I am a northerner. I was born in upstate New York in Niskayuna. My mother was born in Pittsfield Massachusetts and while my father was born in Munich Germany, he was brought up in Manhattan. Yeah I lived south of the Mason-Dixon line in Maryland. But I also lived in upstate New York. I remember being proud to live near a house that was part of the underground railroad. My daughter and my best friend are African American. So make no mistake about my allegiance, I am a northerner.
To me the Civil War as a northerner was about union, not slavery. To southerners the war was about fear the states would lose the right to allow citizens the right to keep slaves. At the time the issue was one of preventing future states from being slave holding states. The north was not about changing the law of the land to emancipate the slaves. That happened after the south attempted to secede from the union.
The secession was at best just a dumb ass move. The south needed the north's markets for their agricultural produce. The north needed the south's markets for manufactured products. No matter what happened in the war, the secession would have failed for lack of markets, i.e. issues like currency exchange and border crossing would have had the south begging to return to the union.
The north fought to preserve the union. The Gettysburg address starts with
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Note Lincoln first references "a new nation" and talks about a "proposition." A proposition in Merriam Websters is defined as "something offered for consideration or acceptance." Thus the idea "that all men are created equal" is merely a proposal. There were two emancipation proclamations.
The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named ten specific states where it would apply. Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.[
See Emancipation Proclamation
Neither proclamation dealt with freeing slaves in states that did not secede from the union, i.e. Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. One can conclude that from the north's point of view the war was not about ending slavery, but rather about keeping the union. For the south the war was about fear the north would end slavery.
Now comes the Tea Party and the Republican politicians. Both are trading on fear. Fear that the country is changing in ways that will harm them. Fear that people who are not like them will ruin them. Just like the south of the Civil War their fears are baseless.
Just look at the cries of tax and increasing deficits. These folks are afraid they will lose their benefits, while paying less taxes and facing a decreasing deficit. How strange they are afraid of actions that should reduce their problems. And then there is the issue of color. As Frank Rich points out in today's op-ed
It’s not happenstance that officials from the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Virginia and Mississippi have argued, as one said this month, that the Confederate Army had been "fighting for the same things that people in the Tea Party are fighting for." Obama opposition increasingly comes wrapped in the racial code . . .
See Welcome to Confederate History Month
If Lincoln was alive today, he would be a democrat and an Obama supporter. How sad republicans have drifted so far away from Lincoln.