Ch. 39 "he saw none"

[Scott Badger]

Otto:
> If it's about the Civil War, and I admit I didn't saw that
> immediately, then
> maybe this way that the myth of the Civil War as a noble war to free the
> slaves is rejected, and in my opinion not so much about how the
> slaves could
> have been freed some other way.
>
> In fact the Civil War has been fought about the question of who would own
> the West, a Second American Revolution between the industrialized
> North and
> the feudal South and in this sense I see indeed that there is a connection
> to M&D:

I expect the Civil War, like most wars, wasn't about any *one* issue. And
I'm not sure that any war can be truly noble. But I would argue that slavery
was very much an issue, though purposefully ignored - the elephant in the
room, as they say -, even at the time of the Revolution. I think an argument
might be made that because slavery wasn't dealt with at the inception of the
US, because it would have stood in the way of alliance, and therefore
success, a civil war was in some sense inevitable. The M-D Line, although
surveyed for other purposes, as a symbol of American slavery is the direct
link between the two wars. This is not to deny, though, the presence of
other, less "noble", motivations that the Civil War might also have served.

Further, I associate the slave-driver episode, and the questions it poses
re. violence as a counter to violence, with John Brown's actions which were
explicitly anti-slavery and which I don't think can discounted as part of
what lead the newly United States into war with itself.

Scott Badger