War Between the States

I have been following discussions about the Tom Woods book (Politically Incorrect Guide to American History) and am planning to read it in the next couple of weeks.

Many critics of the book appear to get hung up on the War Between the States and are willing to argue endlessly on the question of what that war was "about". I submit that it was "about" as many things as there were participants. To say that a complex interaction among millions of people was about some small set of things or concepts is to impose an interpretation. Such interpretations necessarily involve selecting a few facts out of the infinite sea of facts and serve the interpreters' present purposes. Dr Woods' book appears to rankle many of his critics because it challenges the received and officially sanctioned interpretation of history. This alone makes the book worth its weight in gold.

In discussing the War Between the States, I have encountered quite a few folks who claim that the war was about slavery and that this is not subject to debate. Moreover, to say otherwise is to condone slavery. This is patently absurd. It takes no courage to oppose slavery, and to cut off discussion by playing the "you must be pro-slavery" card indicates intellectual cowardice.

The same folks almost invariably argue that the cost in life and property and the destruction of the Constitution were worth it to end slavery, assuming that there was no less destructive alternative. Such statements from the comfort of a century and a half after the events in question manifest a disturbing indifference to the suffering of the particpants in the WBTS and contemptible intellectual sloth.

This issue is somewhat personal to me since all my male ancestors of the right age range fought for the CSA. None of them owned slaves, and almost all of them hailed from mountain counties where slaveholding was rare. Family history indicates that these men fought out of love of their country and to defend against an invading army. Slavery was reportedly not part of their justification for service to the CSA. I have every right to honor the memory of my ancestors and to defend this heritage from historical interpretations which gratuitously demean it.