The question is: Why did the Civil War unfold when it did, where it did, and the way it did? At the end of the day, it really comes down to power - not just governmental power but a basic ideological struggle over who can control which other people and under what legal terms. As for slavery - it carried metaphoric weight for both sides too. It was one thing to describe the enslavement of African Americans, whom few white Northerners (and Southerners) cared much about. But the political debate was characterized by claims to the enslavement of white people - not as literal chattel slaves but as submissive underlings to conspiratorial forces based far away. For Americans living along the slave-free line - the Ohio River Valley, for example - the political debate was a profile in arrogance and intemperate extremism on both sides. But for leaders of the planter and industrial classes, this was a debate over the very nature of the republic, and over whose social order was national and whose was local.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 00:25:59 +0000
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