The war of...

I grew up in Maryland, as border-state as a state could be.  And it's below the Mason-Dixon Line (true story: on the way back from Oshkosh, this summer, my dad and I drove past a furniture place called Mason-Dixon Furniture (or something very close to that), and I made some fairly snide comment about not being south of the line (you don't generally hear it mentioned in the north, in my experience).  Then, about a hundred yards later, we passed a sign saying we were crossing that line.  Oops), so you'd think my experience would be in sympathy with the South.

And I have a great admiration for Robert E Lee, which you'd think would make me even more sympathetic to the South.


But the truth is that when, as a teenager, I heard someone call Maryland a southern state, I was frankly baffled.  While I can see (now, at least) several reasons for calling it that, it didn't match my experience at all.

Anyway, I've heard (only in the last ten years or so) people calling the Civil War the War of Northern Agression (in fact, there's a plaque across the street from where my son has a sports class that says it), and I find that ludicrous, on several levels.

First is the fact that the phrase wasn't used until more than fifty years after the war ended (meaning that the Rebs never felt the need to justify their conduct like that).  Second is the fact that the Southern States separately declared secession from the Union whose Constitution they had approved (and came damned close to saying, "We're not giving up our slaves.  nyah-nyah." in the process.  Note the mention of 'slaveholding States' in the first paragraph).

The anniversary of Lincoln's address reminds me of the fundamental point that the states that seceded had fundamentally forgotten, that all men are created equal.  It also makes me wonder about how good a job we're doing about that, even now.  Better than then, of course, but how much better?