Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the Middlebury Institute, discusses his article “The Sesquicentennial Is Upon Us;” why “War of Southern Secession” and “War Between the States” are more apt descriptions and should be used in place of “Civil War;” the tariff revenue at stake in the fight over Fort Sumter, which newly-independent South Carolina claimed as its own; how Northern industrialists and the Republican Party planned to preserve the union in order to transform the country into a major industrial power, eager to expand westward; how the Emancipation Proclamation was used to fill the Union Army’s ranks and stir up Southern slave rebellions (it did not effect Northern slaves); and the North’s failure to integrate newly freed slaves and compensate slave owners, dooming the South’s economy.
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