>To restate what I said a long time ago on the list, I think
>the Civil War
>was a mistake also -- that slavery could have ended
>peacefully, as occurred
>with apartheid, and that this would have avoided the intense Southern
>resentments that caused a century of lynchings and help make
>the South so
>politically and culturally retrograde in general.
>
>What bothers me is the way war actively feeds passion for
>violence. Even my
>great hero, kindly ol' Emerson, got well caught up in the
>fever of the Civil
>War as the Union bodies piled up. His friend Nathaniel
>Hawthorne noted,
>"Emerson is breathing slaughter like the rest of us." Among
>other things,
>Emerson was enraged to learn of Southerners' "cutting up the
>bones of our
>soldiers to make ornaments and drinking-cups of their skulls."
> The actual
>atrocities and propagandistic myths that every war creates produces a
>witch's brew of hatred that can last for generations -- breeding
>self-righteousness and cruelty in victors and a bitter desire
>for revenge
>among losers.
>
>Carl
This may show me up as an ignorant Limey, but I thought re-segregation, the power of the Klan, etc., were because Reconstruction was aborted in post-Civil War political compromises?
As for apartheid ending peacefully, Nelson Mandela didn't spend decades on Robbin Island because he made speeches against apartheid, but because he took part in a conspiracy to commit armed actions directed against the regime.
Julian