I haven't read much civil war history, but my impression is that slavery was just the issue around which a number of differences coalesced. The North was initially fighting simply to get the South to rejoin the Union. Ending slavery became a goal only when it seemed as if European nations might recognize the South as a sovereign nation.
As for getting over it, the ability to hold grudges long past any reasonable date has passed seems to be a part of our nature. I can recall the violence in Northern Ireland during the 80s, which was based on enmities that were more than a thousand years old. Heck, how old are some of the grudges held in parts of the middle east? 2,000 years or more?
As for getting over it, the ability to hold grudges long past any reasonable date has passed seems to be a part of our nature. I can recall the violence in Northern Ireland during the 80s, which was based on enmities that were more than a thousand years old. Heck, how old are some of the grudges held in parts of the middle east? 2,000 years or more?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
