PAGE EIGHT; FEATURE SERIAL SIDE BOX

It was perhaps a mistake to call a disparate and wayward collection of geographical entities a ‘Union.’ But they did it anyway. When the United States of America came into being in 1776 it was little more than a gleam in the eye of those who created the Bill of Rights that enshrined the constitution of the emerging nation. To weld the states of which America consisted into one nation was going to be a hard task. With all the major functions of governmental administration handled at state level, every state was a separate legal and political entity with an almost sovereign attitude to its own status.
....There were many divisions -- economic, social and political -- between the constituent elements that made up the United States and bringing these elements together was one of the tasks central government set itself from the start. If many of the states could spare only a cursory nod in the direction of the national seat of power, Washington -- in the form of the President, Congress and the House of Representatives -- couldn’t have cared less. They were still the national government, the hub around which the states revolved, and their will would be done. And done throughout the whole country.
....Conflict was bound to result. One of the sharpest divisions within the (Dis)united States of America was that of slavery. While slavery made a tremendous contribution to the prosperity, social conditions and political attitudes of the South, in the North it was increasingly frowned upon. As, over the first half of the 19th century, the rift between the North and the South widened, it became clear that trouble lay ahead. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President. With an anti-slavery republican president heading the country, by 1861 eleven southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) had seceded -- resigned -- from the Union.
....Organised as the Confederate States of America, under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the south made its pitch for independence. Standing against the federal government and the rest of the country, the Confederates were a raggle taggle army with little more than a great deal of enthusiasm and patriotic zeal to keep them up and running. But even against the might of the US army, their enthusiastic patriotism would carry them far. Not, however, far enough.
...Despite the North’s superiority in both numbers and supplies, it took them four long and bloody years to subdue the south. Although early victories for the North suggested that the war would soon be over, under the inspired command of General Robert E. Lee, the south succeeded in turning the tide. Although the war swung both ways, the north did not recover the initiative until March 1864 when Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant supreme commander of the US forces. Suddenly Grant, who had been responsible for the Union’s successes early in the war, turned the tide decisively in his favour. After a ten month siege, Grant defeated Lee’s army at Petersburg, Virginia, while the other Union force, under the command of General William T(anks for the memory) Sherman, faced the only other Confederate force of consequence in Georgia. After capturing Atlanta in early September, Sherman set out on a 300-mile hike across Georgia that left a swathe of devastation in his wake. In December he reached Savannah and took that in a short sharp battle. Meanwhile Grant had gained control of the Mississippi river. With control of the great river, the Union had a throttle hold on the Confederacy’s main supply route. It became a war of attrition as Grant starved out the battle weary, wounded and demoralised remnants of Lee’s once powerful army. In March 1865, with Lee’s army decimated by illness, desertion and starvation, Grant began his final advance. In early April he captured the Confederacy’s capital, Richmond, Virginia, and the war was over.
....The cost to both sides had been immense. Although there were over 350,000 deaths among the Union forces, it was the south who fared worse with a casualty rate of over 50%. The hardships and privation for the south had not been reserved for the army. The southern states had been devastated by the war. Farms that had been abandoned to the women while the men went to fight had been neglected or put to the torch by the Northern forces. Starvation in both the towns and the rural areas had been a major problem. When Grant choked the army’s supply lines to death, he also cut off supplies to civilians. But, even before that, the ill-equipped, ill-funded and hardly organised at all Confederate army, had been a constant drain on the the south’s resources -- both food and all the other things required to keep an army on the move and fighting. At the end of the war, as the last tattered and starving remnants of Lee’s once powerful rebel army came limping home, the south realised the extent of its sacrifice. It had given its workforce, its bloodline, its sons, to the war and had lost everything. Everything except its pride and arrogance. As the song says: ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah, and the south goes marching on.” Huh?