THE CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR
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for solution to the invincible march of progress; nor can they be by–
passed with "objective" neutrality. Not many problems perhaps force
this decision upon the historian. But,
if
any problem does in our his–
tory, it is the Civil War.
To reject the moral actuality of the Civil War is to foreclose the
possibility of an adequate account of its causes. More than that, it is
to misconceive and grotesquely to sentimentalize the nature of history.
For history is not a redeemer, promising to solve all human problems
in time; nor is man capable of transcending the limitations of his
being. Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is
consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is
anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfillment. Nothing exists
in history to assure us that the great moral dilemmas can be resolved
without pain; we cannot therefore be relieved from the duty of moral
judgment on issues so appalling and inescapable as those involved in
human slavery; nor can we be consoled by sentimental theories about
the needlessness of the Civil War into regarding our own struggles
against evil as equally needless.
One must emphasize, however, that this duty of judgment ap–
plies to issues. Because we are all implicated in the same tragedy, we
must judge the men of the past with the same forbearance and charity
which we hope the future will apply toward us.
