The Civil War and Iraq

I have to say at the outset that I am not impressed when someone quotes a long dead sage to “prove” a point. Appeals to authority are one of the weakest of the logical fallacies.

However, sometimes the things you read about events long ago and men long dead strike a responsive cord and remind you that there are very few new things under the sun.

I am re-reading Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs. Yes, THAT Grant: Ulysses S. Grant of Civil War fame. He was the Civil War General who finally commanded all of the Union armies and defeated the Confederacy. His capture of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg coincided with Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg and re-invigorated the North in its fight to reunite the Union.

There is an eerie similarity between the current war and America’s Civil War. Even the political parties are the same.

First, although the war was about saving the Union and ending slavery, it was – as it was known throughout much of the South - the “War of Northern Aggression.” Unfair, perhaps, but the South’s objective in the Civil War was to be left to secede in peace, not to invade or conquer the North. The Civil War’s fighting was ostensibly begun by the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the surrender of Major Anderson and his 85 troops. The fighting was not expected to last very long at all, and the surrender of the fort's defenders was quickly followed by their release to Union warships outside Charleston harbor. Major Anderson later became a Union General. But, while the skirmish at Fort Sumter marked the initiation of shooting, the Civil War was started by Abraham Lincoln’s decision to prevent the South from seceding, and his willingness to use military force to prevent it.

Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union and – as a result – Northern armies invaded the states that seceded to bring them back under Federal Government control. Virtually all of the war was fought on secessionist soil.

Today we consider that a good thing. But it was not inevitable. Lincoln could have allowed the South to secede and made arrangements with the Confederate government to cooperate in developing another separate country on the North American continent, thereby saving roughly 600,000 lives; 2% of the population. In today's terms that same death toll would equal 6 million people.

Following the war, the South was treated as conquered enemy territory during “Reconstruction” and its economy was so devastated that it took a century before it fully recovered.

There were many people who opposed the war. First or course were the 10 million people of the Southern states who would just as soon not fight an invading army. But even among the 20 million Northerners, there was a very large contingent who did not feel the war was worthwhile and who were content to see the South secede. Among these was George McClellan, the top Northern General at the beginning of the war who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864 when his party – the Democrats – ran on an anti-war platform, promising to end the war and negotiate with the Confederacy.

Of course, this unpopular war was blamed on Abraham Lincoln who was attacked by the Democrats as “Honest Ape” in newspapers which ran cartoons showing him as a monkey. Lincoln is also illustrated as commanding a boat with a pair of black men groping a white woman. When a draft was announced, riots exploded in New York City which killed an estimated 100 people and had to be put down by units of the Army of the Potomac. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy called Lincoln

"fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero... The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good."

This scenario is eerily similar to the situation we find ourselves in now. Today Pomeroy has his counterparts on the Internet at sites like DailyKos and MoveOn.org and at street demonstrations where President Bush is commonly demonized as a mass murderer and 9/11 is called "an inside job.".

It may be instructive to hear what the men of that time had to say.

Faced with intense criticism from Democrats and defeatist Republicans, Grant commented

“I always admired the South, as bad as I thought their cause, for the boldness with which they silenced all opposition and all croaking, by press and by individuals, within their control. War at all times, whether a civil war between sections of a common country or between nations, ought to be avoided, if possible with honor. But, once entered into, it is too much for human nature to tolerate an enemy within their ranks to give aid and comfort to the armies of the opposing section or nation.”

There is no doubt that the kind of “aid and comfort” that General Grant was referring to is similar to what we are seeing in the “anti-war” faction today.

The government of the day dealt with their ideological enemies on several levels. In one famous case they imprisoned and later exiled congressman Clement Vallandingham. For those not familiar with him, he was the founder of the “Copperheads.” Vallandigham gave a major speech on May 1, 1863 charging the war was being fought not to save the Union but to free blacks and enslave whites. To those who supported the war he declared,

“Defeat, debt, taxation [and] sepulchres - these are your trophies.”

He denounced "King Lincoln," calling for Abraham Lincoln's removal from the presidency.

Just as the war in the Middle East is being fought with an eye on the politics in Washington, the Civil War was fought with the same politics in mind. The Confederacy’s objective was to make the North weary of war so that the fighting would cease, the Confederacy remain separate, and slavery remain in place. The failure of Northern arms in the first years of the war led to discouragement in the North and problems with military recruitment.


As volunteers dried up, a draft was instituted in the North. In protest, rioters lynched blacks in New York. Grant was keenly aware of these political problems. In his memoirs he recalls a conversation he had with General Sherman as he was preparing his Vicksburg campaign.

“[Sherman advised Grant to go back the Memphis and establish a base of supply in keeping with military doctrine instead of deciding to live off the country and attack Vicksburg]…To this I replied, the country is already disheartened over the lack of success on the part of our armies; the last election went against the vigorous prosecution of the war, voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout most of the North and conscription was already resorted to, and if I went back as far as Memphis it would discourage the people so much that bases of supply would be of no use; neither men to hold them or supplies to put in them would be furnished. The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause was lost. “

From the perspective of 150 years later and the rosy glow we get from having fought a bloody war to free us from the scourge of slavery and to preserve the Union, we tend to forget the incredible controversy that this noble cause engendered.

Is there is lesson to be learned that we can apply to our situation today? Yes there is. Today the situation we face is even more dire than the North faced in 1860. The Confederacy was not an aggressive power. During the attack on Fort Sumter there were no casualties caused by hostile fire and the Union troops that surrendered were sent home. The Confederate States simply wanted to be left alone. The case of the Islamofascists is not as simple. They swim in a sea of likeminded adherents numbering roughly 1.5 billion people, some armed with nuclear weapons and others in the process of obtaining them.

Their attack on 9/11 caused 3000 casualties - more than Pearl Harbor - and their ostensible objective is a world-wide Caliphate. This may sound like the ravings of a lunatic, but notice that many voices of opposition are already stilled in Europe - mindful of the killing of Theo Van Gogh - and even the mainstream media, supposedly American champions of “free expression,” are afraid to offend Islamic sensibilities by publishing cartoons of which Islamists do not approve.

We are engaged in a new kind of war; a war without a center of gravity against we can fight with our superior weaponry. We have a Copperhead contingent within our ranks who don’t believe we are actually in a war and who wish us to stop fighting and start negotiating our retreat.

Like the fight against Communism, this may well be a long twilight struggle whose end we cannot know. We sympathize with General Grant, but we know that his struggle ended in victory for freedom and union. Let us pray that the God who has spared this great nation so far will continue to bless us despite our manifold sins and that, like Grant, we will find victory. Let us also pray that it will not be at the cost of so many lives and so much destruction.

EDITED 9/18/2007