History of the United States I / Unit 17 USH1 2415 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Confederate Irony
The idea
The Confederacy conscripted men before the Union did, impressed enslaved people from their owners over those owners' objections, ran industry directly, suspended habeas corpus, and overruled states that tried to evade its draft. Its own vice president opposed conscription, the seizure of enslaved property and the habeas corpus suspension. Governors withheld supplies and troops. A nation founded on states' rights built the more centralised of the two wartime governments, and Unit 15 entry 2135 carries the detail.
In practice
The states' rights government doing more of what its doctrine forbade than the government it had seceded from.
Where people slip
This is not hypocrisy and calling it hypocrisy wastes the lesson. A war of survival requires central power and any government fighting one will take it, whatever it said beforehand. What the Confederate case demonstrates is that constitutional doctrine loses to necessity whenever the two collide. Carry that forward as the general rule this strand teaches, and it will explain the Union's measures as readily as the Confederacy's.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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