HOW SHOULD THE CIVIL WAR BE REMEMBERED - Essay Example

Remembering the U.S. Civil War on this ground could be an endeavour of looking into its meaning and of reconstructing the image and substance of such meaning as though to retrieve its succulence from the most sensational core of U.S. history. Isn’t it that the Civil War was chiefly fought for the sake of addressing the issue of color that is essentially and most cruelly manifest in black slavery? Even to this day, any American or non-American must have naturally inculcated in the mind the echoes of what it means to be black and what it means to be white.

Slavery of the colored race is a subject that raises both psychological and emotional concern over the memory of excruciating negro struggle in the past, considering especially the internal conflicts within its vast enduring realm. The delicate imagery of black slaves in plantation and in other fields that tasted the sweat and blood of negroes slave-driven to free yet heavy menial labor or subjected to physical abuse and death by the discretion of the white master as well as the picture of intimate oppression of black women treated as sex slaves, child bearers, house servants, and companions all constituted what the Civil War had to bring toward grave resolution for good.

Keeping or abolishing the treacherous bondage herein that symbolizes racial inequality is a responsibility for which the two major factions in the Civil War ought not to be forgotten particularly the moment of Hood’s defeat where “The destruction of Hood’s army coincided with the final step toward the constitutional destruction of slavery” (McPherson 503) according to J. McPherson. Much as the Civil War ought to be remembered in the manner that signifies its cause, it should be held in equivalent regard owing to the separation between the federal North and the confederate South along with the intense long years of war through which the bulk of contradicting interests, strengths, and weaknesses of both had been identified in the process.

One should remember well, via academic discourse, that the Civil War served to fulfil the duty which the War on Independence had somewhat fallen short to accomplish a century prior and that the South would not have seceded to establish Confederacy were it not to the inevitable occurrence of distaste toward certain aspects of federalism. While the North was industrial, democratic, and progressive, on the other hand, the South remained agricultural, aristocratic, and conservative. A majority of Northerners viewed the inhabitants of the South as indolent, poorly educated, and misbehaved people who would irrationally counter ideas and possibilities which could enable the United States to achieve its goals with capitalism.

Moreover, the severe degree of violent opposition between the Union and the Confederacy may be perceived in a fashion McPherson notes the confession of Sherman, remarking in convicted tone:-- “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people – Defeating Southern armies was not enough to win the war, the railroads, factories, and families that supplied and fed them must be destroyed; the will of the civilian population that sustained the armies must be crushed” (496). If indeed the Civil War should occupy a place in remembrances to be paid credits of respect in the present,