Traveling
in New England, particularly through Maine, you cannot miss the simple,
imposing granite obelisks set on the greens of so many villages, town and
cities across the State and region. These monuments commemorate those who
fought and died in what, at least in New England, was known simply as "The
Rebellion of 1861-1865."
Although the fighting took place hundreds of miles away, the Civil War was a visceral chapter of New England's history. Part of it was the toll; Maine, which alone sent more than 80,000 young men to the fight, suffered a nearly 20% casualty rate -- the highest of any Union state. The reason, in part, was the immortal heroism of units like the Twentieth Maine Infantry at Gettysburg. The regiment, under command of Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, anchored the end of the Union line on a hill called Little Roundtop, driving off the Confederate charge in the key moment of the key battle of the Civil War.
Over the last century-and-a-half, Maine, like many of the other Union states, has commemorated the victory in unprepossessing ways. In New England, Civil War commemorations are often folded into Fourth of July or Veteran's Day celebrations. There is, simply, no Northern "Civil War" Day, Week or Month. Again, part of it is that this understatement is simply the Yankee way. Perhaps more has to do with the fact that the reasons for fighting the war were so universally understood in New England, that quiet pride seemed the just response to having preserved the Union and, most crucially, excising the cancer of slavery from the American South. In retrospect, perhaps the North has kept a little too quiet about the righteousness of the Union cause in the most seminal of American conflicts.
Not so the South. There, over the last century-and-a-half, the noisy affirmation of the Confederate cause has been the political currency with the effect of transforming what was an unconditional surrender into something like a political photo finish. To this day, Southern politicians, without so much as a tip-of-the-rebel-cap for being so seamlessly let back into the Union, still variously refer to the "War of Yankee Aggression," "The War of Secession," "the Northern Invasion," and "The War Between the States" -- the latter suggesting that the United States barely existed at the time and various states merely chose up sides.
So we should probably thank Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for what is either their breathtaking ignorance, or a desire to send a coded message to the American right, when both proclaimed April as "Confederate History Month" without so much as a hint that African-American slavery might have had something to do with the bloodiest war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.
Whether Governors McDonnell and Barbour are red-neck muttonheads, or sly apologists for "the Cause," they have given a welcome opportunity to bring up what sounds like the return of "States Rights," the vicious euphemism that was the Southern battle-cry during the insurrection and today, the ugly reaction to the recent passage of Barack Obama's universal health care. Today, we find that it is not only politicians from the old Confederacy who are again waving the bloody flag of "States Rights," but also leaders of states in the Mountain West and Southwest, who similarly find it useful to denounce the Federal Government, albeit at pretty much at the same time they sup so heartily at the Federal trough.
In Governors McDonnell's and Barbour's "misstatement," we clearly hear what might be considered the new "States Rights-Speak" coming also from Governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Rick Perry of Texas. This go-round, they are joined by a passel of other Republican Chief Executives who have undertaken to sue the Feds over the constitutionality of health care reform, again under the rubric of "States Rights." It has been Perry of Texas who has most vocally flirted with the States Right's theme of secession as if the issue had not already been settled in blood. States Rights has also become a popular rallying cry for the new crop of tea-partyists.
There is even a popular, if high-schoolish, argument that the Civil War was about "States Rights," rather than slavery. It is instructive to listen to Abraham Lincoln's own explanation of the roots of the Civil War and the need for the Union to fight on to final victory. He made the argument during his March 4, 1865 Second Inaugural, one of the finest orations in the history of the English language. In his speech, Lincoln urged his Union compatriots on to triumph even, he told the crowd gathered on the west side of the Capitol, "if God wills that it continue " until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."
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