Just a historical FYI rahbert, the South was not entirely the “pro-slavery side.” The North was pro-slavery too at the time. Some of the northern states were slave states, Lincoln said the war had nothing to do with slavery, and General U.S. Grant said that if he thought the war was about freeing the slaves, he would turn in his sword and fight for the other side. Grant was also a slave owner before, during and after the war.
In contrast, General Robert E. Lee was an abolitionist. Many Southerners shared his views. President Jefferson Davis requested land owners to promise their slaves freedom in exchange for military service. The abolition movement was growing in the South before the war. The 13th Amendment that legally freed the slaves, (not the Emancipation Proclamation), was ratified by many Southern states before many Northern states.
The historical fact is that the Civil War was a conflict between TWO slave nations - the USA and the CSA. Granted, the USA had already banned slavery in some states, but the same movement was growing in some CSA states as well. Historical revisionists have spent a little over 100 years trying to paint the Civil War as some idealistic holy crusade against the injustice of slavery. That image doesn’t hold up to the historical facts. The Civil War was mainly about money, particularly taxes and resources. What the South did was no different than what the Founding Fathers did during the American Revolution. Both were acts of rebellion and armed insurrection. Both attempted to establish free and independent nations. Both were dominated by slave economies. The only difference between them is this. In the American Revolution the rebels won. In the American Civil War they didn’t.
Yes, when the CSA was running short of men, and, on the verge of defeat.
You need to read some American history.
Wrong. Grant's wife's family owned slaves, but freed them during the war. Grant himself was given a slave, but freed him after a short time. And he did so at a time when he was in debt and could have used the money selling the slave would have brought in.
In contrast, General Robert E. Lee was an abolitionist
Lee thought that slavery was a moral evil, but that it was good for the slaves. God, he felt, would get around to freeing the slaves someday and it was no good for man to try to push the issue.
President Jefferson Davis requested land owners to promise their slaves freedom in exchange for military service.
I don't suppose you can find that quote, can you?
Granted, the USA had already banned slavery in some states, but the same movement was growing in some CSA states as well.
Yeah, you're going to need some citations for that, too. If anything, the opposite was happening. Slavery had been seen as a necessary evil during the post-Revolutionary period, but by the 1850s an extensive body of southern thinking had come along pronouncing slavery a positive good and something ordained by God. Confederate VP Alexander Stephens' opinion on the matter wasn't unusual:
With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them.