The political elite in the South may have made statements to the effect that the war was about slavery, but I doubt the average Confederate soldier volunteered with the idea "I want to help defend slavery."
Read “Killing Lincoln”. He was as likely to be assassinated by a Northerner who opposed a war to end slavery as a Southern Sympathizer.
I find it puzzling that the Dems are ‘re-enslaving” the “minorities” (and a bunch of us that aren't) by state dependency. It is not happening voluntarily but by subjection.
Is that also slavery? In my mind it is and it was evil in the 1860’s and it is even more so today.
Slavery by bureaucracy.
Slavery’s existence created a false but cherished sense of equality in the South. Leading slave holders like Thomas Dew of Virginia spoke of the purest equality of color. Unlike the north where class was evolving from wealth or its lack, the south enjoyed a society where the poorest white could feel kinship to the wealthy through their common race. The slaveholding class did little to tarnish this image. Also, some slaves were considerably more skilled than poor whites, as they were trained in trades necessary to running a self sustaining plantation. In a free competition many whites would be left behind by freedmen. Finally, many poor whites were paid to join the slave patrols and had a monetary stake in slavery’s survival.
The mania for secession had complicated motivations, but it’s clear the underlying issue was one of needing to protect the wealth (capital) represented by the slaves.
I just recently found an outstanding site with statistics that make it easy to understand the importance of slavery to the economy of the South.
http://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
As far as I can tell, the authors are merely try to be accurate, they’re not trying to push a political POV.
The most fascinating part for me was the value of slaves in the total southern economy. They composed about 60% of all wealth in the South.
Our economy has gone into a tail spin in the last few years and lost something around 10% of the total wealth in this country, which is on the order of $200T.
It is not all unreasonable that the South resisted those (abolitionists) who wanted to confiscate 60% of their region’s wealth.
Look at how violently many on this site resist the very notion of a few percent increase in tax rates. How do you think they’d react to proposed confiscation of 60% of their accumulated assets?
Anyway, take a look at the site. It’s really cool.