Rebels
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The American Civil War with the bloody and destructive emancipation of four million Slaves in comparison to the Czar’s peaceful Emancipation of the twenty-three million serfs of Imperial Russia was a wasteful and wickedly insane enterprise built upon the diabolical pride and unconditional hubris on both sides of the conflict. It was a problem that could have been resolved by true statesmen with a coherent Christian morality by the elimination of manual labor for the cultivation of cotton by the application of steam energy and mechanization in 1840’s rather than 1870’s.
It also demonstrates the inferiority of democracy over monarchy in directing social change with a Christian worldview. Like the First World War, courage was abundant on both sides, but wisdom was nowhere to be found.
The Tsar Liberator was assassinated, and the failures of the Tsarist regime in the 19th century paved the way for the Bolsheviks in the 20th. I will take what we produced here in this country in comparison. In the fullness of time our Civil War made the country stronger with both North and South honoring their veterans. Until the recent madness of the Left attempting to use the Civil War for their malign purposes, the memory of the courage and fortitude of those brave men helped knit the nation together. None of them died in vain.
For those who did not read my past post on the subject; the question of seceding was still unanswered in 1860 as the constitution was silent on the subject. The Civil War resolved that question regardless of the division of opinion as to its wisdom or appropriateness.
Shenandoah County VA in the Valley had liberals voted in their school board. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee high school and elementary were renamed at a cost of $300,000! Its citizens voted in conservatives to the school board. The schools are renamed back to Jackson and Lee.by 5 to I votes of the board However the county refused to pay for it. The citizens are now fund raising. This action is not refighting the Civil War. The action is restoring heritage.
I had learned all the usual anti-slavery v pro-slavery business in school. Based on this, when New Country Video (on PBS) ran an instrumental song around 1989 with a reading from Mary Chesnut’s diary, I was expecting basically the Confederate version of Nazi propaganda.
It wasn’t.
I was further surprised to read the actual Order of Secession written by South Carolina not long ago. It does mention slavery, …eventually. As hinted by our host, it mostly talks about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Such creates some serious difficulties with the narrative about stomping out Lost Cause myth or defining the South as defending slavery. Sadly, the actual concerns were a bit more…involved…than that. I do consider we may ultimately tear ourselves asunder for want of properly understanding our own history.
Andrew,
I think it also worth considering that while steam engines existed as early as the 1840s, the intent to use them for farming… did not. Also noteworthy, the plow that many in the Midwest ought recognize, …did not exist until almost 6 years after the War.
If I pay a visit to a museum in my original home town, I find a building that displays lots of farm machinery and old cars. Those are “ancient” and huge tractors. I think the earliest one dates from 1900.
Most of the assumptions I would make about farming or planting in the South… do not apply. The implements I expect didn’t exist yet.