The difference is that the world was evolving past the concept of slavery. most of the “civilized” nations were in the process of or had already eliminated slavery. Every northern state had either outlawed slavery or had defined a path to emancipation.
The south held out and was determined to not only perpetuate slavery, but to expand it. I can understand why - after all they had a considerable investment in what appeared to them to be a guaranteed money-maker.
I’ve heard other southern partisans make the claim that “they just wanted things to stay as they were”. The problem with that was that the world was changing (not just the northern states) and the slavocracy was finding itself increasingly on the outs with everybody.
An argument could be made the above opinion is justification for killing 600,000 people in a total war. In fact, the argument is made here all the time.
rockrr you have swerved close to the truth, but be careful, because in a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
When both northern and southern colonies saw slavery as a money-maker, both regions viewed the practice as moral. Both agreed to write it into the Constitution.
The Tracing Center, a civil rights organization in Boston, talks about the money-making on their website. They write:
“A central fact obscured by post-Civil War mythologies is that the northern U.S. states were deeply implicated in slavery and the slave trade right up to the war.
“The slave trade in particular was dominated by the northern maritime industry. Rhode Island alone was responsible for half of all U.S. slave voyages. James DeWolf and his family may have been the biggest slave traders in U.S. history, but there were many others involved. For example, members of the Brown family of Providence, some of whom were prominent in the slave trade, gave substantial gifts to Rhode Island College, which was later renamed Brown University.
“While local townspeople thought of the DeWolfs and other prominent families primarily as general merchants, distillers and traders who supported ship-building, warehousing, insurance and other trades and businesses, it was common knowledge that one source of this business was the cheap labor and huge profits reaped from trafficking in human beings.
“The North also imported slaves, as well as transporting and selling them in the south and abroad. While the majority of enslaved Africans arrived in southern ports–Charleston, South Carolina was the largest market for slave traders, including the DeWolfs—most large colonial ports served as points of entry, and Africans were sold in northern ports including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Newport, Rhode Island.”
But the north did later, largely, come to view slavery as immoral. That occurred about 10 seconds after they discovered that, for the north, it was no longer a money-maker. The only thing remaining after the discovery was to start the killing.
Southern slave interests “lost it all” in the war. (Yeah!)
rockrr, you are knowledgeable about history. Can you cite any prominent New England Universities, politicians, families or business empires that exist today whose fortunes can be traced back to slavery?