150 years later, conflict persists

150 years later, conflict persists

One hundred and fifty years ago this morning, Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., marking the beginning of a war that continues to captivate Americans more than any other the nation has fought during its 234 years. Over the next four years, a succession of anniversaries will come and go, from the first Battle of Bull Run to Antietam to the Emancipation Proclamation to Gettysburg to the seminal election of 1864, to the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, and finally, to the assassination of President Lincoln.

The war was a mass of contradictions, beginning with its central theme — the quest to eliminate the institution of slavery. In the years before the war, Southern leaders sought to defend this monstrous practice with high-toned rhetoric about states' rights; meanwhile, Northern politicians and business people willfully ignored their own contribution to this evil in the years before the war by pretending their industries, especially textiles, weren't profiting from forced labor by slaves in the South.

Further contradictions emerged as the war proceeded: Union military leaders came to respect an enemy who fought courageously and honorably, in sharp contrast to the dishonor at the roots of his cause.

Ulysses S. Grant exemplifies this contradiction in his autobiography by alternately expressing his admiration for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest as a tactician and cavalry officer, and condemning him for massacring captured black troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn., in April 1864.

Apologists for the Confederacy defend the Southern cause by pointing out it was a different time with different standards. Their favorite argument is that states' rights, not slavery, was the central issue. None of this holds much water because the "peculiar institution" clearly was at odds with the fine words and principles of America's founding, and one can scarcely conceive of anyone fighting so vast a war over the terms of intergovernmental relations.

Yet, for all that, the war continues to this day. America remains torn by divisions, which fortunately haven't sparked open violence of the sort the nation experienced during the 1860s.

Discrimination and self-destructive cultural traits have kept some minority groups down while others have prospered. Conflicts persist between native-born Americans and immigrants; blacks and whites; rich and poor; the political left and right; combatants in the many culture wars; and among politicians pandering to one side or the other.

During this time of revisiting the Civil War period, Americans should keep in mind that the war need not have been fought — that slavery was a doomed institution in any event on ideological as well as technological grounds, and all that was required was compromise.

As it was, the debate over slavery raged across at least seven decades before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter, and the war owes its omnipresence in the history books to the inability of the conflicting parties to agree on a middle ground.

It surely is a mistake America never should make again, but by no means is it a certainty that such a blunder won't be repeated.