Reading US History and a Stunning Analogy - 7/23/2022

I read a lot of US history. I'm currently reading the first volume of Shelby Foote's famous Civil War trilogy, The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958). Note that it was written in 1958, a year after I was born. I would have read it sooner, but we were at the library and mom realized that I had a poopy diaper. Then I just never got around to it. But I finally have, and I'm reading it now. As I am reading, I'm about 100 pages in, Foote's description of the issue(s) leading up to the war stike me as stunning. The cliché, 'those who ignore history are damned to repeat it' rings in my ears.

Slavery was a moral abomination and is a stain on our history.

The reason for the Civil War is almost always explained one of two ways: the war was over slavery, and the right to own slaves, or it is explained as being a war over 'states rights'. The latter, 'states rights', is almost exclusively the basis cited by people sympathetic to the Confederacy's secession from and war with the Union. I don't ever recall, in my life, anyone justifying secession because they believe slavery was morally acceptable. 'States rights' is the way they justify it. Other people, me, believe the war was fought over slavery. Do southern states or did/do the people in them have the right to own slaves? Both explanations for the war are right, each in their own way, but neither reason answers the other.

Slavery is a moral issue, cut and dry. It is either OK to own slaves or it isn't. It is either OK to think of Black people are lesser forms of life, unworthy of equal standing with whites, or it isn't. But you won't hear hardly anyone who sees the war as having been one over states rights ever even address the morality or immorality of slavery. As I read about the dispute and the rhetoric surrounding it, I had a wow moment. 'States rights' was and is a damned cop out. I suppose it was way easier to look one's own self in the mirror for standing up for states rights than it was to look in the mirror and feel pride in making the case that slavery was morally acceptable, that Black people are some lesser form of life. Is slavery morally acceptable? Are Blacks lesser beings? How does history judge it?

I am trying to keep this short. Well, at least I'm trying to.

Is not abortion/the right to choose nearly a perfect analogy to the Civil War? Abortion is a moral issue, it is either OK to abort, or it isn't. I can entertain the validity of discussion of viability, and that the morality of the issue may change as each pregnancy progresses toward term, but whether or not the act is moral or immoral can't be discarded from the debate. If you think the act is moral, then say it. 'A woman's right to choose' and 'a woman must not be told what she can and can't do with her own body' are cop out arguments, plain and simple, not at all unlike the way that 'states rights' was a cop out for justifying slavery.

It was like feeling a feeling of deja-vu all over again.

States rights and the right to choose are both arguments that sidestep the important moral question to resolve debate to a desired end. We know how, enlightened by the passage of time, history now judges slavery. It will be well beyond my time in this life, but someday history will pass its judgement on abortion or the right to choose, too.