May 25, 2004
Shocking though it may be to us today, Nova Scotia and the Maritimes chose the Confederacy over the Union in the American Civil War, overwhelmingly and with some enthusiasm.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow - The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces, University of New Brunswick professor Greg Marquis documents the fervour for the Confederacy and against the Union in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes of that time.
Sam Slick author and former Nova Scotia chief justice Thomas Chandler Haliburton damned the Union for "the ungodly and unchristian way in which they carried on the war…” and "…their utter disregard of all International law.”
The office of a St. Stephen newspaper proprietor who championed the Union was vandalized, allegedly by locals with a preference for the Confederacy. He later moved his paper to Calais in Maine and ultimately joined the Union Army.
Halifax Harbour despite the official neutrality of the Maritime colonies famously sheltered, repaired, supplied, and aided in the escape of the Confederate raider Tallahassee, responsible for destroying or capturing 35 Union vessels. The Tallahassee's captain John Taylor Wood after the war made a home of Halifax, where he became a leading member of the community.
The Class of '65 at their graduation from King's College in Windsor sang "We'll Hang Andrew Johnson from a Sour Apple Tree", Johnson having succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln's assassination in April of that year.
Confederate Major J. Smith Stansbury moved to Halifax in 1864 in ill health, and when he died not long after it was "among friends and sympathizers”; prominent Halifax clergy and citizens joined the funeral procession, and Stansbury was buried in the Camp Hill Cemetery, in the family plot of future Canadian Senator Benjamin Weir.
There were Nova Scotians and Maritimers who took sides for the Union, and some who fought for it: Marquis estimates that 10,000 Maritimers fought in the American Civil War, most of those on the side of the Union. But the Union faction constituted a distinct minority of the general population; Nova Scotia and the Maritimes picked the losing side in the American Civil War.
Sympathy for the Confederacy for some years must've seemed reasonable enough: Confederate forces had a good run of battle decisions, President Lincoln was much despised, the Union government lost legitimacy for such emergency measures as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship, and mass arrests, etc. But obviously the Union ultimately prevailed, and in hindsight we can scarcely imagine that its victory and rightness ever were in question.
Surely those Maritimers and Canadians unhappy about the Iraq War would object strenuously and understandably to their equation with Confederate sympathizers, and that is not my purpose. It is instead to demonstrate that this is not the first time we have felt strongly about an American war in which we are very largely uninvolved, not the first time we have damned U.S. policy in such a war, and it's just possible it'll be not the first time we come to feel differently about that war.
It's not venturing too far onto a limb to suppose that a majority of Maritimers and Canadians regard the Iraq War as "Bush's War”, not a war for security and freedom, and regard the arguments for the war as "Bush spin" and not legitimate rationales. But what if Iraq -- however messily -- becomes one of a precious few Muslim nations with true liberty, democracy, and rule of law, rejects reversion to a tyrannical and menacing rogue state, and serves as a positive model for the wider Muslim world?What if Iraq -- along with Afghanistan -- is not some anomalous, tragic misadventure, but the latest in the procession of American-led wars of liberation such as in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and America's own Confederate states?
While the world fixates on some pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and other such diversions, Iraqis are voting in local elections, an Iraqi Constitution is taking root, freedom of speech and of the press is flourishing, free enterprise is bustling, insurgents are being decimated, hospitals and schools are being constructed, utilities and infrastructure being restored, and so on.
For the Iraq project to prevail, America need not be perfect, and the Iraqi people need not love America; they need only choose decent, normal life over anti-Western tyranny. And Iraqis now are freed to make that choice.
Canada has every right as a sovereign state to abstain from this Iraq War, just as the United States had every right to abstain from the early years of the First and Second World Wars. But America came to feel differently about the world wars, and we may yet come to feel differently about this one, even if by that time the Iraq War like the Civil War is history.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
Shocking though it may be to us today, Nova Scotia and the Maritimes chose the Confederacy over the Union in the American Civil War, overwhelmingly and with some enthusiasm.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow - The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces, University of New Brunswick professor Greg Marquis documents the fervour for the Confederacy and against the Union in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes of that time.
Sam Slick author and former Nova Scotia chief justice Thomas Chandler Haliburton damned the Union for "the ungodly and unchristian way in which they carried on the war…” and "…their utter disregard of all International law.”
The office of a St. Stephen newspaper proprietor who championed the Union was vandalized, allegedly by locals with a preference for the Confederacy. He later moved his paper to Calais in Maine and ultimately joined the Union Army.
Halifax Harbour despite the official neutrality of the Maritime colonies famously sheltered, repaired, supplied, and aided in the escape of the Confederate raider Tallahassee, responsible for destroying or capturing 35 Union vessels. The Tallahassee's captain John Taylor Wood after the war made a home of Halifax, where he became a leading member of the community.
The Class of '65 at their graduation from King's College in Windsor sang "We'll Hang Andrew Johnson from a Sour Apple Tree", Johnson having succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln's assassination in April of that year.
Confederate Major J. Smith Stansbury moved to Halifax in 1864 in ill health, and when he died not long after it was "among friends and sympathizers”; prominent Halifax clergy and citizens joined the funeral procession, and Stansbury was buried in the Camp Hill Cemetery, in the family plot of future Canadian Senator Benjamin Weir.
There were Nova Scotians and Maritimers who took sides for the Union, and some who fought for it: Marquis estimates that 10,000 Maritimers fought in the American Civil War, most of those on the side of the Union. But the Union faction constituted a distinct minority of the general population; Nova Scotia and the Maritimes picked the losing side in the American Civil War.
Sympathy for the Confederacy for some years must've seemed reasonable enough: Confederate forces had a good run of battle decisions, President Lincoln was much despised, the Union government lost legitimacy for such emergency measures as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship, and mass arrests, etc. But obviously the Union ultimately prevailed, and in hindsight we can scarcely imagine that its victory and rightness ever were in question.
Surely those Maritimers and Canadians unhappy about the Iraq War would object strenuously and understandably to their equation with Confederate sympathizers, and that is not my purpose. It is instead to demonstrate that this is not the first time we have felt strongly about an American war in which we are very largely uninvolved, not the first time we have damned U.S. policy in such a war, and it's just possible it'll be not the first time we come to feel differently about that war.
It's not venturing too far onto a limb to suppose that a majority of Maritimers and Canadians regard the Iraq War as "Bush's War”, not a war for security and freedom, and regard the arguments for the war as "Bush spin" and not legitimate rationales. But what if Iraq -- however messily -- becomes one of a precious few Muslim nations with true liberty, democracy, and rule of law, rejects reversion to a tyrannical and menacing rogue state, and serves as a positive model for the wider Muslim world?What if Iraq -- along with Afghanistan -- is not some anomalous, tragic misadventure, but the latest in the procession of American-led wars of liberation such as in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and America's own Confederate states?
While the world fixates on some pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and other such diversions, Iraqis are voting in local elections, an Iraqi Constitution is taking root, freedom of speech and of the press is flourishing, free enterprise is bustling, insurgents are being decimated, hospitals and schools are being constructed, utilities and infrastructure being restored, and so on.
For the Iraq project to prevail, America need not be perfect, and the Iraqi people need not love America; they need only choose decent, normal life over anti-Western tyranny. And Iraqis now are freed to make that choice.
Canada has every right as a sovereign state to abstain from this Iraq War, just as the United States had every right to abstain from the early years of the First and Second World Wars. But America came to feel differently about the world wars, and we may yet come to feel differently about this one, even if by that time the Iraq War like the Civil War is history.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
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