Was the Civil War Worth 600,000 Dead Americans?

[Publius1787]

Was the Civil War Worth 600,000 Dead Americans Just to Preserve the Union?

 

[JWBooth]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

 

[Publius1787]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

I think it can be well determined that the South was defending and the North was attacking. Therefore, the context of the question could be regarded as was Lincoln's goal of unity worth wasting 600,000 lives.

 

[IGetItAlready]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

I think it can be well determined that the South was defending and the North was attacking. Therefore, the context of the question could be regarded as was Lincoln's goal of unity worth wasting 600,000 lives.

I don't know how your assessment can be classified as "well determined" when it was the Southern states who seceded over the election of Lincoln and their well founded fears he would attempt to outlaw slavery and it was the Confederates troops who fired on Ft Sumner in the first shots fired in the war.

 

[Publius1787]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

I think it can be well determined that the South was defending and the North was attacking. Therefore, the context of the question could be regarded as was Lincoln's goal of unity worth wasting 600,000 lives.

I don't know how your assessment can be classified as "well determined" when it was the Southern states who seceded over the election of Lincoln and their well founded fears he would attempt to outlaw slavery and it was the Confederates troops who fired on Ft Sumner in the first shots fired in the war.

Who died as a result of Confederate bombardment at Fort Sumter? Who was captured/imprisoned? Besides, the shots at Fort Sumter were not the first shots of the war. Fort Sumter was just the event that Lincoln used to stoke nationalism, calls for war, and cover for raising an army without consent of congress and his suspension of habeas corpus. Lincoln refused to meet with the Southern Peace Commission before any shots were fired anyway. Lincoln wanted war. The South certainly did not.

Now that I've established that no one died as a result of enemy fire on Fort Sumter, what was Fort Sumter's purpose? It’s purpose was to stop ships entering in to the Port of Charleston and enforce teriff law. Did you think that a recently seceded South Carolina was going to allow "foreign" taxation of their imports/goods? Can they enforce secession, a secession voted on by the people of South Carolina, if they are not soverign? Lincoln gave them no choice. He rejected their offer of peace, he rejected their peace commission, and he rejected their soverignty.

 

[Greenbeard]

The United States will always be worth preserving.

 

[Publius1787]

The United States will always be worth preserving.

Half the country votes to secede in peace and 600,000 deaths of her own citizens is justified in preserving it? Is that an emotional arguement or a logical one?

 

[elvis]

Yes it was worth it.

 

[Publius1787]

Yes it was worth it.

I can always click on the poll if I want to see what people think. What I want to know is the reasoning behind their poll choice.

 

[Sallow]

Absolutely.

Additionally..the North should have punished the South much worse then it did. Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee should have been publically disemboweled and their heads should have been put on pikes until they became desiccated fly blown husks. Then they should have been ground into powder and flushed into a sewer.

 

[antagon]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

I think it can be well determined that the South was defending and the North was attacking. Therefore, the context of the question could be regarded as was Lincoln's goal of unity worth wasting 600,000 lives.

The south (the confederate gov't) was on the offense as they occupied all the seceded states... US territory.

 

[Publius1787]

Absolutely.

Additionally..the North should have punished the South much worse then it did. Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee should have been publically disemboweled and their heads should have been put on pikes until they became desiccated fly blown husks. Then they should have been ground into powder and flushed into a sewer.

One of our countries top universities.

However, your argument on the merits is a value judgement, absent of logic.




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[Publius1787]

No price is too high to pay when sweeping aside an outdated republic and instituting a centralised leviathan state.

I think it can be well determined that the South was defending and the North was attacking. Therefore, the context of the question could be regarded as was Lincoln's goal of unity worth wasting 600,000 lives.

The south (the confederate gov't) was on the offense as they occupied all the seceded states... US territory.

The states seceded via vote by democratically elected officials in their state. That’s the same way they entered in the union. That’s hardly the occupation you describe. Elected officials who execute the will of the people do not occupy. No new outside force entered to lay claim to the Southern States until northern invasion. The people who were in those states were the same people who have always been there. Occupation? If the American Revolution could be justified via the will of the people then why couldn’t secession be justified by the will of the people? Why was war necessary? For defense? To redress a grievance for a loss? Why?

 

[Greenbeard]

Half the country votes to secede in peace and 600,000 deaths of her own citizens is justified in preserving it?

I assume by citing statistics on the number of deaths in asking if it was "worth it," you mean to phrase this question in moral terms (along every economic, political, historic, etc metric the answer to your question is obviously "yes," as evidenced by the United States emerging as the most powerful and prosperous force in the history of the world in the decades and century after the war).

If the moral weight of the war is your concern, then take solace in Lincoln's suggestion that the war--and its carnage--might well have been an unavoidable moral reckoning:

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Ending that scourge and re-dedicating the nation to human liberty and human dignity was worth it.

 

[AmyNation]

Of course it was worth it. We would not be the super power we are today if we were 2 separate countries. Who knows where we would be, if we would have then had to turn and fight other countries who saw us as easy colonies to conquer.

 

[Publius1787]

Half the country votes to secede in peace and 600,000 deaths of her own citizens is justified in preserving it?

I assume by citing statistics on the number of deaths in asking if it was "worth it," you mean to phrase this question in moral terms (along every economic, political, historic, etc metric the answer to your question is obviously "yes," as evidenced by the United States emerging as the most powerful and prosperous force in the history of the world in the decades and century after the war).

If the moral weight of the war is your concern, then take solace in Lincoln's suggestion that the war--and its carnage--might well have been an unavoidable moral reckoning:

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Ending that scourge and re-dedicating the nation to human liberty and human dignity was worth it.

That was not Lincolns stated war ends (See below). And Lincoln was the one who refused to negotiate peace before war broke out. Unavoidable?

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

— President Abraham Lincoln to Hon.Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862

The failure of Radical Reconstruction proved that former slaves, or freedmen" got nothing out of the Civil War.

 

[Publius1787]

Of course it was worth it. We would not be the super power we are today if we were 2 separate countries. Who knows where we would be, if we would have then had to turn and fight other countries who saw us as easy colonies to conquer.

By that same reasoning slavery was woth it because it helped lead to the rise of America as an economic power.
By that same reasoning, the trail of tears was worth it because the indians are making millions off of casino's.
No, I don't think so. There are positive outcomes in every historical disaster. That doesn't make the disaster right.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

The United States will always be worth preserving.

Half the country votes to secede in peace and 600,000 deaths of her own citizens is justified in preserving it? Is that an emotional arguement or a logical one?

It’s the Constitutional one.

Texas v. White

 

[AmyNation]

Of course it was worth it. We would not be the super power we are today if we were 2 separate countries. Who knows where we would be, if we would have then had to turn and fight other countries who saw us as easy colonies to conquer.

By that same reasoning slavery was woth it because it helped lead to the rise of America as an economic power.
By that same reasoning, the trail of tears was worth it because the indians are making millions off of casino's.
No, I don't think so. There are positive outcomes in every historical disaster. That doesn't make the disaster right.

Not allowing the county to be broken apart during such a crucial time in our history was the right choice, IMO. It has shaped us into who we are today.

 

[Greenbeard]

That was not Lincolns stated ends (See below).

I have no idea why you ended that quote immediately before Lincoln's concluding line in that letter: "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."

There was obviously a heavy moral component to the war, as Lincoln the man obviously recognized. Indeed, in issuing the declaration explaining and justifying its decision to secede, South Carolina cited Lincoln's well-known personal views:

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

The United States was worth preserving. And the scourge of slavery was worth eliminating.

The Civil War was more than worth it.