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2010.10.29 11:13

The Blame Game, Fort Sumter

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The Blame Game, Fort Sumter
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Wolran Kim (Oct 2010)



The Civil War was the bloodiest and the first total war in U.S. history. (Killed soldiers: World War I-115,000, World War II-318,000, Civil War-618,000) The War broke out with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, but the cause of the 4-year war was not as simple as one bombing attack. Long-term confrontation which cumulated politically and economically between the North and South exploded. The Missouri Compromise (1820) was declared unconstitutional with the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 which escalated tensions over slavery. Thus the inevitable confrontation reached a stage, March 4, 1861, at the time when Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president. Six states seceded from the Union following South Carolina. Nobody would expected that the war would last for four years and both sides started in fantasy of victory. The Northern position was that they must win and the Southern wanted independence after making the North suffers a big loss. The favorable situation in the long run was all the way North in troop strength, industry, railways, navy, and population, even in justification. I have learned when I was young in Korea that the President Lincoln fought to liberate the slaves in the Civil War. But the emancipation was a means to an end not the purpose of the war.

Lincoln’s address in Chicago, Illinois, July 1858 encouraged people to come together as citizens of the United States eliminating racial prejudice with universal principle of equality (McNamara). Also he made a speech in Charleston, Illinois, in September the same year, He was explicit in his statement that Whites and Blacks cannot be equal politically and socially (Basler). He was not an abolitionist and his vision focused on a unitary state (single federal). But the slaves were freed as a result of the war, so history made him a father of emancipation. We can tell that his only dream was a true single country from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, but I don't think he was a warmonger. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” “Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this.” (Lincoln)

Jefferson Davis had inauguration as President of the Confederacy on February 18, 1861, and he commanded the bombing at Fort Sumter on April 12. Also he had been denied his peace emissary from Washington, and he argued for slavery and respect of the State Constitution as follows claims. "So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we will continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self-government." (Davis, Jefferson)
Fort Sumter, which became the catalyst for the Civil War, was the center of the outgoing waterway in the Atlantic Ocean in the Port of Charleston which was the pride of the South. Fort Sumter was the only place flying the Confederate flag other than Fort Pickens in the territory of the Commonwealth, Fort Sumter, who needed aid commodities, requested assistance from the Federal Government, and Lincoln artfully avoided war by supporting only provisions rather than military force (Davis, Burke).

The cause of Civil War has aroused intense debate among historians of future generations, as well as in time of war. Northerners insisted that Southerners continued slavery contrary to the United States founding, and Southerners blamed the North for the Yankees violated states’ sovereign authority. Also advocates of economic decisions were seen as a conflict between the forces of Northern commerce and industry and Southern plantations. Meanwhile, the revisionists of the 1940s believed that the Civil War was a natural consequence from directly opposed values of two different civilization and culture. Carl Sandburg (1878~1967), historian and novelist was claimed that the cause of the Civil War was "Cotton", not "The Emancipation", and John Hope (1868~1936), black historian claimed that slavery was a carefully calculated strategy (Hope).

I think that Civil War would have broken out some time or other even without bombardment at Fort Sumter which faced up the encounter between the federal government and South Carolina. A boil festers and is bound to burst eventually. I think the war had already begun two president's previous. The first bombing of Fort Sumter was just festering of an old wound. Two completely different politics and economic structures in one country couldn't be helped without victims. It was a confrontation between a plantation based on slavery and the capitalist economy based on free labor economically. It was a showdown between emerging industrial capitalism and a Republican ally of free peasant plantation aristocracy. Also it was confrontation between feudal aristocratic culture and emerging perspective American culture. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the Reconstruction Era and brought changes that helped make the country a united superpower.


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