Bull Snipe: "IMO, no, restoring the Union was Lincoln’s objective in going to war."
jeffersondem sooooo enjoys arguing both sides of this that just can't give it up.
What Lost Causers want to say is: Civil War had "nothing to do with" slavery, and to prove it they trot out quotes from Lincoln & others saying they only wished to preserve the Union.
However, there are just as many quotes from both Union & Confederate sources saying it was, indeed, "all about slavery" -- Reasons for Secession were all about slavery, as were the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment.
But, but, say Lost Causers, Lincoln never mentioned slavery in his April 15 proclamation calling up 75,000 troops, so see, see, it had nothing to do with slavery, they say.
And posters like jeffersondem just love this "debate" so much they'll argue both sides on the same thread, switching sides without a moment's blink or missing a beat.
The truth of the matter should be clear to anybody who really cares about truth: slavery was important in the beginning, during the middle and at the end of the Civil War, but it was not the only important issue.
Very true. Though every once and awhile they will slip and admit that slavery did have something to do with it. Jeffersondem did so in an earlier post when he stated;”There is that, John Brown’s northern-financed murder raid, and Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech which supported southern fears that, if elected, Lincoln would use the military to violently overthrow the pro-slavery United States Constitution and destroy the South physically and economically.”
“However, there are just as many quotes from both Union & Confederate sources saying it was, indeed, “all about slavery””
For the purpose of this post let’s stipulate that it was, indeed, “all about slavery.”
Lincoln said it in his controversial Gettysburg speech: “. . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . .”
Lincoln makes the claim that from the beginning, the federal soldiers that died under this command were “fighting to free the slaves” - that new birth of freedom.
But slavery was enshrined into the United States Constitution by the original 13 slave states - and Lincoln did not have the votes to legally and peacefully adopt an amendment to abolish slavery.
Some in the South predicted that, if elected, Lincoln would take up arms to violently overthrow the pro-slavery United States Constitution and to make war on the states. Maybe he did.