Nancy Ekberg - What Kind of War Was It, Anyhow?

Jeremy was ashamed of the tear that was rolling down his cheek. He knew it made him look like a sissy, but he was having a hard time being brave. His best friend and cousin, Jonathan, was going off to be in a war called the Civil War and Jeremy was afraid he wouldnt come back to take him fishing anymore. He couldnt understand why Jonathan wanted to go off and shoot other boys and maybe even get shot himself!

Jeremy was having a lot of trouble understanding this war anyhow.

When he sat at Granddaddys kitchen table, across the Virginia border in Kentucky, and listened to his kinfolk talk, they said that his uncles and Jonathan were fools to be going off to a war that could break up the United States.

And yet, when he listened to Jonathan and his uncles, here in Virginia where there were plantations, they said the government and President Lincoln had no business telling them how they should run their businesses and plantations and they would sooner leave the United States and set up their own government.

And he got even more confused when he talked to his friend Willie, whose family were slaves on Jeremys fathers tobacco plantation in Virginia. Willie said some of his cousins were going off to fight too, because the war was going to free all of the slaves.

So Papa, Jeremy asked, what kind of war is this, anyhow? Is this the kind of war we learned about in school that freed America from England? Is this a war to make us independent like a revolutionary war?

Well, Son, said his father, thats a good question. This war is called many things. Some call it a Civil War, which is a war between two parts of the same country. But some people call it a War Between the States, some call it a War of Secession, some call it the War of Northern Aggression, and yes, some call it a War of Independence. Maybe it is a revolution, but I reckon youll just have to hear the whole story and make up your own mind.

Jeremy went to his father first, to ask about the conflict people were calling the Civil War.

This is how it all began. You see, for many years, Southern states like Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and some of us here in Virginia, have had large plantations and farms that grow cotton and tobacco and rice and sugar and we used slaves brought over here from Africa to do the work. Some of these plantations were big, so big that the owners couldnt pay enough people to work the crops. These plantations needed so many workers that the slaves were very necessary in order to plant and weed and harvest the crops. The slaves were cheap labor and besides there werent enough white settlers in the South to do all the work that had to be done . So it was kind of a way of life here in the South and when a plantation or farm owner died, he just passed on his land and slaves to his sons and family. You see, Jeremy, the plantation owner had spent a lot of money to buy his slaves and didnt want to lose what he figured he owned.

You know, your friend Willie is a slave and so is his daddy and so is his granddaddy and so on.

I never really thought about that before, Papa, said Jeremy. I just thought that Willie was a Negro so he was a slave and I was white so I wasnt, and that masters took care of slaves like you took care of me, and I never knew things could be different.

Well, continued his father, some folks in the North and even some in the South began to think that things should be different.

You see, Son, the people who live in the northern states, have a different kind of life. They mostly have businesses that make things like iron and shoes and shirts and other things that dont require many workers. They hire people to do the work and they say that we who live in the Southern states should do the same. They think we should free all the slaves and hire them to do all this work.

So in order to keep both parts of the country happy, the United States government in Washington had agreed on a kind of compromise or an agreement, that half of the states who wanted to join the United States of America (which they called the Union) could join as free states and the other half could join as slave states. They thought that if there was half of one kind and half of another, one kind couldnt control the other. That meant that everyone who lived in a free state would be considered a free person and those who lived in a slave state could own slaves and could buy or sell themjust like they bought or sold their other property.

That worked for awhile, but then many people in the North and even some in the South began to talk and write about the need to get rid of slavery. Those people were called Abolitionists because the word abolish means to get rid of something. Of course, to the people in the South, this talk meant that they would have to change the way they ran their plantations and the way they did business. Those Southern residents didnt think that the people in the northern states had any right to tell them how to run their lives and so some of them began to talk about secession. That means they would vote to take their state out of the Union, elect their own government, and be independent of the United States of America. They believed in states rights, wherein a state could make its own laws instead of following laws made by the United States of America.

Finally, all the talk got stronger and when the new president, elected in 1860, was a man from the political party that included the Abolitionists, some people in the South decided it was time to leave the Union. South Carolina was the first state to do this. Its residents voted to leave the Union and they elected their own government. Then they sent their own state army to Fort Sumter, a port at Charleston, to take over the fort and its armaments. Since it was in South Carolina, the people felt it belonged to South Carolina. But the United States army that was stationed there refused to give it up, and so the army of South Carolina fired shots on the fort and soldiers. This was considered the beginning of the war. The date was April 12, 1861.