THE SHAME OF GETTYSBURG

Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. We remember that speech in noble terms, but we do not remember Gettysburg in the horrific terms it deserves. First, the Civil War was not fought principally on the issue of slavery. It was begun and fought on the issue of states' rights...Southern states not wishing to bear the brunt of a growing federal bureaucracy (sound familiar?)that favored the industrialized Northern states. The slavery issue may have been brought in to rally the North to stand firm against the eleven secessionist Southern states. Second, I have neither read nor heard any convincing argument why, in a nation founded on the principle of freedom, a state, by appropriate and lawful vote by its citizenry/elected representatives, were not free to secede from a Union it had voluntarily and freely chosen to join. To deny that right, in my view, is unconstitutional. That issue is being awoken again as a State or two has indicated a desire to secede from the United States, and portions of a State are voicing a desire to secede from a State. The military fatalities at Gettysburg, 51,000, were the greatest of any battle the U.S. has ever fought. Civil War military fatalities were 10 times greater than those in Vietnam, 50% greater than those in World War II, 15 times greater than those in Korea, and 100 times greater than those in Iraq/Afghanistan. The Civil War was a brutal war that saw Americans slaughtering Americans with whom they had, just a moment before, shared a dream. Lincoln hoped that a nation of, by and for the people would not perish from the Earth. Nor should 51,000 of its people have had to perish.