A Terrible Thing I Could Imagine Happening

A second civil war in the USA. So, this President Obama who gave the most Lincolnesque speech I have ever heard, "On Race and Religion", now needs to give the present situation a "House Divided Against Itself Can Not Stand" speech. I think our country is on the brink of falling apart. I know that I personally do not share the same values spiritually, economically, socially, and so on, as many in this country.

I know I feel a vast kind of defeat from fighting battles which I thought we long ago won. (abortion rights, free press, civil rights) I am deflated and confounded by what is going on; injustice, oppression, abuse (women, planet, resources, ) do piss me off. That being said, I do not believe violence will solve any of these situations. Violence is the enemy of peace and justice.

However, there are lots of American citizens right this minute who are cosmically pissed off about their rights to kill and their rights to have no environmental or health regulations and their rights to exclude minorities from their civil rights. Most of these people are pretty much worked up into a frenzy of ignorant righteousness by Ted Cruz, Fox news and hateful radio invectives both religious (?) and political.

I think we are sitting on a powder keg right now and it wouldn't take much to ignite an absolutely crazy splitting apart of this country. An extremely violent break up would happen. It is my fear that this could happen the way it happened with that one shot in Sarajevo or the attack on Fort Sumter.

I fear that what Obama must face now is either the dissolution of the United States or he must rise up and unite his people. No sign of that so far, but if he could do it, we could get on with our rightful task of conquering the planet and making money. All kidding aside, I know that what this country needs is to re-vision itself uniting under a common purpose.

I don't know how this can happen. Right now our common enemy seems to dwell within our polarization. This is dangerous for us and for the whole world. I think Obama could take the opportunity of the shutdown and invite every American to think about why we are a country at all and how we can pull together. We need some spiritual leadership, some spiritual perspective. We don't need blame and victimized leadership.

I pray for all the suffering beings on this planet. I pray that we can transform the bad karma we are creating and that no one makes a disastrous move before we wake up.

Refresh your recollection of the last civil war in this country. This simplified version of the events might trigger your knowledge.

Causes of the American Civil War

A common assumption to explain the cause of the American Civil War was that the North was no longer willing to tolerate slavery as being part of the fabric of US society and that the political power brokers in Washington were planning to abolish slavery throughout the Union. Therefore for many people slavery is the key issue to explain the causes of the American Civil War. However, it is not as simple as this and slavery, while a major issue, was not the only issue that pushed American into the ‘Great American Tragedy’. By April 1861, slavery had become inextricably entwined with state rights, the power of the federal government over the states, the South’s ‘way of life’ etc. – all of which made a major contribution to the causes of the American Civil War.

By 1860 America could not be seen as being a homogenous society. Clearly defined areas could be identified that had different outlooks and different values. This was later to be seen in the North versus South divide that created the two sides in the war.

The South was an agricultural region where cotton and tobacco were the main backbone to the region’s economic strength. The area relied on exports to markets in Western Europe and the class structure that could be found in the UK, for example, was mimicked in the southern states. The local plantation owner was a ‘king’ within his own area and locals would be deferential towards such men. The whole structure was portrayed in ‘Gone With The Wind’; a strictly Christian society that had men at the top while those underneath were expected and required to accept their social status. Social advancement was possible but invariably it was done within the senior families of a state, who were the economic, political and legal brokers of their state on behalf of the people in that state. Within this structure was the wealth that these families had accrued. It cannot be denied that a huge part of this wealth came from the fact that the plantation owners oriented the work on their plantations around slave labour. As abhorrent as it may be to those in the C21st, slavery was simply seen as part of the southern way of life. Without slavery, the economic clout of these premier families would have been seriously dented and those they employed and paid – local people who would have recognised how important the local plantation owner was to their own well-being – simply accepted this as ‘how it is’. When the dark clouds of war gathered in 1860-61, many in the South saw their very way of life being threatened. Part of that was slavery but it was not the only part.

The North was almost in complete contrast to the South. In the lead up to April 1861, the North was industrialising at a very fast rate. Entrepreneurs were accepted and, in fact, were seen as being vital to the further industrial development of America. You did not have to stay in your social place and social mobility was common. For example, Samuel Colt was born in Connecticut into a relatively poor background. He had an inauspicious start to his life but ended up a very rich man who left his wife $15 million in his will. Whether he could have done this in the South is a moot topic. It was always possible but most of America’s premier entrepreneurs based themselves in the North where the straitjacket of social class was weaker. Cornelius Vanderbilt is another example. Whether a man who came from the Netherlands could have forced his way into the social hierarchy of the South is again a question open to debate. The North was also a cosmopolitan mixture of nationalities and religions – far more so than the South. There can be little doubt that there were important groups in the North that were anti-slavery and wanted its abolition throughout the Union. However, there were also groups that were ambivalent and those who knew that the North’s economic development was based not only on entrepreneurial skills but also on the input of poorly paid workers who were not slaves but lived lives not totally removed from those in the South. While they had their freedom and were paid, their lifestyle was at best very harsh.

While the two sides that made up the American Civil War were apart in many areas, it became worse when the perception in the South was that the North would try to impose its values on the South.

In 1832, South Carolina passed an act that declared that Federal tariff legislation of 1828 and 1832 could not be enforced onto states and that after February 1^st 1833 the tariffs would not be recognised in the state. This brought South Carolina into direct conflict with the Federal government in Washington DC. Congress pushed through the Force Bill that enabled the President to use military force to bring any state into line with regards to implementing Federal law. On this occasion the threat of military force worked. People in South Carolina vowed, however, it would be the last time. 

It was now that slavery became mixed up with state rights – just how much power a state had compared to federal authority. State rights became intermingled with slavery. The key issue was whether slavery would be allowed in the newly created states that were joining the Union. This dispute further developed with the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ of 1803 whereby Kansas, among others, was purchased by the federal government. Kansas was officially opened to settlement in 1854 and there was a rush to settle in the state between those who supported slavery and those who opposed it. The state became a place of violence between the two groups and Kansas got the nickname ‘Bleeding Kansas’ in recognition of what was going on there. However on January 29^th 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a slave-free state. Many in the traditional slave states saw this as the first step towards abolishing slavery throughout the Union and thus the destruction of the southern way of life.

When South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20^th 1860, the first state to do so, it was a sign that the state no longer felt part of the United States of America and that America as an entity was being dominated by a federal government ensconced in the views of the North. Whether this was true or not, is not relevant as it was felt to be true by many South Carolinians. The secession of South Carolina pushed other southern states into doing the same. With such a background of distrust between most southern states and the government in Washington, it only needed one incident to set off a civil war and that occurred at Fort Sumter in April 1861.