The American Civil War was an augury of war as it was fought in the twentieth century.
In fact, though not in theory, [the American Civil War of A.D. 1861-5] was a war to end Slavery, and this aim was substantially achieved by it. But the American Civil War was not a war to end War; and its significance in the history of modern Western Warfare was as ominous for the future of our Western Civilization as its role in the history of Slavery was decisive and beneficent. In putting an end to Slavery, the victory of the North in the American Civil War rid the Western World, as we have seen, of an ancient evil into which the new force of Industrialism had been breathing fresh vigour.
Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888.
But when we examine the means by which the North won this military victory, of which the final abolition of Slavery was the first-fruits, we observe that the North not only brought into action against Slavery the very force of Industrialism which had given Slavery itself new power; the North mobilized Democracy against Slavery as well, and it won the Civil War by employing, in combination, a number of potent new weapons which Industrialism and Democracy, between them, had placed in a belligerent’s hands by the beginning of the seventh decade of the nineteenth century. The Northerners fought the Slave Power with railways and with heavy artillery; but these weapons forged by Industrialism would not have decided the issue by themselves if they had not been combined with the weapon of conscription; and conscription is a weapon that has been placed in a belligerent Government’s hands by Democracy. The compulsory recruitment of man-power for “cannon-fodder”, which autocracies do not lightly attempt, becomes practicable in a democratic community when it is fighting a national war in a popular cause. The American Civil War of A.D. 1861-5 marks an epoch in the history of War because it saw the application of both the two new driving-forces – Democracy as well as Industrialism – to an ancient social evil. In consequence of the introduction of the formidable new weapons which Democracy and Industrialism had forged, War had become a more terrible thing by the year 1865, when the American Civil War stopped, than it had been in 1861, when the Civil War began. And so, while it is true that the abolition of Slavery was the first-fruits of the American Civil War and that this result was good, it is also true that the American Civil War had an effect in the military sphere which was profoundly evil. It carried our Western Society a long step forward in the process of “keying up” War and thus making War a more terrible scourge than it had been in the past.
“The compulsory recruitment of man-power for ‘cannon-fodder’, which autocracies do not lightly attempt, becomes practicable in a democratic community when it is fighting a national war in a popular cause.” The Tsars, I suppose, paid a heavy price for attempting it during the First World War, and Stalin was manipulating and speaking on behalf of the Russian people although he was an autocrat.
A Study of History, Vol IV, OUP, 1939
