Dear friends,
"Gone With the Wind," the famous American Civil War novel was written by a southerner and the situation is described from the Southern point of view. Margaret
Mitchell, the author, used many stories she heard from her family who had lived
through it, to weave this thrilling novel. It is full of dashing, daring men and women, thrilling episodes, and much romance. The book was made into one of the very few movies I've ever seen that stayed faithful to its book. The video is
in two parts. I hope you have a chance to read the book first and then to see
the movie with Clark Gable and Maureen O'Sullivan.
North American history is so very different from Chinese history that I have decided to write some things about it. The first in this series was my post about
"The Hanging Judge," Judge Begbie of British Columbia, now a province of Canada
. This is the second in this history series. Some information for this article came from National Georgraphic.
In early 1861 the American Nation ripped itself apart when eleven southern states declared themselves the independent Confederate States of America. They did so because they were determined to preserve a way of life rooted in slavery. South Carolina and Mississippi, both with half their populations slaves, seceded first. Another nine states followed, roughly in order of their slave densities. Slave-holding states, in alphabetical order and not accordiang to slave-holding densities were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland
, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennesse, Texas, and Virginia.
Northern, mostly non-slave states in 1860 were Illinois, Kansas Territory, Indiana, Iowa, New York and Long Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nebraska Territory, half
of Texas and an Unorganized Territory just north of Texas. I suppose the rest of the present day USA hadn't been explored and claimed yet.
Decades of a thriving internal trade in human beings had concentrated slave numbers where planters on large plantations grew valuable export crops of rice, tobacco, and especially cotton.
Before the war began, the United States held more slaves than any nation on Earth. Slaves produced cotton, sugarcane, rice, and other vital agricultural exports. In 1860, human property, (i.e. slaves,) was worth more in raw dollars than all the capital invested in U.S. railroads, factories, and banks combined.
During the war tens of thousands of black men, slave and free, joined the Union
Army and Navy, (the North), determined to help emancipate their people. More than 620,000 soldiers of both races died in the struggle. About 200,000 African-American men fought for the North. Roughly 150,000 of them were former slaves who
had been fled from their owners or been liberated by Northern forces. It is believed that as many as 40,000 free blacks enlisted in the army and over 50,000 joined the navy. That leaves a total of about 330,000 white members of Northern forces. When captured by Rebels, black troops were often shot or hung, rather than imprisoned. Beginning with an 1863 battle at Port Hudson in Louisiana, African
Americans proved their quality, attacking heavily fortified Confederate positions and advancing in spite of intense enemy fire and heavy losses. They fought their way into the respect of all the army. By war's end, four million enslaved
men, women, and children had gained their freedom.
The South sank into poverty from which it couldn't recover.
Legacies of the Civil War clearly survive today, in the challenge to balance state and federal power and, above all, to fulfill President Abraham Lincoln's hope
for a nation
"conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal."
In 1865, the year the war ended, the 13th Amendment to the Federal Constitution
formally outlawed slavery. In 1868 the 14th Amendment promised equal treatment
under law to all citizens. In 1870 the 15th Amendment declared that voting rights could not be denied to black men. These changes gave the federal government
the power -- and the duty -- to protect individual rights against encroachment by the states.
History has a long forward reach. Early in the war it was easier to recruit soldiers than to obtain enough weapons to arm them all. Dozens of types of long guns, handguns, and artillery pieces were used. This array needed almost as many
different types of ammunition.
The north had a great advantage early in the war. It produced 97% of the nation
's guns and 93% of its iron. The South, "the "Confederacy" scrambled to begin manufacturing its own weapons, but they were generally of inferior quality, so Southerners relied heavily on guns seized from Federal supplies, or scavenged from
wounded or dead Udnion soldiers, or brought in from Europe by blockade runners.
(If you read the book you know that Rhett Butler was a blockade runner.) By the middle of 1863 both sides were importing hundreds of thousands of European weapons. It was almost impossible for the south to get their guns, which they now
had in plenty, to the many battlefronts.
So what does this have to do with the future? Meaning now? Well, by the war's
end both sides had increased their domestic firearms production dramatically. Northern armsmakers alone had produced more than two million guns. Together with
imports and war surplus the country had a huge glut of weaponry. By the 1870's
the U.S. had become one of the world's largest exporters of small arms -- a status it still holds to this very day. Every country is deeply marked in the present by it's past.
There will be a section 1-A to this article about the American Civil War.
Please watch for it. :-)
Best wishes to all,
Mary, a Canadian.
Tim's our resident American. I hope he approves of my effort so far.
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