Review: Not as biased as most
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2013
Mr. Von Drehle cannot be faulted for presenting a one sided case to the continuing Civil War over the Civil War. In his books last pages, he correctly points out the fallacy of blaming the Southern Confederacy for all of the faults and immoral acts of the American version of slavery. While he points out the antebellum history of the slave economy in the prosperity of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Britain, I wish he would spend an appropriate amount of time as he did on the seceded  states.For instance, the New York emancipation act did not free any slaves. It prohibited their children from being born into slavery, a laudible act, however, it did not prohibit the export of current New York slaves to other states which continued to allow their issue to be born to lifetime slavery. Was this the act of freeing the slaves most New Yorkers believe it to be? I see it as more of a Negro Export act which we should condemn with the same breath as any other part of our slave history.West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a Slave state. At a time the Union Army occupied New Orleans, Nashville, and Tidewater Virginia, the Emancipation Proclamation freed not a single slave in the Union or Union occupied territories. Only those in areas of the seceded states yet to be subdued.The other choice he makes is to view the entire enterprise from twenty- first century eyes instead of judging the institution within the context of it's period. In this, he makes the same mistake that he criticizes Jefferson Davis and other Southern apologists from the pre- WWII era for. Slavery was practiced in Africa among Africans and Arabs for hundreds if  not thousands of years before the first Portuguese vessel dropped anchor at Jamestown with the first load of slaves to sell. With the near 100% death rate of Europeans when traveling to the Slave Coast of Africa, the collecting and shipping of slaves to the waiting slave ships was performed almost exclusively by black Africans. Slavery existed largely because those same mosquito born illnesses were also brought over which caused a much higher death rate among Europeans than the Africans who had increased immunity.Thus, this inefficient system turned out to be a relatively efficient system compared to any alternative available at the time. This economic fact forced competing farmers new to the New World to either accept the concept of slavery, or have their children starve and lose their lands. No matter how much an individual vows not to mistreat his slaves, as the generations go on, the economics of the system had to win out.That's really the point that both sides should be able to reach agreement on.