Circa1865

“The American Conservative, in its March 14 [2005] issue, carried an excellent article on “The Living Room War.” The author, Professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, pointed out that the American homefront seems to be disengaged from the actual current war. This, he writes, is a moral failure and is unlike the situation in previous wars.

Bacevich spoils it all when he starts out likening Fort Sumter to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The last two were massive sneak attacks by foreign enemies. The firing on Fort Sumter was preceded by a gentlemanly warning and was completely bloodless. It would not have happened at all if Lincoln had not dissimulated about reinforcements and had a hostile fleet just outside. Nor does Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops after the fall of Fort Sumter at all resemble American unity and determination after Pearl Harbor.

To begin with, the call for troops was illegal, and the 75,000 was either mistaken or deceptive, since the conquest of the Southern people and destruction of their self-government eventually required over a million men. Furthermore, its immediate effect was to drive four more States out of the Union and require military occupation of to forestall the secession of three others.

And despite a temporary upsurge of militancy after Sumter, Lincoln’s government never had the degree of support in the North for its actions that characterized the public in the two more recent events.

Several hundred thousand [Northern] men evaded the draft by various means, many others were enlisted only by cash bonuses, public speakers and newspapers had to be suppressed, and a fourth of the army had to be recruited abroad.

When this kind of folklore is invoked, putting Southerners in the basket with Tojo and bin Laden, we despair of Yankees ever learning anything and ever appreciating our contributions to the USA.”

(Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, Clyde N. Wilson, Foundation for American Education, 2006, pg. 223)