When I think about the Confederacy and The Civil War, as I think about all wars, I am struck with the tragedy. Wars are tragic things. The Civil War was a horrible war fought for horrible, indefensible ends. I often resent a plantation elite who manipulated poor white yeoman farmers into dying in droves. Rich man's war. Poor man's fight.
Still happens today. Happened in Vietnam.
My great-great Grandfather was from Alabama, but he fought for the Yankees. There was no such thing as a solid South. Votes to secede in each state’s legislature were not unanimous. Winston County, Alabama, famously voted to secede from the South or at best, completely refuse to assist the Confederate Army. The Free State of Jones, in Mississippi, is another such example. People in the hill country of Northeast Alabama, North Georgia, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and western Virginia (which became the state of West Virginia in 1863) did, too.
And, of course, there is a very human element. 1 out of every 10 Southern men died in combat. Every family knew loss. Every mother knew a mother who had lost a child.
If we had casualties of 10% in a battle now, it would be considered a bloodbath. In the Civil War, you routinely had 30% casualties every battle. And one right after the other. In some instances, like the cornfield at Antietam, some regiments had 100% casualties. So an entire town of men might be wiped out and never return home.
The Southern economy after the war was reduced to rubble. People starved. The state of Mississippi spent 25% of its entire budget on artificial limbs for quite a while.
If you look at the Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, he blames both sides for the war. "Woe unto the world for its offenses! Both sides pray to the same God and read the same Bible. And pray to that very same God to make war on each other. The Almighty has his own purposes."
In Lincoln’s mind, the North was at fault for not ending slavery much sooner, and also letting it grow like a tumor, unchecked. The South was at fault for perpetuating it. Lincoln struggled deeply to make sense of the war. He came to believe that the Civil War was punishment for slavery, that it was, in fact, Divine Retribution for the wickedness and evilness of slavery.
I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for anyone who perpetuated the peculiar institution of slavery, by any means. Or the cause they advanced. Or the money they lost when the whole economic system they built on bondage collapsed. But I have 100% sympathy for everyone in the middle of a war, ANY war, civilians and soldiers, too. Let’s not forget the human cost. That is the Quaker in me.
And my faith shows here.
You may have heard it said that you are to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemy. If you love only people who love you, what does that prove? Even tax collectors do that much.