Our freedom as Americans is 250 years old today.
In that time our American story has gone through growing pains and close calls. Indian wars, a revolutionary war, the War of 1812 to preserve our new nations and our very own cataclysmic civil war. Several smaller skirmishes marked our place on the planet as we moved on to greater conflicts across the globe, the Spanish American war, World War I, World War II, the Korean war, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and now Iran.
We did not fight those wars alone. The battle of Yorktown featured French troops with Washington’s army. And the English surrender was facilitated by the French and Spanish fleets, who prevented English reinforcement from landing. Most of our conflicts has seen us with allies sharing the burden and the losses. Great coalitions were necessary to defeat Hitler, the Japanese empire and even our smaller engagements usually involved others working with our soldiers. In fact, NATO has only enacted its joint defense clause (a provision where an attack on one NATO nation is considered an attack on all NATO nations) once, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Without question, our toughest and most important war, was our civil war.
There have some recent efforts to downplay certain elements that led to our civil war because “it makes us look bad as a nation.” That’s a bad idea.
Of our conflicts, the civil war was by far the most violent, the stakes were the highest and the implications once it ended the most profound.
Let look at its scale. Four years of war saw approximately 600,000 casualties, more than any war we have ever been in. If you consider if our country had the same proportional rate of causalities with today’s US population: we would have 6,660,279 casualties. Civil war is brutal.
The cause of our civil war was slavery. Some say it was a states’ rights issue over the commerce clause. That’s bunk!
From our founding as a nation, slavery was recognized and accounted for in our constitution. In fact, each slave counted as 3/5th of a person…for purposes of determining representation in congress.
This odious, immoral, evil and horrendous institution was legalized in our foundational documents.
And the slavery workplace wasn’t like the kindly operated plantation ‘Tara’ in “Gone with the Wind.” It was the brutal reality of ripping people from their homeland and sending them over the sea to be slaves for the rest of their lives.
It was horror. The Atlantic voyage was rough. Male slaves were usually chained below deck, while women and children were often kept in sheds on decks. Captains and crews often used such access to acquire “bedwarmers.”
Once in America things weren’t better. Slaves were sold at auction; families split apart and people were treated as property. They had no rights.
But America and slavery didn’t mesh well. In a country created in the belief that all men were created equal, and that freedom, including religious freedom, was an inherent right, slavery couldn’t meet the acceptability test. Lobbying and organizing against slavery began almost immediately and didn’t stop. Many of our churches took up the call of freedom.
The Civil War was the turning point for our country. We showed that a democratic nation that welcomed all who agreed to live under a uniform set of laws that respected everyone equally could endure.
President Lincoln himself spoke of the importance of the Civil War in 1863 at Gettysburg, when the outcome was still uncertain. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
Some want to understate the civil war’s impact in our history. I believe it should be highlighted and extolled.
On this birthday of 250 years, let’s give thanks and honor to the men and women who have paid the highest price for our freedom. Let us also resolve to never let their sacrifices be in vain. And let us insist that this heritage be fully taught so that its lessons never be forgotten.
