I Used to Think I Knew What the Civil War Was Fought Over

The nonpartisan fact-checker PolitiFact has debunked the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans PR rep Ray McBerry for his claim "'You’ll find blacks in almost every regiment throughout the South who fought right alongside white Southerners [during the Civil War]."

I always find these assertions that the Civil War was about state's rights and not slavery to be one of my favorite examples of cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia states that "cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously." People justify, blame and deny to reduce this dissonance.

The people who argue the state's rights theory (mostly white southerners) are conflicted. They know slavery is wrong (or at least don't want to admit otherwise) yet don't want to lend any credence to the north, bigger government, or anything that tramples upon their concept of freedom. Therefore they seek to convince themselves that the war was fought for some reason other than slavery, even going as far as to seek "evidence" that slaves fought alongside their masters.

State's rights certainly was a prominent factor for the Civil War. After all, it was the southern colonies' attempts at secession that began the war. If you stop looking there, it makes sense. If you look at this New York Times' piece revealing the language in some of the states' declaration of causes, it makes it harder to ignore the impact of slavery.

In fact, slavery is a very conflicting issue in America. It is a major supplier of dissonance to the two documents that (mostly conservative) Americans hold dear to their hearts: the Constitution and the Bible. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is completely tolerant of slavery. If we, as a society, agree that slavery is wrong (and if not, feel free to stop reading this blog), then we must accept one of three options regarding the Bible:

1.) God is wrong about slavery
2.) We are wrong slavery
3.) Whoever wrote the Bible is wrong about slavery

I've never conducted a survey but I can imagine that I'd be in the majority of people who accept the third option. This means that we have to pick and choose that in which we believe.

This also means that to accept the words of the framers of the Constitution as gospel (a phrase that loses a little weight given my previous conclusion) is to accept the tolerance of slavery. However, if we can acknowledge that there were flaws in the morality of the framers and that the world is an infinitely more complex place now than in the 1700s, we can begin to accept that we will need to be more pragmatic thinkers as we make our decisions.

Our past is certainly not something to be ignored. The framers of the Constitution were some of the most brilliant minds our country has ever seen. The words of the Bible provided civility and peace to societies and the minds of individuals that may have fallen into chaos. However, if we cannot transcend the wisdom of our ancestors and make the world a better place, we do them no good.

We also shouldn't berate those who exhibit this type of cognitive dissonance. As humans, we are all prone to this type of behavior in some fashion. What we should do is become more aware of these mental obstacles so that we can transcend them as we search for truth. Or wait for Christopher Nolan to make a movie about it.