A Fallacy of Neo-Confederatism

Posted on July 28, 2009 in Culture Wars

Students of the Civil War are often confused by the assertion that because the North fought to preserve the Union, the South could not have been fighting to preserve slavery. The assertion is half correct: the North did begin by fighting to preserve the Union. But even single act of secession by the Southern states named preservation of slavery as the reason. It is true that a few states named other reasons, but Slavery was the one reason that united them all. To preserve slavery, they felt, they had to resist any attempts to be reincorporated into the Union.

But, you may protest, you’re saying the North had one reason and the South another reason for fighting. Yes. How can this be? Happens all the time.

Let’s saying you are sitting in a bar. A drunk decides that he doesn’t like your nose and he picks a fight with you. You defend yourself by fighting back. Why is he fighting? Because he hates your nose. Why are you fighting? Because you are trying not to be hurt by the lout. So his reason is prejudice and yours is self-preservation. The fight doesn’t start with both of you standing for self-preservation ((It can end quite differently, however, with both of you striving not to be hurt anymore.)) : he wants to hurt you because of your nose and you don’t want to be hurt.

I’m sure you can think of other examples. The moral here is to be careful of how some people try to revise history by shell games of false logic. A and B can have quite different reasons for fighting: what matters is that there is violence.