A lesson learned from AMERICAN CIVIL WARS, by Alan Taylor

 Grand national visions inevitably clash with the human nature to disagree. 

I have now spent over two decades of my life studying the field of History, working with various professors and studying people from every different time and place, in an effort to understand humanity’s decisions and how the world ended up as it has (after weeks like this one, I sometimes feel I know TOO much, and I would have been so much better off joining the mass of people who have no interest in my topic or understanding it). I worked and studied with many great people, but perhaps one of the single greatest honors of my life was a chance to spend just a year as a student of Professor Alan Taylor, the former UC Davis professor who has now taken his place as one of the country’s most eminent and famous historians. Taylor’s books are now found in bookstores across America, likely due both to his thoroughly researched historical brilliance, but also his ability to take fairly dense topics and break them down in a way that is more understandable to the masses. His books have always been as readable as they are informative, and his most recent American Civil Wars is no exception (on a personal note, Professor Taylor is also a super-chill and approachable scholar who taught me much about dressing as a geeky History teacher, and I also am forever grateful to him for being willing to write rec letters for me and answer e-mail questions long after he remembered anything about me as a student). 

For American Civil Wars, Taylor steps somewhat outside of his normal area of expertise (Colonial America), and provides a broad study of the revolutionary struggles that gripped the United States, Canada, and Mexico during the mid-1800's. I have long loved studying the American Civil War, but I sadly know almost nothing about this era of History for our two continental neighbors, and Taylor provides some fascinating summaries of Mexico’s effort to retain independence from a puppet French government, and Canada’s efforts to navigate the politics of its boisterous and aggressive southern neighbor. Those are some pretty dense topics to tackle in a book that is less than 500 pages, and Taylor’s book sometimes has the feel of an introductory college textbook (which knowing him he will likely use it as). However, for the purposes of my blog I still found some compelling insights into the era’s passions and the workings of human nature. 

Above all, the age of civil wars was an age of fiery passions and national visions of greatness, with every side convinced of the absolute righteousness of their own. The American Republicans believed that a free-labor system of corporate growth and economic modernization was the ticket to prosperity for all hard-working Americans, whereas the Southern Confederacy saw their system of slavery as elevating all whites with the promise that no matter how difficult their lives might sometimes become, they could always rest with the knowledge that black people would do their most difficult work and free white people for better opportunities. The Canadians saw their American neighbors as a violent and chaotic people who allowed base passions to rule them, and they took comfort in the idea that an enlightened British elite would always provide Canada with the proper moral guidance. The French puppet Maximilian truly believed that only his enlightened monarchy could elevate the people of Mexico, whereas the Mexican republic rebels under Benito Juarez looked to American elites to provide them with a better model for society. 

All of these groups believed firmly in the righteousness of their national visions, yet all along the way missed glaring failures in their own ideologies. White Southerners boasted of their moral and manly superiority over the Yankees, only to lead their country into ruin, and cling to the toxic ideology of racism in a way that it seems the country may never fully recover from. The victorious Union achieved their vision of national expansion, yet failed to understand or empathize with the destruction their vision wrought both on the Native Americans, and on the majestic natural world of the West, to say nothing of all the people exploited by the corporations empowered by the Civil War. Maximilian’s delusions of an enlightened foreign rule over Mexico ended at the end of a firing squad, but the Mexican rebels who executed him never addressed the vast inequalities that still contribute to chaos in that country. As for Canada, they might have avoided much of the violent chaos that plagued their southern neighbor, yet their own supposedly enlightened kingdom continued to exploit and destroy the cultures of the native people of Canada. 

Perhaps a grand lesson all of the principals of the American Civil Wars should have learned was a dose of humility and open-mindedness. The greatest thinkers of this era—who sadly often did not end up in positions of national leadership, give or take a Lincoln—acknowledged the flaws in their own people and attempted to come up with solutions to address them, and they also recognized times when they had erred and attempted to rectify past mistakes. As long as humans cling to ideologies and selfish causes above all else, humanity as a whole will continue to suffer through the shadow of conflict and civil war, as one cause after another attempts to remake the world in its image only to end up watching it all crumble around them.