On the Civil War and the ‘settler revolution’: Kevin M. Gannon, ‘The Civil War as a Settler-Colonial Revolution’, Age of Revolutions, 18/01/16 | settler colonial studies blog

On the Civil War and the ‘settler revolution’: Kevin M. Gannon, ‘The Civil War as a Settler-Colonial Revolution’, Age of Revolutions, 18/01/16

26Jan16

Excerpt: Since Charles and Mary Beard dubbed it “the Second American Revolution,” the Civil War has occupied pride of place as the pivot point in the traditional narrative of U.S. history. If nothing else, scholars have had to at least confront the idea of “revolution” when reckoning with the era, whether they see it as–for example–a revolution in state formation (Richard Bensel), a revolution in favor of freedom (James Oakes), or even a “a preemptive counter-revolution” (James McPherson). Certainly, the violent disruption of the American state, the carnage wrought by the war on both the human and physical landscapes, and the fierce urgency of the issues involved (especially slavery) underscore the revolutionary nature of the war and its aftermath. We also need to recognize the decisive ways in which that era shaped our present, particularly with its attempts to untie the knots of race and slavery. Those attempts, were, of course, incomplete. They were violently interrupted by recalcitrant white southerners using terror tactics to stem the tide of radical reconstruction, aided and abetted by an increasingly compliant North that had, in the words of the New York Herald, “gotten tired of the Negro.” So the era remains, to resort once again to the metaphor, “America’s unfinished revolution.”

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