Of course, I completely disagree on all counts. Factually I believe you are wrong. It was all about slavery and the expansion of slavery to new territories plus the balance of power in the Congress between slave and free states.
However, thank you for the rational discussion.
I believe you’ll find I was factually correct..In fact, President Lincoln actually wished to ship the slaves back home to wherever they came from but decided to use them as a psychological warfare tool...It was a very clever and successful move...
post 34 - You are correct. Even Thomas Jefferson predicted a war between the states would occur over the issue of slavery. Though accurate that the North’s unfair trade policies towards the South played a part in the acrimony between the two, the prevalent cause of the Civil War was exactly as you’ve stated.
I honestly do believe that there was a fair measure of states’ rights involved with the Civil War, along with a significant role played by the economy between the states of the time (consider the massive blockade shortly following the battle of Fort Sumter).
However, you’d have to be somewhat ignorant of history to deny that slaves had a role. Slavery was an integral part of the Southern economy at the time. Though the notion of one man owning hundreds upon hundreds of slaves is somewhat exaggerated - very few Southerners owned more than a few slaves, and IIRC, there existed less than ten that owned more than a few hundred - you can’t ignore this facet. Looking at the writings and letters of Southern politicians would reveal a genuine notion of superiority over blacks, which was only enforced by the Dred Scott Decision shortly before the war began.
Personally, given the industrialization going on throughout Western Civilization - plus the efforts of the British in shutting down the African Slave trade many years prior - I believe that the necessity of slavery as an economic institution would have passed away as machinery took a larger role. Who knows, without the bad blood instigated by the Civil War and the ensuing Reconstruction - which in and of itself blew up over the bad blood between the various Compromises of years past that attempted to mitigate the free/slave state issue - perhaps the issue of rights for colored people would’ve been a lot smoother.
Alas, what happened happened.
I certainly would prescribe some measure of nobility to various peoples of the Confederacy. As for nobility of the CSA itself? Not so much...maybe just a little.
However, if it were ''all about slavery'', then why did Lincoln, through the Emancipation Proclamation, free only slaves in the South and not in the North? Was this act not designed to punish the South by damaging the Southern agricultural-based economy, largely dependent on slaves (and others) to maintain it?
sigh
you are aware that Lincoln did say he had no intention to free any slaves and the only reason a year and a half he did what he did was because he used the situation politically against France and Britain