Wednesday, June 12, 2002
When in the Course of Human Events
by Charles Adams
(This isn't the same guy who created the Addams family.) There are many hot topics out there on which people have strong opinions. It seems like one of the oldest is the whole question of the Civil War. Who were the good guys? Who were the villains? What the heck was all the fighting about? In my younger days, I wasn't aware there was a conflict. Being brought up in Illinois, I was definitely taught that the good guys wore blue, Lincoln was a saint, and the war was fought to end slavery. It wasn't until the past decade that I ever heard the arguments for the other side or even considered this era in American history. Anyway, Charles Adams has considered this and has definitely sided with the Confederacy. Mr. Adams is a Northerner and a scholar on the history of taxation. Not surprisingly he sees the cause for the war as economic -- the continuing rising tariffs which benefited the the industrial north at the expense of the agrarian south. He tends to downplay the role of slavery, quoting various sources, including Lincoln himself. He also quotes some European sources, to get their more objective view of things. Overall, the book is very interesting, definitely worth checking out. But did he change my mind? Well, not entirely. Nobody is without bias, not even the European thinkers of the 1860's, so I take Mr. Adams' words with a grain of salt. Adams didn't win me over to his views on slavery. Even if the Union government was originally willing to preserve that institution, slavery had been an issue from the country's inception and it certainly affected those planning and fighting the war. On the other hand, he did strengthen my opinion that the South did have a right to secede, and I agree with him that Lincoln and his compatriots made some substantial changes to the United States government. After reading this book, I probably would not vote for Lincoln were I given the chance to do so. Finally, this book did made me look at the War in the context of the spirit of "Manifest Destiny" that affected the U. S. in the 19th Century. (This is more a tangental thought on my part and not something clearly defined in the book itself.) There are many names for this conflict, and they reflect one's opinions about the war. I think I might start calling this the "The War of Enough Rope", where the ambitions of a people determined to master a continent were turned against themselves with some horrible consequences.
LibraryThing link
(This isn't the same guy who created the Addams family.) There are many hot topics out there on which people have strong opinions. It seems like one of the oldest is the whole question of the Civil War. Who were the good guys? Who were the villains? What the heck was all the fighting about? In my younger days, I wasn't aware there was a conflict. Being brought up in Illinois, I was definitely taught that the good guys wore blue, Lincoln was a saint, and the war was fought to end slavery. It wasn't until the past decade that I ever heard the arguments for the other side or even considered this era in American history. Anyway, Charles Adams has considered this and has definitely sided with the Confederacy. Mr. Adams is a Northerner and a scholar on the history of taxation. Not surprisingly he sees the cause for the war as economic -- the continuing rising tariffs which benefited the the industrial north at the expense of the agrarian south. He tends to downplay the role of slavery, quoting various sources, including Lincoln himself. He also quotes some European sources, to get their more objective view of things. Overall, the book is very interesting, definitely worth checking out. But did he change my mind? Well, not entirely. Nobody is without bias, not even the European thinkers of the 1860's, so I take Mr. Adams' words with a grain of salt. Adams didn't win me over to his views on slavery. Even if the Union government was originally willing to preserve that institution, slavery had been an issue from the country's inception and it certainly affected those planning and fighting the war. On the other hand, he did strengthen my opinion that the South did have a right to secede, and I agree with him that Lincoln and his compatriots made some substantial changes to the United States government. After reading this book, I probably would not vote for Lincoln were I given the chance to do so. Finally, this book did made me look at the War in the context of the spirit of "Manifest Destiny" that affected the U. S. in the 19th Century. (This is more a tangental thought on my part and not something clearly defined in the book itself.) There are many names for this conflict, and they reflect one's opinions about the war. I think I might start calling this the "The War of Enough Rope", where the ambitions of a people determined to master a continent were turned against themselves with some horrible consequences.
LibraryThing link
Labels: CheckItOut
// posted by John @ 5:58 PM 
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