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Ideas incite men, but it is men that bring about war. Men may have their reasons for conflict, but if they are politicians, entrusted by the people with the power to conduct war, then they have the responsibility to couch their reasoning not in the excuse of another’s shortfalls, but in the logic of law.

Many, who would lay blame for the great American war at the feet of the people of the South, invoke the logic that there would not have been war without slavery. They make the case that slavery was at the root of the argument between North and South. Slavery, it is said, was the obvious difference between the two sections; slavery aroused conflicting passions, principles and interests. The cause is variously presented as a moral issue, a political issue, an economic issue, a racial issue, an ideological issue and a highly emotional issue.

Concerning the moral issue, in practical terms, the slavery controversy was conducted, not on the basis of facts and realities, but in terms of symbols, slogans, images, and all the trappings of irresponsible and ill-informed propaganda. The North viewed the entire South through the eyes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglas.

It cannot be said that North and South were divided on racial prejudice. Even though the Republicans protested over the Dred Scott verdict, blacks were still actively prejudiced against in the North. Indeed, it is reported that one of the reasons why Republicans supported abolition was the belief that “even the free Negroes in the north would return to the southern states, their natural habitat within the United States”.

Final proof of Northern hypocrisy on the morality of slavery was offered by the discrimination against the Negro which was practiced, both officially and unofficially, legally, publicly and privately, throughout the northern states.

The Northern abolitionists who did want to eradicate it were a small, distrusted and atypical minority in the north, who manifested radical attempts to incite racial violence.

And this “it is reported” is pretty lame. We need citations and evaluation of degree of applicability.

One thing that we do know, is that the party we know today as Democrat was the majority of slavery support. And you know you cannot morally equate “I don’t like my Negro neighbor and wish he’d move” to “I think my Negro neighbor ought to be a slave.”