I moved to the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation and inadvertently got involved with the Anna Mae murder trial then
in progress. I discovered that the two men charged with her murder were being
framed, and I wrote about it for the local paper. I began writing to save
lives. The newspaper was closed down. For my efforts, I was evicted, arrested,
jailed, and banned. I lost everything because I told the truth. I moved to
North Dakota where I am writing my story in the form of a novel.
A day later. "
JS : I have searched for the better part of today looking for an answer
to Civil War questions and find none.
- Did Congress ever declare war against the South?
- If not, how could it legally conscript its soldiers?
GC: The issue of Congress's
role is almost moot. Once all those Southern states seceded, the northern
warmongers could do whatever they wanted. Still, I'd like to know if there was
a formal declaration of war. "About some of your other questions. " As I
recall, at first it was an all-volunteer army! Later, they started drafting all
the new Irish immigrants--desperate for work. (I mean, they and their parents had
escaped from the Potato Famine and British imperialism and they find themselves
smack-dab in the War Between the States!
At any rate, the draft was then, as it is now, a pernicious, despicable
system. The better-off could pay a fine and someone else would get drafted in
their place! Nowadays, we don't have a
draft--we just have an Endless Recession and the poor and the lower middle class
can join the army" or sling hamburgers (if they can find work!) or sell drugs
(and risk joining the prison-work complex!).
JS: I'm wondering, how it all developed.
I mean, slavery had been a divisive issue from the beginning, from the
Constitution. " How did it go from
wrangling to war?
GC: I think the real explanation is that the North decided that a war at that
time would be better than a war later on! Lincoln provoked the attack on Ft. Sumter by
"re-supplying" that near-empty fort; then the war-cry was
"preserve the Union." But, really, it was about how to control the
new Western territories--recently conquered from Mexico! I think that's the part
that has been lost on most Americans! If
we hadn't had our imperialist Mexican-American War (1846-1848), and stolen half
of Mexico!--our Western states--there wouldn't have been a Civil War! Of course, once gold was discovered in
California (1849), settlement of our Western territories, expropriation of
"Indian" lands, genocide against the "Indians" and our own Civil War to
determine how the West would be "won"--all that was in the cards.
JS: Why do you say, "the
North decided that a war at that time would be better than later?"
GC: I think it's the
basic dynamic of European imperialism and Great Power politics! Left to their
own devices, the Confederacy would have continued the colonization of Mexico
and moved on into the Caribbean. (They
might have challenged Britain's "interests" there, or collaborated with
Britain!) At any rate, two significant
empires would have developed in North America.
In 1861, the North had the decided advantage. A decade or two later" who knows?
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