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150 Years Later, US Still Debates Issues That Fueled Civil War | U.S. History | Learning English/*
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RSS Feed150 Years Later, US Still Debates Issues That Fueled Civil War??08 April 2011
Photo: APDave Chaltas is dressed as Confederate General Robert E. Lee during a re-enactment of the Battle of Aiken in South Carolina Share ThisDiggYahoo! BuzzFacebookdel.icio.usStumbleUponRelated LinksFort Sumter National MonumentManassas National Battlefield ParkTO DOWNLOAD the MP3 of this story, click on the MP3 link in the upper right corner of the page. Double-click any word to find the definition in the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary
This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
This Tuesday is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the opening shots of the American Civil War. On April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, Confederate soldiers fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
A total of eleven southern states left the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America. They wanted to continue their economic system based on agriculture and slavery.
The War Between the States continued for four years until the Confederates surrendered. Six hundred twenty thousand Americans died during the war. President Abraham Lincoln was killed shortly after it ended.
One of the first battles took place at what is now Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. Ray Brown from the National Park Service says two percent of the American population died in the Civil War.
AP/Library of CongressPresident Abraham Lincoln, center, in Maryland after the Battle of Antietam in 1862
RAY BROWN: "You can imagine the impact that this would have on whole communities throughout the country and why there would be such passions that have been passed on from generation to generation even at the remove of one hundred fifty years."
Marianne Lee brought her children to the historic battlefield for a history class.
MARIANNE LEE: "I think it is important to look back at this particular war, because it is what made our Union. We separated and yet managed to come back together."
David Blight is a historian at Yale University in Connecticut and an expert on the Civil War. He says observances of the fiftieth anniversary centered on the sacrifices of the two sides.
DAVID BLIGHT: "What we did in this country is we suppressed having to talk about what caused that war or what its results or legacies were, focusing largely on honoring the soldier."
Kevin Levin is a history teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia, who writes the blog Civil War Memory. He says Americans continued to ignore the issues at the one hundredth anniversary of the war.
KEVIN LEVIN: "Americans, I think, were more interested in remembering a war that united Americans rather than divided Americans."
But in recent years, historians like David Blight at Yale have started to take a new look.
DAVID BLIGHT: "We do not want to sacrifice the military history story. That needs to be understood. But this time, we need to put the story of emancipation at the center of this narrative, because what really transformed the United States, were not those battles. What really transformed the United States was the process by which four million slaves were freed that necessitated a recrafting of our Constitution."
The addition of the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to anyone born in the United States and guaranteed equal protection to all people. And the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote.
But it took the civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties to enforce many of those promises.
Historian David Blight says Americans are still debating many of the same issues as they were a century and a half ago.
DAVID BLIGHT: "Every time Americans debate the problem of states' rights, the relationship of federal power to state power -- which we are indeed having a roiling debate again -- and every time we debate not only race relations, but the very idea of what it means to be an American, multi-racial, greatly diverse society, we are debating the direct legacies of the Civil War."
And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. You can learn more about American history at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Christopher Cruise.
___
Contributing: Susan Logue Koster
Watch a video by Susan Logue Koster
Listen? Email? Print? Comments?Comments (23)09-04-2011nghiemtruong89(Viet Nam)i hate the war!
09-04-2011C(Vietnam)America is a multi-racial society in which people are guaranteed equal protection. And they have been experiencing a long period of time to struggle for that. But now, somewhere in some countries, there are some racial conficts and still have died people who are black, yellow or jewish.... why? when we are all human being!
09-04-2011Sni(Vietnam)America went through a great deal of hardships and challenges to come to independence. But why have they been invading many other nations???
09-04-2011I wonder why federal government has ever let the ivory coast people to kill each other massevely? As it experienced in the past some legacies of war, i think, it is its right to protect all human beings in case of war as in our developping country in general and african country in particular, what our political leaders want is to suck the citizen's bloods making them poorer and more ignorant rather than to lead them toward the emancipation by education.NO FOOD NO DEMOCRACY , GOD HELP US!
09-04-2011Slava(CR)Wars and enslaving of people brings by both sides only sorrow, losses and misery.
09-04-2011Thanh(Vietnam)Thanks VOA. History of the US is my interesting subject. I like the content today. You lost many people in the Civil War to get human rights to American citizen. Finaly, you have great States after the war.I love Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
09-04-2011Gene Trumbo(USA)In one way, the US Civil War was such a waste. Perhaps if the Union had let the South go, as it seems Thomas Jefferson thought from his words in the Declaration of Independence. Maybe they would have re-united later. Maybe we would have lost World War II as separate nations. History is what it is.
09-04-2011guffaw kussef(USA)600 thousand died. North won. Terrorists lost. The End.
09-04-2011The wanna-be journalist(Amerika)"They wanted to continue their economic system based on agriculture and slavery."Ms. Koster, you maam are an idiot.
09-04-2011drac(China)just as the news said, a greatly diverse society emerged.
09-04-2011Maki(Japan)It's good to look back past events including the Civil War because we adults tell our children who will make the future country. And those grown-ups will evaluate what is good and what is bad. Therefore, learning a history in school is important. I should have known the reason to study when I was a school child. Back then, my teacher just told historical facts. There was no knowing why I had to study. In addition, I'm surprised at how many people were killed in the battle. I can't imagine.
10-04-2011BOOWAH(USA)I wonder how many Americans will be killed in the upcoming Economic Civil War. With the lopsided division of wealth in this country today, there's bound to be one! Forcing the poor to sacrifice while asking nothing from the rich will surely trigger it!
10-04-2011bill(usa)A part of the emancipation proclamation was due to the pressure being put on the northern states by England and France to possibly side with the southern states for the cotton and tobacco exports. Prior to that Europe saw slavery as being a problem on both sides. Lincoln and his party new if Europe sided with the confederacy to gain the cotton and tobacco trade that the south would receive war munitions to fuel their military. Therefore it was as much a finanical decision as a moral one.
10-04-2011M.Adam(Afghanistan)Thanks that is a good way for learning and news and some of information abuot American society that were nation passion .
10-04-2011Karl P. Fdez(Spain)Lincoln was not a black nor a slave and he knew he would spend large amounts of money and send many Americans to death. Economically thinking, South Africa would be a rich nation more than one hundred years later living on the apartheid. So call me naif but let me think Abraham Lincoln was just a fair man.
10-04-2011Seung(USA)We are learning lesson from history whatever it was good or bad.It is the difference between Germany and japan which the former repented her fault against jewish and the latter has not repented yet to her neighbor countries.
10-04-2011Steffen(Germany)This war was really unavoidable, because there were two economic systems.The defeat of the Confederal troops meant the victory of theindustrial economic system of the North.The backward slavery systemof the South was an obstacle in the development of the U.S.
10-04-2011Antonio Ferreira(Brazil)I′d like to thank the Voa for this interesting article.As a black brasilian man,reading it is like discovering a bit about my own past.
11-04-2011all of them have religious in body
12-04-2011matchgirlHistory is exactly what it was.This is useless that we do any new hypothesis of history today.
12-04-2011Balance(China)We had also experienced a civil war for two decades. It was a war representing ideological split, millions of people died in the war. As a result this war led to China's division into Taiwan and Mainland China. Today, for the new generation in China, ideology is not important any more, what we want are freedom, equality and happy lives.
12-04-2011Gustavo(Brazil)I didnt know about this history. I liked to know about it. Thank you VOA
12-04-2011LAK(Iraq)The American people should respect other nations. Ask the people of Libya, Iraq and other countries, if they are happy to see American bombs falling from the sky, children and innocent people dying without knowing why. Americans make war only into the USA.
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