The "Civil War" or "War for Southern Independence" - Two Views

Recently a reader, Hap Cannon,  sent a letter to the editor of "Welcome to North Georgia".  In this letter, he criticized the editor for calling the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.  He said that the war was an insurrection by staid leaders, and suggested that if someone didn't like calling the war the Civil War, they should call it The Insurrgency of The Traitors. 

My name is James Garner, I'm your webmaster here at the Capitol Chapter, and below is a letter that I sent to Hap in response to the above letter to the editor.

Good morning Hap,

I was recently browsing the North Georgia web site and ran across your letter regarding the name for the war against the South. You make several statements in your letter with which I agree wholeheartedly and one or two with which I did not agree.

I was born in Polk County, Georgia and grew up in Haralson County, where I graduated from West Harlason High School. I entered Georgia Tech in 1968 and received a BS degree in Electrical Engineering in 1973. At the time that I entered Tech, if you asked me to list the two greatest presidents the United States has had, I would have said that George Washington was the greatest president and Abraham Lincoln was a very close second. I actually felt more akin to Abraham Lincoln because I read about him getting his education by studying at night by firelight from the fireplace in his log cabin home. I grew up the son of a sharecropper, we used a fireplace for heat and a wood stove for cooking. I knew what it was like to be poor and could identify with Lincoln.

At Tech, I had to take a class on United States history. On the first day in this class, the professor outlined what we would cover in the course and he referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. I had never heard this term, my first reaction was pretty much the same as yours. At West Haralson, it was always referred to as the Civil War. My first thought was that I had a radical professor who was going to try to brainwash me.

In this class I received a completely different perspective on the war and initially I didn't accept it. I kept researching things that the professor told us, and I kept finding that he was telling the truth. At the conclusion of the class and after many hours of independent research, I would have rated Abraham Lincoln as the worst president the United States has ever had. After taking the class I viewed him and Jefferson Davis as diametrical opposites.

Lincoln was self-educated and attended the public school less than a year. He had no formal education beyond the year in the public school where he learned to read and write. Because of this, he had a very limited understanding of the United States Constitution and all the background that led to the construction of the Constitution.

Davis attended St. Thomas Aquinas College in Kentucky for two years, before he entered Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time Transylvania was one of America's premier institutions of higher education, with an attendance greater than Harvard or Yale. After attending Transylvania College for 3 years, Davis received an appointment to West Point, where he graduated 23rd in a class of 35. During his education, especially at West Point, Davis had thoroughly studied the Constitution and understood the background of events which shaped the Constitution. This formal education, like my education at Tech, forced him to study opposing views and provided him with the resources to further his understanding of the Constitution. He knew that a rebellion against the Federal government or a State government would be treason. The courses he took at West Point pointed out that the only way for a State to leave the Union was for it to hold a state convention or state election and let the voters decide on whether to leave the Union, just as the voters of the State had decided on whether to join the Union.

Lincoln was a career politician, his only military experience was when he enlisted in the state militia for 3 months to go drive the last of the Native Americans out of Illinois.

Davis was initially a career military soldier. During the Mexican War he was a Colonel under General Zachary Taylor who later became President. General Taylor said of Davis, "The Mississippi Rifles under Colonel Davis were highly conspicuous for their gallantry and steadiness....Brought into action against an immensely superior force, they maintained themselves for a long time unsupported....and held an important part of the field until reinforced. Colonel Davis, though severely wounded, remained in the saddle until the close of the action." Davis had demonstrated his dedication and willingness to put his life on the line for his country. His heroism, led Governor Brown of Mississippi to appoint him to the United States Senate when General Speight, (who was one of Mississippi's Senators) died. Thus Davis became a United States Senator at the request of those who wanted to reward him for his military heroism.

I agree with your view about the Klan, but the reeneactors that I know are not beer-drinking rednecks. As an example, I have a neighbor who is a reenactor, he is a college-educated computer programmer and never drinks. Even though he is a Southerner from South Carolina, he is a Union reenactor, 125th Ohio, he chose this unit for the comradeship and the friendly people in the unit. I have been to several of his reenactments and have never seen anyone drinking alcoholic beverages.

I also agree with you that not all Southerners agreed with the war, likewise not all Northerners agreed with it. In fact thousands of Northerners were thrown into prison because they did not agree with it.

You indicate that you love history, that's great. Please continue to read and better understand history. This is a free country and the facts are out there. The victor in a war gets to write the history books, so you and I were given a certain "official" slant on history in school, but we can read opposing views and make up our own minds. We can read diaries and letters of those who fought on both sides, North and South and make up our own mind about the war based on this information.

Through my research, I have discovered that two of my great uncles, joined the 40th Ga in Haralson County. They did not own slaves. They lived on small farms and grew a limited amount of cotton as a cash crop. They did vote for secession, one of the reasons was that they thought taxes on imports and fees on exports (cotton) were already too high. They didn't like the fact that these taxes which they paid were being used by the Federal Government to make canal and road improvements in the North, the 1860 Republican platform under Lincoln proposed to increase the money spent on these canal and road improvements in the North. They thought this would lead to even higher taxes.

My great uncles did not enlist in the Confederate Forces until March 2, 1862, almost a year after the first shots were fired. At the time they enlisted they were becoming very concerned that the Union Army would invade Georgia, destroy their homes and kill or imprison their family.

Through my research, I also discovered that Sherman's calvary rode onto my great grandfather's farm in Polk County and stole everything that they could carry off, including all of their food. Luckily they didn't physically harm any of my relatives, this is especially fortunate when you consider that the same Union Calvary would later totally decimate the town of New Manchester and according to some accounts rape many of the women and girls before shipping all the women and children to Ohio and Indiana in cattle cars. Many Northerners disagreed with the way Sherman's army was treating the Georgia civilians. Some Northern newspapers printed stories which were critical of Sherman's treatment of these civilians, even though this public criticism in their newspaper could have caused the Federal Government to seize their printing presses.

Based on my research over the last 30 years, I agree with the term The War of Northern Aggression, but I prefer to call it The War for Southern Independence because the latter does not have quite as much of a negative connotation.

In closing, I want to commend you on your browsing the web and reading different opinions about current events and events that shaped our nation. I also want to commend you on voicing your opinion about what you see. In our early history, I think one of the greatest strengths of the United States was that everyone felt free to voice their opinions and openly discuss their views. Now, I am very concerned because it appears many people are content to base their opinions on some movie that they saw, a 10-second political commercial, or biased news reports, and they want to criticize those with opposing views, instead of openly debating the issues.

Thanks for listening, have a good day,