This is copied from an article in a April 25, 1007 newspaper. It is the text of a interview between Col. H.L. Moore (Lewis Moore's grandfather) who served in the Civil War and a Washington Post reporter.
I have often wondered where the historian of a hundred years hence will begin when he sits down to write a history of the War of the Rebellion. It is clear that he will not begin with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States, the secession of South Carolina, or the firing upon Fort Sumpter. The storm had been brewing long before any of these events took place. For a long time there had been thundering low down in the sky. The reduction of Fort Sumpter was the first peal that split the air right over our heads. In a moment the sky had fallen, and the whole North became one great camp, a Camp of Blue. There were lines of steel, squadrons formed, the artillery wheeled into battery, and the storm broke that had been gathering for nearly a hundred years.
The Colonies had been created by the British government, and while they all admitted allegiance to the mother country they maintained that among themselves they were as independent of each other as are the goverments of this country and Great Britain today. When the oppression of the mother country could be borne no longer, when resistance was forced upon the colonies, then they huddled together in a loose alliance of separate and independent states called a confederacy. There was no central government to raise troops, no money to pay them, but from the absolute necessity of the case, they clung together, fought battles, and conducted campaigns almost without money or clothing, and sometimes with the scantiest supply of food, and finally the heoric militia succeeded in achieving the independence of the country.
After this came the adoption of the constitution, and formation of the government of the United States. Here the trouble became imminent on account of the desire on the part of some of the delegates to secure a strong central government that would have power to raise money to pay its debts, to execute its laws, and command respect both at home and abroad. On the other hand there were delegates who maintained that the states were sovereign and independent, and that no powers were to be granted to the general government except those which were specially nominated. The question of states rights was never settled. I suppose it was impossible to settle it, and that if a more vigorous fight had been made to settle the question at that time the colonies might have failed to organize any government at all. They compromised or slid over the hard places the best they could, and left the matter to be finally settled by the great battle on the ridges around Gettysburg and on a hundred other sanguinary fields. The question of slavery was already in the air and they compromised that too. They did not abolish it, but they did what seemed probable would finally result in its abolition, and that was they prohibited the slave trade after 1808. It is not likely that the doctrine of state rights would have brought the sections to war if a couple of unlooked for events had not taken place: First, slavery became profitable in the South. Second, the whole world, including the northern states, gradually got the impression that no man had a right to live off the sweat of another man's face. Until at the beginning of the war, it amounted to two billion dollars, and from the time that cotton became valuable, the South used every effort through the action of the general government to secure the safety of the institution. They succeeded in obtaining the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which required the return of fugitive slaves by the sheriffs of the northern states. Then came the Dred Scott Decision, which practically decided that taking a slave into United States Territory, did not free him. Slavery was fully entrenched in the laws of the land when Lincoln was elected president, but the result showed that constitutions, legal enactments and judgements of the higher courts must all give way before the aroused conscience of the people.
Soon after the organization of the Confederacy Alexander Stevens of Georgia, made a speech in which he said regarding slavery: "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner."
This flung defiance in the face of the whole civilized world, and it was one of those chickens which come home to roost. As the war ebbed and flowed the representatives of the Confederacy beseiged the courts of France and St. James for recognition. France was only too willing but waited for England, and the governing classes of Great Britain were so anxious to see the dismemberment of the Union that the Confederacy would have been recognized early in the war if our representatives had not maintained that we were fighting for freedom, fighting to free the slave, but this argument fell flat when we were reminded that the generals in the fields were sending escaped slaves back to their masters. So, in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which he called a war measure. It was that, and an effective one, but one of the impelling forces that caused that action was the sentiment of the laboring men and women of the manufacturing centers of England who were willing to go without cottoon and short of food, as long as the shortage came in a prosecution of the a battle for freedom.
The governments of Great Britain and of France were no friends of ours during those four years of blood shed, and they hailed with rejoicing the news that came from Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, while they morned for Vicksburg and Atlanta. During all these years the plain working classes of England were our allies, and any British administration that acknowledged the independence of the confederacy could not have held its place for twenty four hours. The South finally learned this, and in the latter months of 1864, while Lee was cooped up at Richmond and Sherman was plowing that furrow from Atlanta to the sea, an ambassador was sent to London offering to guarantee the abolition of slavery as the price for the recognition of the conferderacy. He was told, "It is too late."
I have come to look upon the war of the Rebellion as one of those things that had to be. It was inevitable. Nobody began and nobody could end it. We were all in in. The men of the North fought and marched and fought again, and so on from day to day and year to year. The women of the North waited and worked, they picked lint and rolled bandages. They nursed the sick and wounded back to life again, when they could, and when they could not, they mourned for their dead.
This ought to have been enough, but the cross borned by the men and women of the South was heavier than this. The battle field was at their doors, their crops were trampled into the ground by charging squardons, their houses and barns were burned, and their country was made desolate.
Fate threw us into the ranks of the army that finally achieved victory. Suppose, Comrades, that we had been born in South Carolina, Georgia or Mississippi, attended their schools and read their papers. Would we have served under Grant of Lee? Sherman or Johnston? I think no doubt but we would have proved ourselves the product of our environment, and laid down our arms at Appomatox. So, I feel no resentment for the southern soldier who joined his army and waged his war in accordance with the canons of civilized warfare, and when he surrendered, admittedd that the war was over, and returned like an honest man to the pursuits of peace.
Now this doesn't mean that it made no difference on which side we fought, nor which side won thebattle. It did make all the difference in the world. I tell you the country was in peril. Free govenment was in danger. Government by the people, for the people was at stake, and its very existence depended on whether you and I kept our guns clean and our cartidge boxes full. The generals were all right enough but the fate of the day always depended upon the man behind the gun. If he was caught in the flanks and stampeded, the battle was gone. If he kept his nerve and changed front he saved the day.
What have we gained for all our march and battle? We have got a good deal. The flag we followed through the smoke of the conflict floats the proud banner of a free people from sea to sea, and from the lakes to the gulf. It floats there because in a thousand instances, when the flag went down some brave soldier tore the flag staff from the dead hand of his fallen comrade and bore it on to victory.
The substance of the country is not wasted in building lines of fortifications and in supporting great standing armies. What a man earns now can be used in clothing and feeding his family and in supporting his children. He can build a better house, furnish it better, own more land and enjoy many more of the conforts of life because the men who wore the Blue carried their lines from the Potomac and the Ohio to the Gulf.
