USA Civil War – a scar that won’t heal

 

The USA Civil War of 1861 was fought over slavery and the independence of individual states from the national government. It cost of 625,000 lives and was the most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914. It pitted neighbour against neighbour, split families and by the end of four brutal years with two and a half million men fighting, it left the south devastated and left deep scars in the American psyche. It was precipitated by the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 who held that all men were created with an equal right to liberty. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863 freed millions of slaves held in the south.

The war started on 12 April 1861 at Fort Sumter, South Carolina at 4.30am. What’s most interesting about this not very startling chart in relation to the USA 1776 chart are three things. 1 The USA was on its First Uranus Return. 2 Tr Pluto was hovering round the square to the US Leo North Node. 3. The transiting North Node was opposing the USA Cancer Sun (exactly in the June 1861 Eclipses).

The nodal connections suggest a significant moment in the country’s history and destiny. When tr Pluto had moved a quarter of a zodiac in 1941 to conjunct the US Node, Pearl Harbour happened. Tr Pluto on the next square in 1986 oversaw the Challenger space rocket disintegrate, the Iran-Contra Affair blew up, and more helpfully Reagan was descaling the Cold War with Gorbachev. (Just as a point of interest tr Neptune was exactly opposite the USA Node when 9/11 occurred.)

The next tr Pluto hard aspect to the US Leo Node, in opposition from Aquarius, doesn’t happen till 2027/2028. What is worrisome about that is the next Uranus Return also occurs in 2028. Both of those aspects were around at the height of World War 11 in 1943/44.

Uranus Returns come round every 84 years and affect every country differently. But they do carry great significance. Russia 1917’s First Uranus Return accompanied Putin’s accession to the top in 1999/2000, where he’s remained ever since.

In the UK the Uranus return in the late 1960s oversaw the start of the Irish Troubles, Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech, and the Race Relations Act was passed which criminalised racial discrimination. The previous Uranus return around 1885 saw colonial Britain in the ’scramble for Africa’, the Siege of Khartoum, and Irish terrorists in London.

For the USA, the Uranus Return was the Civil War and then World War 11.

I would suspect this nasty spat with Trump and the Alt-Right versus the civilized world is more to do with tr Uranus square the USA Mercury opposition Pluto (see previous posts Aug 13 2017, Nov 12 2016) – and that will subside into next year. But it has exposed glaring fault lines in American society that have been there from square one and won’t go away in a hurry.

29 thoughts on “USA Civil War – a scar that won’t heal

  1. HI Marjorie,
    With the exception of the comments – can we revisit this post in a more current posting. The nodes, Uranus and Pluto – it is all becoming too real now. Thank you for this. KT

  2. I’m African American. I’ve experienced racism from EVERY corner of the United States and Canada. I am pretty sure I will experience racism from other parts of the world if I were to travel more.

    This is my reality until death. My ancestry is rooted in Virginia. I grew up in the North. I have come across many kind souls In the South and truly mean racists from New York City.

    What I Know about Trump is that he is an opportunist. He plays to the vulnerable. He plays to fear. That is how he won. Obama brought hope. Trump brings fear.

    • Melissa, I am truly sorry. I remember reading an interview with Arthur Ashe, the tennis player who won three Grand Slam titles and died tragically young. He was asked if he could change one thing about his life what would it be. He replied: ‘I wouldn’t have been born black.’ That seemed to me the most appalling thing – to have ignorant prejudice make you want to not be you.
      Just as Obama seemed to provide the hope of a major step of progress, everything has suddenly shot in reverse, further than at any time in the past half century. It would make you despair of the human race.

    • Take a vacation to Japan. Friends have told me the experience is eye-opening, Melissa. Also, I have friends in Africa, and some who have visited Africa, and it has been soul-restoring. Ghana, in particular, uses English as a primary language.

  3. Look at the meaningless of the question of race – the equal value of men between men – on just this string alone. It’s pathetic; humans are a vastly inferior species to return to the same issue every 50 years over thousands of years. We have well-earned our extinction event.

    Know a Trump voter? Make sure they know they empowered this hate to pinnacle again; don’t walk away until you see them choke on it.

    • ” Make sure they know they empowered this hate to pinnacle again; don’t walk away until you see them choke on it.”

      Not gonna happen – they follow him into darkness. Surprised you don’t see this for what it is.

  4. The last civil war (civil – not colonial) in Portugal (in Europe) was from 1828 to 1834 (we also call it Liberal Wars) and it was essentially a war between an old way of ruling and a new way of ruling, more democratic, more inclusive. It actually opposed two brothers. Mine is a small country. Right now it’s 11 million people. A lot less in those days. The point I’m trying to make is: we do not have this entrenched feeling about our last civil war (not like americans do). Maybe it’s because we are still a small country, maybe perhaps we are an old country (almost 900 years old) and had had other civil wars before this one or maybe there were other events in our contemporary history that occupies still our mind, collectively (we had a colonial war in the 1960’s and ’70’s, a Fascist dictatorship for almost 50 years and finally a Revolution in 1974). So it’s kind of weird (to me) to see how something that happened more than 150 years it’s still felt as if it was 20 years ago. Just my 2cents.

    • Perhaps it’s because it occured “so close to home” and the entrenched memories and causes of what triggered the rift remain. Race defined property – even gender defined what was property. Those definitions ahve never been dropped from schoolroom teaching, church, government – it is as part of American heritage as “apple pie”. America is a country of individuals – perhaps why everyone (falsely) states, “it is a free country”. Nothing is free – there is always a price to pay.

        • The interesting point these people forget is that it was politics and economics that fuelled the decision to bring black people to the USA in the first place. Black people of the time had no intention of travelling to the US – they probably didn’t even know it existed. There was no immigration of the time. People were not leaving their country/continent BY CHOICE for a better life in the US. They were taken from their land and brought there to work as slaves, to be sold as slaves, for free labour. So the people of today are their descendants and know no where else. So that IS their country too!!

          America was never white in the first place. The American Indians were originally there. Then the blacks were brought there and no voluntarily I may add.

          On top of all that there were breeding farms where they would breed slave babies just for sale. There are copies of price lists where black people were bought and sold like commodities.

          These people need to wake up and smell the coffee or at the very least read and understand their history. Even most of their ancestors did not originate from the US …..

          Phew …. I could go on and on but will stop here

  5. I agree the divisions are too deep to heal easily, but I think the divide is more urban/rural. You will find people in Maine or New Hampshire, whose ancestors fought for the Union, with Confederate battle flags as some sort of generic redneck pride symbol.

    I do not agree that the South is still not recovered. Over the past half century plenty of jobs and people have gone South. Cheaper labor, cheaper real estate, no labor protections. The South remains poorer, etc., because it continues to espouse a political ideology that shuns spending on education, public health, or really much if anything at all. But it has plenty of political clout and now has gifted us this disgrace of an administration. Trump carried with ease 10 of 11 former Confederate states plus culturally Southern Kentucky and Missouri.

    I will not mince words. I am a proud New Englander and, although New England is nit perfect, it has a lot to be proud of. I loathe the South. I believe conservative white Southerners (and there are very few of any other kind) have been the cause of most of our problems from Day 1. Worse than the Civil War, any attempt at reconstruction (in the “not being racist swine” sense) completely failed. That they celebrate these racist traitors a century and a half on is very telling. And they are the reason we can’t have sane policies on anything. I feel no kinship and honestly would prefer not to share a country with them.

      • Yes. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, John Singleton Mosby, Preston Brooks, for starters. All racist traitors, all honored across the South with statues, schools, parks, streets, etc. There is a Jefferson Davis Highway just across the bridge from Washington D.C. It is a disgrace.

    • “I do not agree that the South is still not recovered. Over the past half century plenty of jobs and people have gone South. Cheaper labor, cheaper real estate, no labor protections.”

      This is recovery?

      OK, don’t mince words, then. You are more powerful for your passions than others not “proud New Englander” than say, someone in Ohio?

      “You will find people in Maine or New Hampshire, whose ancestors fought for the Union, with Confederate battle flags as some sort of generic redneck pride symbol.”

      What a poor excuse for a post. I feel pity for you.

          • You’ve lost the good will and respect of a lot of people, Larry C. Why you would destroy this with odd retorts and blazing racism is beyond logical thought. Take your respect for the Confederacy and it’s traitors, and your disrespect for my state of Ohio (proud stop of the Underground Railway) and ‘shove it’.

            I know Marjorie doesn’t like us to make personal comments, but you really deserve this. A seasoned KKK member couldn’t have done a better job of roiling things up than you Larry C, and you should know how other people see you now.

      • I do not know you but I’m surprised by your posts today. Being proud of New England does not preclude the pride of, to use your example, someone from Ohio.

        And you will find some – not nearly as many in the North as in the South – who display that flag. When they are asked, they will say quite proudly it’s a symbol of redneck pride against the lib’ruls in the cities. Their words.

        The idea that the South (which has benefited enormously, in the political sense, from population shifts since 1960 or so) is still a victim of the North makes no sense. They’re victims of their own unwillingness to promote labor rights or higher wages.

        I find it surprising, to say the least, that such an outspoken opponent of Trump has such a problem with the idea that men are racists and traitors who, after having their side dominate all branches of the federal government for 20 years, lost an election in 1860 and decided to wage a four-year armed insurrection against the government of the United States. Their successors in Southern state governments, who erected statues in honor of their failed rebellion, declined to follow for at least a century the post-Civil War constitutional amendments guaranteeing equal protection and equal rights to vote. They lynched thousands of African-Americans who tried to vote, or just looked at them funny. They fought integration tooth and nail, and try to evade those constitutional requirements to thus day. There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the despicable display in Charlottesville this weekend. But I suppose two centuries of unbroken virulent racism is a “yawn.”

        If someone’s been writing “poor excuses for posts,” I’m comfortable that it’s not me.

        • Wow, what a gauntlet toss. Quite dramatic.

          You never did respond to what made “those traitors” actual traitors.

          As to a yawn equating to two centuries of racism, well, I guess the math is different where you come from. Maybe even modern.

          • Whatever. Taking up arms against the United States government for four years in an effort to defend the owning of human beings of a different skin color is treasonous and racist. Neither one of these questions is difficult for me. Apparently you don’t agree. So be it.

    • Interesting though that the leader of these groups, Richard Spencer, was born in Massachusetts. The young men came from states like Nevada, California, Washington and traveled 3,000 miles. I think young men often need a cause and are susceptible to falling for causes.

  6. The South was so obliterated by the North that it still has yet to recover. Yankees in the North believe theirs is the best since sliced bread. I doubt the split will ever heal. Thanks for the assessment, Marjorie.

    • Larry, Thanks for raising it. As a European I would have to stay I was always hazy about the detail. So good to have googled it more extensively.

      • The emotions will run for centuries. That war will nveer end. I was born & raised just north of the Mason-Dixon line – and was taught to feel a deep resentment and mistrust against the South. In a way, the Union scorched-earth policy was not dissimilar to that used against the Germains toward the end of the War. Bomb everything – and everyone – into oblivion.

        • You should google and research a map of bombs that were dropped on Great Britain by the Germans during WWII. IT IS ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDING. Germany literally carpet bombed Britain.

          Yet the British recovered, and Germany recovered from the retaliation bombing by the Allies.

          The South didn’t recover because they didn’t have their massive enslaved work force any more. The Brits and the Germans worked to make their countries great again. The South was helpless without enslaved people to do the work. Case closed.

          • Thank you Buckeye. As a Brit I wanted to say the same. Sometimes just too old and weary to enter the fray. I am not sure people will ever stop being greedy and lazy and this is what lies behind pretty much all our ills.

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