The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 16)

"Wouldn't it have been better to simply accept the idea pushed by the defeatists of the 1860s that African-Americans were destined for slavery and that it was just too bloody and ghastly a proposition to do anything to unchain them?"

Was there really no other option? Was the slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of young men the only possible price for the abolition of slavery? Was the destruction of 1/3 of the country on an epic scale by a vengeful army an exclusive right?

While the causes of the American Civil War are frequently debated, writers like Mr. Lord proclaim slavery as its exclusive and unavoidable cause. But I must wonder, if the war was really all about slavery, why didn't Congress simply outlaw it?

From roughly mid-February until mid-April 1861, all the delegations from the so-called slaveholding states had gone home. The only delegations left were from Northern states and, therefore, in Mr. Lord's estimation anti-slavery; and since the only cause of the war was ending slavery, why did they not simply pass a law making it illegal?

Congress would not get around to outlawing slavery until a couple of years after the destruction of the South. Even Abraham Lincoln's dubiously legal executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation was a wonderful example of political pragmatism, carefully worded to free only those slaves over which he had not effective control.

p>One wonders. br> -- Christopher M. Sullivan br> Columbia, South Carolina /p> p> Not everyone who wishes to bring the troops out of Iraq is a defeatist, as Mr. Lord suggests. To make a correlation between our own Civil War and the Iraq conflict is stretching history almost to the breaking point. No, they were two different wars with two different aims. The Civil War was for preserving the union, the Emancipation Proclamation was added almost as an afterthought and only applied to those states in rebellion. The Iraq conflict is a battleground for fighting a mindset that is a threat to the world. It is a killing ground. If we leave tomorrow or not for years, it will remain just that. The war on terror is beyond Iraqi borders, it could even end up in Venezuela if Chavez keeps his promise of exporting his revolution. There's an even better chance it will involve Iran. Israel is in danger also from the worsening instability among the Palestinians. This calls for a rethinking of strategy: Do we want our troops to remain bogged down in a specific area, chasing insurgents, while others terrorize in other areas or do we want to regroup and get ready for the eventual big conflict between ideals that is coming? Iraq is bleeding us right now, while the real defeatists in this country are doing the best they can to ensure this nation does not see her 300th birthday. br> -- Pete Chagnon /p> p> The amazing common thread is that the, as now, Democrats urge surrender and support treason in time of war.

topics:
Bill Clinton, Business, Books, Constitution, Law, Iraq, Iran, Israel, NATO, Africa, Immigration, Unions