Over at the Ace of Spades, Monty put up a historical post talking about the Battle of Gettysburg, which ended on July 3rd (the same day that Grant won at Vicksburg). Inevitably Southern revisionists get to the fray and offer their own interpretation of "The War".
I couldn't resist adding my two cents:
My roots are deeply Southern. My great-great grandfather was a rabid secessionist preacher from Charleston who went to England during the Civil War to lobby the court of Queen Victoria to support the South. Other parts of my family come from Virginia and Prince William county where the battles of Manassas were fought. I was raised honoring Robert E. Lee and the courage of Southerner's fighting against overwhelming odds. I still marvel and respect the courage and military leadership of the South regardless of how misplaced it was. While going to school at UVA, I would listen ad nauseum to revisionist history taught to friends raised in public Virginia schools about how the Civil War was provoked for purely economic reasons.However I also am a father of an adopted black girl. Ask me if somehow this was 1860, would I permit my daughter to live a life as a slave because it was an institution that was on its way out, and would eventually be abolished in one or two generations?
Ask me if I would permit it for one day?
The simple answer is no. I'd pick up a gun and probably shoot first, and ask questions later.
The Civil War was provoked by a moral issue. A profoundly moral one. It required me to be a father before I truly understood it.
Thankfully there were abolishionists who understood this independent of their personal circumstances and were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to end this evil institution.