tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9506140.post3535213557287139413..comments2024-03-22T03:22:38.270-04:00Comments on Elektratig: Historical InevitabilityElektratighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05703096671081292287noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9506140.post-52498073064735613892007-12-29T00:18:00.000-05:002007-12-29T00:18:00.000-05:00Does it matter to our study of history if someting...Does it matter to our study of history if someting was inevitable or not? Does it change our analysis? I think not.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9506140.post-61538166040000084282007-12-27T14:28:00.000-05:002007-12-27T14:28:00.000-05:00I think calling an event such as the Civil War "in...I think calling an event such as the Civil War "inevitable" is amateurish. I don't mean this in a sniping way, but to show that it is not a serious look at history. It promotes a teleological view of history that is simply far too unsophisticated and "cookie cutter" for an accurate look at the past. Anyone can go back into the chronicle of the past and see lots of events and add them all up to "prove" that a subsequent event was inevitable or foreordained. Historians don't do this, or at least they shouldn't. There's far too much contingency in history to support such a claim (esp. in military history, but in other subfields as well.) Those who claim inevitability fall into the fallacy of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc," which is to say "after it, thus because of it."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9506140.post-26662724994075636902007-12-26T16:03:00.000-05:002007-12-26T16:03:00.000-05:00I would only note that those assuming secession an...I would only note that those assuming secession and/or war was inevitable seem to assume that secession was popular in the South, and we know for a fact that this is not true. <BR/><BR/>Secession certainly was not popular in the slaveholding states taken together as a whole. Nor was it popular in any of the non-confederate slave holding states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), or in the border confederate states taken separately. Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had all explicitly considered and rejected secession prior to the events at Sumter. <BR/><BR/>Finally, and most contentiously, secession wasn't even broadly popular in the deep South. Georgia and Louisiana may, I repeat may, well have been dragooned into secession by a manipulative minority. Texas certainly was. Etc... <BR/><BR/>So I don't see how any of what occurred can be taken as inevitable. Given a fairly evenly divided electorate even in the deep south, and explicitly hostile opposition to secession elsewhere, it seems absurd to assume anything was inevitable. <BR/><BR/>Had war been inevitable Edmund Ruffin could have waited comfortably at home rather than travel to South Carolina to initiate it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com