(July 8, 2013 at 11:29 am)Tonus Wrote: 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?
Maybe even longer. That's what happens when the only ideas you are exposed to are the ideas of your parents, and their only ideas are from their parents and so on. That's no longer an excuse nowadays. Nowadays, people are exposed to a world of ideas. And oh look at that, the internet comes around and suddenly people start being more understanding. START, mind you. Not necessarily going away entirely. But funny how cosmopolitan nations/cultures tend to be much more forgiving than insular nations/cultures...
