[stand watie]

actually, the WBTS was about ONE major cause for dixie & ONE major cause for unionists. period. end of story.

for dixie partisans the war was a battle for FREEDOM from a faraway government which southerners increasingly viewed as intrusive & potentially dictatorial. they wanted OUT of the union AND were willing to die to be FREE. (the soldiers,sailors & marines of the CSA saw themselves as being exactly the same as the heroes of 1776.)

for unionists, the war was to prevent the union being divided. dedicated unionists were prepared to die to prevent the south departing. (MANY thousands of those BRAVE union boys DIED BRAVELY in a POOR CAUSE.)

it really was NO MORE complicated than that.

99% of EITHER side cared NOT a DAMN about "the pitiful plight of the slaves". (BOTH sides SHOULD have cared. they DID NOT care!)

99% of Americans wouldn't have fought a SKIRMISH over slavery in 1861. hardly ANYONE would have fought a WAR that killed a MILLION people over the DYING "peculiar institution" even in 1864. (furthermore, veterans on BOTH sides would have lol AT you had you told them that that was what the war was about!)

all this talk of "slavery was a major cause of the war" is in a word: BALDERDASH (and/or: a KNOWING LIE, told NOW, by sanctimonious,REVISIONIST, DAMNyankee, LEFTISTS!)

free dixie,sw

[usmcobra]

STAND do you believe that the southern slaves should have been freed since the south fought for it's freedom?

Never mind those slaves in the United States do you believe that in the confederacy that the slaves there should have been freed as soon as the south had seceded?

[SoCal Pubbie]

"for dixie partisans the war was a battle for FREEDOM from a faraway government which southerners increasingly viewed as intrusive & potentially dictatorial. they wanted OUT of the union AND were willing to die to be FREE. (the soldiers,sailors & marines of the CSA saw themselves as being exactly the same as the heroes of 1776."

Therein lies the foolishness, stupidity, and delusional thinking of the secessionists that obviously still percolates in the dark, dank recesses of a few small minds over one hundred years after the fact. The colonists in 1776 chafed at taxation without representation, the southern Democrats of 1861 chafed at losing elections. There was every opportunity to negotiate, or resolve a mechanism for secession via the courts, but they choose to start a war in which they would have their asses handed to them four years later.