* Ta-Nehisi Coates–among many others–insists that the American Civil War was solely about slavery. I haven’t read enough Civil War history to know whether that’s the case. One of the things that puzzles me about that view, however, is that its own proponents don’t behave as though they believe it. When I visited the Netherlands a few years ago, I was embarrassed to be fervently thanked for the role my Canadian forebears played in liberating that country, even though I was clearly decades too young to have served personally. This experience was not an anomaly–see, e.g., this recent WaPo feature.
Compared to American slavery–which, in the American public imagination, is a moral horror rivaled in human history only by the Holocaust–the German occupation of Holland was a comparatively slight oppression from which to be saved. But I’m not aware of any kind of ongoing recognition/appreciation by black America of the +500,000 casualties the Union ostensibly incurred solely for their sake.
That’s a question of etiquette, or ethics, however. The question I’m more interested in is a historical one: if the orthodox view of the Civil War is correct, is there any greater example of inter-racial altruism in history? Anything that even comes close? I can think of similarly substantial instances of intra-racial sacrifice, or inter-racial sacrifice involving mixed motives of principle and self-interest (WWII obviously contains examples of both categories), but no instance of pure inter-racial self-sacrifice that’s anywhere close in magnitude to what TNC and others contend occurred in the American Civil War. Any ideas?
Luke: Gratitude and empathy, like most moral virtues, depend on the ability for abstract thought, which is measured by IQ. High IQ people like the Dutch are more likely to be grateful than low IQ people.
Also, the Dutch come from a Protestant heritage and these people tend to be particularly altruistic and nice. They don’t make major in-group vs out-group distinctions.
