"North and South magazine" Topic

Came across this in Borders the other day and thought it looked interesting. Anyone have any familiarity with it? Is it a good resource for wargamers?

AX

I've been reading it since it started, and I've been a subscriber for the past five years. It's a very good magazine, and it often has detailed accounts of smaller battles.

The past year has been a bit of a let down, in my opinion, as the editorial staff has gotten bogged down in the black Confederates controversy. (The editors conclude that there were very few armed black Confederate soldiers, if any).

Apart from that, the magazine has a scholarly feel to it. After all these years, I still get excited when I get a new issue in the mail. I usually finish reading it within the next couple hours.

I had a subscription for about 5 years when it first began. I let mine run out because I thought the stories were getting too obscure and repeating topics. It was good back then but have not seen one since.

In a minor hi-jack, I recommend Blue and Gray over all other CW magazines.

Yes! Blue and Gray is better.

As a side note… Civil Wars Times Ilustrated was all the rage back when that started. Big name authors actually wrote numerous artiles in that but sadly… they got obscure as well. I let that subscription run out too.

I have kept my old back copies of CWTI and B&G. They are good but now I need an index. :(

I bought N&S pretty regularly and still have my back issues. But I haven't kept up with it, for various reasons.

I prefer the maps in Blue and Gray over North and South.

I will add another vote for Blue & Grey. Their "generals tour" pieces are excellent battlefield guides. Another good magazine is America's Civil War. N&S is ok and I read it occasionally. I have long given up on the tired old Civil War Times, which seems to repeat itself over and over again with nothing new.

I read and enjoy both. I agree with the people who mentioned the problems noted above with N&S. There are a few other problems in that the editorial staff have latched on to the school of thought that the war was all about slavery, and have let a few articles creep in that are not up to N&S's usual rigour. That said I do enjoy it quite a bit.

Dn Jackson, that does not surprise me as that is THE dominant school of thought in academic circles right now. Granted it is a very, very important aspect of the war but not the only.

No slaves, no war. Don't have to read too many first person accounts by southern leaders to understand that, or the offical proclaimations by rebelling states and the Confederate government defending their leaving the Union. A casual reading of the newspapers and speeches in the south in the period before the war (1820-1860) shows clearly what was driving the southerns to contemplate rebellion.

Dan

Well, there was nearly a war in the 1830's, not over slavery.

One could as well argue, "No west, no war" as the North, including the republicans, were willing enough to tolerate slavery where it already existed.

Recommend both volumes by William W. Freehling, "The Road to Disunion, Volume I: Secessionists At Bay 1776-1853" and "The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861".

Dan

Sure, Dan, and they have their point and their use. But I am not all THAT impressed; it is an incredibly complex subject, and we've had a century and a half of competing explanations from the latest generation of historians. Fifty years from now those guys will be on the list with the "blundering generation" school and the "it was all about economics" school and so forth.

You need to smack down the South (today), you write books like Freehling. Not saying he's not correct; he prioves what he proves. Just like Stampp's PECULIAR INSTITUTION proved what it proved, just in time to justify the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. "History is what the Present finds useful to remember about the Past." But there's WAY more to it.

Would you concede that the North's war aims were NOT the mirror image of the South's? The South may have been defending slavery -- but was the North determined to attack it? No way, if Lincoln's speeches mean anything.

So immediately we have complexity, and a theory that explains, at most, half of what occurred.

In the Noth some states seem to fight for one cause and others seemed to fight for another. Many times you read accounts that the soldiers from New England claim to want to free the slaves first and also to restore the Union. Soldiers from Western states wanted to restore the Union first and also free the slaves. Some areas within states weren't that driven to do either. It is a very complex issue and not cut and dried.

There's no doubt that slavery was a very important part of starting thew war. However, it was not the only reason for the war which is what far too many in N&S keep saying. If you do a bit of reading about the post revolution period there was almost a civil war then, and that had nothing to do with slavery. Also, the economic aspects of secession are being ignored right now, yet the southern politicians thought enough of it at the time to write their constitution with a change from the US Constitution on the issue of tarrifs.

When my students demand to know in one sentence what caused the Civil War:

"The Civil War was caused by the inability or unwillingness of the northern and southern states to deal effectively, within the existing federal union, with the question of the expansion of slavery into the western territories."

doc,
Good statement! May I quote you?
A hair of a difference, yes but the arguement was over expansion not slavery itself. Satisfies those who want slavery to be the answer and those who don't. On the "money".

Please do quote me; it is a carefully worded sentence.

But not true. I gave up a long time ago arguing with folks over the net as I get tired of the same old arguments, but if you can produce a single southern state secession document that does not name slavery as the prime reason of their leaving the Union, I'd love to see it. Explain Steven's pointed comment about slavery, or why it was slavery that the movement into the western areas that caused open warfare prior to the war.

Somehow those who want to turn a blind eye to the reason for the war spend a lot of time explaining away what the men who lead the rebellion had to say about their reason for doing so. Simple reading of the historical documents is hard, as facts are difficult to explain away by those who want to believe that slavery was a minor detail, or somehow not the "true" reason war was forced.

Did not mean to hitch-hike this tread, so will let it go now.

Dan

Well said Doc!

I have explained to people who ask me (they know I'm a history nut) what caused the war, and I've said something similar. There were laws in place to guarantee that for every free state that entered the union, a slave state would be as well. Up until 1848 they were balanced.

Then California came aboard as a Free state in 1850 (but with one of the two senators supposedly pro-slave, so that mollified the south).

Then a "slave state" was held up (Kansas), while the free state was added (Minnesota, 1858). And then a second free state (Oregon, 1859) was added without a corresponding slave state. Kansas was then finally admitted (January 1861), but as a free state. The balance of power in the senate was thus firmly shifted in favor of free states, and the south saw the handwriting on the wall.

Their economic future was in doubt. Succession to preserve their economy was their solution.

If the Missouri Compromise (the law that maintained the 1:1 ratio) had not been repealed in 1854, and the country had continued with a balanced free:slave admission ratio, who knows what might have happened.

Could they have eventually removed slavery peacefully? Or was it inevitable that at some point we were going to war with ourselves to end that practice?

Dan, as I say, you are too invested in Freehling. You've got a hold on one part of the story and seem to be dismissing the rest.

Well for what it is worth the general feeling before the ACW was "the united STATES of America, to after the war the UNITED States of American.

A difference that only those from the US could understand.

VR
James Mattes

As a Limey, I may be treading on very thin ice here. But FWIIW, I have heard from other sources that the ACW was fought over a verb: that is: "The United States is" vs "The United States are", or in other words, a clash between those who believed in centralised (Federal?) government against those who believed that the individual State should be paramount, and that the States shoud remain as individual political entities (Confederacy?).

The whole subject of the road to the ACW is fascinating, and I would be deeply grateful for any single-syllable explositions (I am a bear of very little brain, etc).

It is correct that the United states was treated as a plural verb in, e.g, presidential inaugural addresses before the war, and increasingly as a singular verb after.