April 15th. Most people see it as TAX DAY in the USA, but that day holds a significance most Americans are not conscious of. April 15, 1861, is the day President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the insurrection that bloomed into what is now known as the American Civil War. Exactly 4 years later would be the last day President Abraham Lincoln would spend on earth. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. President Lincoln was shot on April 14th but died on the 15th.
The truth about the American Civil War has been twisted and sanitized in American History classrooms over the last 50 years. This has been one event that most prompted me to delve more into true historic events for myself. As my children came home and told me what their history books said about all the pain points in our nation’s history it angered me that the truth was turned into a lie of omission. I hear so many people say the Civil War was about slavery when that was not the true reason. It was a symptom of a greater conflict within the country.
There are similar echoes of those ‘issues’ to events of today. True that the issues are not as clustered into regions as was the case prior to the Civil War (i.e. North and South). To see modern examples of a similar divide just look at the Immigration Debate. I’m not going to get political on this site but did want to share an example that was obvious. In the Civil War era things like state’s rights, that did include the Southern states wanting slavery to expand as well, were a key argument waged prior to the War.
The issue of slavery convoluted the entire Civil War run-up but was not the fundamental reason; though it was a reason on the list I do admit freely. President Lincoln even said that if he could preserve the Union while keeping slavery where it was, he would have done that. If slavery had been the main issue for the War, President Lincoln would have issued the Emancipation Proclamation within the first year, not after multiple years of war having already been waged.
Do you have any thoughts on the historic events on April 15th in relation to the Civil War?