This day in history: The American Civil War began on this day (April 12) in 1961 when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor.
There is a debate as to whether the Civil War was about slavery, or the rights of the states to secede. I lean toward the latter because of the attitudes of the soldiers in the North. You see, the average white Northerner had about the same attitude toward blacks as did the average white Southerner. Alexis de Tocqueville actually believed that racism was actually worse in the Northern states than it was in the South.
When Lincoln introduced the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, soldiers in the North felt that they were duped. Civil War author James McPherson wrote that “They professed to feel betrayed. They were willing to risk their lives for the Union, they said, but not for black freedom.”
McPherson writes of a “backlash of anti-emancipation sentiment” in the Federal army and quotes various officers as saying things like, “If emancipation is to be the policy of this war...I do not care how quick the country goes to pot.” A Massachusetts sergeant wrote in a letter that “if anyone thinks that this army is fighting to free the [black man]...they are terribly mistaken.” Another officer declared that “I don't want to fire another shot for the [black man] and I wish that all the abolitionists were in hell...I do not fight or want to fight for Lincoln's...proclamation one day longer.”
With these negative feelings towards blacks at the time in the Northern states, I find it hard to believe that the people there were willing to give up their lives to emancipate them.
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