Comments on: Commemorating What? http://cwmemory.com/2008/12/08/commemorating-what/ Where History, Heritage, and Education Intersect Wed, 23 May 2012 23:10:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Kevin Levin http://cwmemory.com/2008/12/08/commemorating-what/#comment-4829 Kevin Levin Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:43:58 +0000 http://cwmemory.com/?p=2031#comment-4829 I agree entirely Bob. Thanks for the comment. I agree entirely Bob. Thanks for the comment.

]]> By: Bob Pollock http://cwmemory.com/2008/12/08/commemorating-what/#comment-4828 Bob Pollock Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:24:22 +0000 http://cwmemory.com/?p=2031#comment-4828 I fully agree that we should acknowledge the issue of slavery. However, I also think we can become so focused on that issue that we forget just how important the issue of Union was. Would there be a United States of America today if the Confederacy had won? This is not to in any way diminish the importance of emancipation, but it was equally important to prove that a "government of the people, by the people, and for people" could survive. Ulysses S. Grant wrote to his slaveholding father-in-law on April 19, 1861, "The times indeed are startling but now is the time, particularly in the border Slave states, for men to show their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work with the Republican party but all party distinctions should be lost sight of and evry true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars & Stipes, the Constitution and the Union...In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery." Two days later he wrote to his own father, "Whatever may have been my political sentiments before I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained." In November 1861 Grant wrote again to his father, "My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped in any other way than through a war against slavery, then let it come to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go." Grant, like most Northerners and some Southerners, recognized that slavery had caused the crisis, but it was the survival of the Union, the survival of the idea of representative democracy, that made them willing to lay down their lives. I fully agree that we should acknowledge the issue of slavery. However, I also think we can become so focused on that issue that we forget just how important the issue of Union was. Would there be a United States of America today if the Confederacy had won? This is not to in any way diminish the importance of emancipation, but it was equally important to prove that a “government of the people, by the people, and for people” could survive.
Ulysses S. Grant wrote to his slaveholding father-in-law on April 19, 1861, “The times indeed are startling but now is the time, particularly in the border Slave states, for men to show their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work with the Republican party but all party distinctions should be lost sight of and evry true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars & Stipes, the Constitution and the Union…In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery.”

Two days later he wrote to his own father, “Whatever may have been my political sentiments before I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained.”

In November 1861 Grant wrote again to his father, “My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped in any other way than through a war against slavery, then let it come to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.”

Grant, like most Northerners and some Southerners, recognized that slavery had caused the crisis, but it was the survival of the Union, the survival of the idea of representative democracy, that made them willing to lay down their lives.

]]>