Pacifism
So now we have passionate arguments against pacifism. Fine in their way, I suppose, but as nobody has propounded pacifism it all seems a tad redundant.
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As to the basis of the thread my first impulse upon reading the first page of it was to say "Crap, another "it's all Americas fault", American/Union hatefest...
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Confederates were Americans. Every bit as much as Yankees. The political philosophy which underpinned the Confederacy was an American one. The United States is not synonymous with America. The Union cause was not synonymous with America: it was merely the expression of a regional political philosophy.
There are plenty of threads on these boards where the legal aspects of the war can be discussed. It is not unreasonable to ask that nobody brings up legal arguments on this particular thread. If you think that morality and philosophy are uninteresting or unimportant then leave this thread alone. This is a simple question of manners.
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It is my contention that the South instigated violence in the search for the achievement of its political and moral goals.
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I can only assume that this is a reference to the firing on Sumter. Because I am aware of no other “violent” action undertaken by the Confederate States government other than defence of its territory when it was invaded by the armed forces of the United States.
So let’s look at Sumter again. The question is: was the firing on the fort unreasonable if the Confederate States was an independent country? The decision to attack was not precipitate; it was preceded by extensive negotiations. Neither was it a “sneak attack” like Pearl Harbour; Beauregard gave Anderson clear warning that it was coming. Indeed, the whole siege was conducted in such a positively courtly way that Punch magazine in London published a merciless satire on it. The Ruritanian conflict, which you argue was the cause of a bloody war of conquest, was one which foreigners could barely take seriously.
There isn’t a nation on earth which would not, ultimately, open fire on foreign troops occupying one of its harbours. So I think we have to conclude that Davis and his cabinet behaved reasonably if they were governing an independent country. There was no gratuitous violence.
And so what we seem to come back to is that the United States invaded the territory of the Confederacy because it refused to accept that the latter was now an independent nation. The firing on Sumter was utterly irrelevant, since Lincoln would never, ever have accepted the independence of the South. If you feel disposed to dispute this, please point me to anything which he wrote or said between the dates of his election and his inauguration to suggest otherwise.
So: nice try, lads. You’ve rubbished pacifism, even though the philosophical case against the Union is not based on that creed. You’ve tried to argue that the violence of the attack on Sumter was somehow more significant than the violence of the invasion and conquest of eleven states.
And some of you have ridiculed the very idea of a thread which examines the philosophical basis of civil war ideology. The irony is that, in so doing, you actually prove our point. Do go away and think about it.
