although he professed to have great qualms about the morality of slavery. Thre is also the ongoing mystery of his relationship with one of his Octaroon slaves, Sally Hemmings and her children. She was by all accounts exceptionally attractive. I agree with Taki's supposition that life in antebellum Virginia must have been a particularly beautiful and wondrous epoch.

staghounds

April 28th, 2011 1:55pm Report this comment

Those who say the war wasn't about, or caused by, slavery are ignorant or liars. The war was fought to stop secession; and secession was about slavery. Read the justifications for secession adopted by the seceding states. They are all slavery and slaves. Mississippi's is I think the most horrible:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization...