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[TM] 230 -- Black and White
May. 11th, 2008 12:05 pmTo hear the tale now, you'd think it was a simple issue. The heroes swept in and vanquished the evildoers, squashing them underfoot into the dirt and mud in which they belonged. The captives were freed, and a blow was struck for truth, freedom, democracy and the American way that was heard 'round the world.
It wasn't as simple as all that, but history is written by the victors, and the stories of those who lost get twisted. A people are demonized, a culture is broken, families are destroyed, homes are gone and everyone shrugs and says, "That's what you get." A cry is sounded, a rallying point for all of the "good" guys to shout to the heavens, and if they win, it becomes the marker for history to rally around as well.
When I was a child, it was democracy, as well. The right of the people to choose their own destinies not under the rule of a King who refused to listen to Parliament. But, in the end, the king won, and the Puritan rule of England is recorded as a disaster, with the "roundheads" looked down upon, and the monarchy uplifted, standing even today. When I was a man, the call came to free the slaves, a rallying point to divide a nation, split it apart at its seams in ways that a century and a half later it has yet to heal from.
I lived in Atlanta at the time. I had married a girl there, Maria, and when her father died, we inherited his plantation. When Georgia seceded and the call to arms came, I went. I had no real stake in the matter, truly. Not American, old enough, traveled enough to be able to see the signs of the natural decay of the system of slavery, the way it floundered under the moral uprisings of the abolitionists, and the way that secession would ultimately harm the South economically. But I fought for the home I had found, the wife I had taken, the family I hoped to build, and, ultimately, the right of people to determine their political destiny. The truth is, that slavery was not against the law. It was not even against Biblical law, and whatever your moral stance on it...was it worth a war that left 600,000 dead? 600,000. In the 1860s. Can you grasp the staggering number that is of countrymen killing countrymen?
The South could not have survived without the North, and if it became economically impossible to work within a system of slavery--as it would have, when people refused to trade slave-harvested goods--then the moral justice would have won the day. People were leaving the South. Minds were turning...the war. Was it worth it, worth so many lives, for a system that would have died on its own within a decade or two more, if that? And did a people who left an Empire just 85 years before have the right to say, "No, you may not leave and form your own country"?
And when Lincoln made his Gettysburg Address--he did not even bother freeing the slaves held by Union states--only those in a country that was not his to control. If the issue was truly the battle cry for the morals of the North--then why did Ulysses S. Grant's wife own slaves until Missouri and the United States outlawed the practice in 1865--after the war was won? It was 1868 before the fourteenth amendment passed, declaring former slaves to be American citizens, and 1870 before black citizens were constitutionally protected in their right to vote. Fast on one hand, yes, but if freed blacks could not even vote in the North beforehand--where, then, was the moral high ground?
Make no mistake--I am not defending the practice of slavery. I find it abhorrent. I never owned slaves, freeing those my father in law had held upon my inheritance of his plantation and paying a wage to those who chose to stay and work the land. My point is that war is never a black and white issue, even when the issue brought is the color of a man's skin. The people of the South were not demons, the generals who led them were not evil, and the people of the North were not angels.
Georgia has yet to recover from Sherman's great march to the sea. He caused $100,000,000 worth of damage--in the money of the time. He burned homes, not just military targets. He killed my wife when his men burned our home down around her. Collateral damage. A casualty of war. But how many Northern women were burned in their homes? What they did to her before, when they took all the food, all the horses, before they lit the torches...I do not want to know. We charge people who do that now with war crimes. History books laud Sherman as a hero, and imply the people of Georgia "deserved" it. Some hero.
History is written by the winners, but I was there. I fought. I lost my family. I lost my home. It is never simple. It is never easy. It is never black and white. Nothing is.
It wasn't as simple as all that, but history is written by the victors, and the stories of those who lost get twisted. A people are demonized, a culture is broken, families are destroyed, homes are gone and everyone shrugs and says, "That's what you get." A cry is sounded, a rallying point for all of the "good" guys to shout to the heavens, and if they win, it becomes the marker for history to rally around as well.
When I was a child, it was democracy, as well. The right of the people to choose their own destinies not under the rule of a King who refused to listen to Parliament. But, in the end, the king won, and the Puritan rule of England is recorded as a disaster, with the "roundheads" looked down upon, and the monarchy uplifted, standing even today. When I was a man, the call came to free the slaves, a rallying point to divide a nation, split it apart at its seams in ways that a century and a half later it has yet to heal from.
I lived in Atlanta at the time. I had married a girl there, Maria, and when her father died, we inherited his plantation. When Georgia seceded and the call to arms came, I went. I had no real stake in the matter, truly. Not American, old enough, traveled enough to be able to see the signs of the natural decay of the system of slavery, the way it floundered under the moral uprisings of the abolitionists, and the way that secession would ultimately harm the South economically. But I fought for the home I had found, the wife I had taken, the family I hoped to build, and, ultimately, the right of people to determine their political destiny. The truth is, that slavery was not against the law. It was not even against Biblical law, and whatever your moral stance on it...was it worth a war that left 600,000 dead? 600,000. In the 1860s. Can you grasp the staggering number that is of countrymen killing countrymen?
The South could not have survived without the North, and if it became economically impossible to work within a system of slavery--as it would have, when people refused to trade slave-harvested goods--then the moral justice would have won the day. People were leaving the South. Minds were turning...the war. Was it worth it, worth so many lives, for a system that would have died on its own within a decade or two more, if that? And did a people who left an Empire just 85 years before have the right to say, "No, you may not leave and form your own country"?
And when Lincoln made his Gettysburg Address--he did not even bother freeing the slaves held by Union states--only those in a country that was not his to control. If the issue was truly the battle cry for the morals of the North--then why did Ulysses S. Grant's wife own slaves until Missouri and the United States outlawed the practice in 1865--after the war was won? It was 1868 before the fourteenth amendment passed, declaring former slaves to be American citizens, and 1870 before black citizens were constitutionally protected in their right to vote. Fast on one hand, yes, but if freed blacks could not even vote in the North beforehand--where, then, was the moral high ground?
Make no mistake--I am not defending the practice of slavery. I find it abhorrent. I never owned slaves, freeing those my father in law had held upon my inheritance of his plantation and paying a wage to those who chose to stay and work the land. My point is that war is never a black and white issue, even when the issue brought is the color of a man's skin. The people of the South were not demons, the generals who led them were not evil, and the people of the North were not angels.
Georgia has yet to recover from Sherman's great march to the sea. He caused $100,000,000 worth of damage--in the money of the time. He burned homes, not just military targets. He killed my wife when his men burned our home down around her. Collateral damage. A casualty of war. But how many Northern women were burned in their homes? What they did to her before, when they took all the food, all the horses, before they lit the torches...I do not want to know. We charge people who do that now with war crimes. History books laud Sherman as a hero, and imply the people of Georgia "deserved" it. Some hero.
History is written by the winners, but I was there. I fought. I lost my family. I lost my home. It is never simple. It is never easy. It is never black and white. Nothing is.
