Slaves created a slave culture, which diverted the South from the North. This is the perfect example of schisms that ultimately lead to war.
The reason the South would have won was their determination. With a few more resources Gettysburg would have swung in the other direction, Lincoln would have been forced to sue for peace, and the South would have left with a sovereign republic not unlike a Canada with a Southern drawl.
Regardless. Slavery wasn’t the ostensible reason for the war, but it was the reason for the loss.
BTW. Lincoln doesn’t deserve the canonization that history has given him. He always had the choice of allowing the South to leave the Union, even after the initial Southern aggression. There is no victory above the graves of 500,000 Americans.
Not sure it's that simple. It is my understanding that most of the South was settled by Scottish and Irish people, while most of the North East was settled by English people. There were schisms built into the nation, and i've read a lot of claims that the Civil War was just a continuation of the English Civil War.
Regardless. Slavery wasn’t the ostensible reason for the war, but it was the reason for the loss.
I'm not grasping your point here. Why was slavery the reason for their loss?
BTW. Lincoln doesn’t deserve the canonization that history has given him. He always had the choice of allowing the South to leave the Union, even after the initial Southern aggression.
I hate to take up for Lincoln, but if you look at the situation he had to face, he pretty much had no choice but to start a war with the South. If he didn't, it would have caused massive economic devastation in the North. The North would have undergone an economic disaster, not only from the South eschewing their shipping, banking, insurance and other industries, but from the flood of cheaper European products that would have displaced their markets in the South, the Midwest, and along all the border states.
Southern independence would have been a massive economic catastrophe to Northern economic interests.
Oh, and the initial aggression was on the part of Lincoln. A lot of people have never been informed that what triggered the attack on Ft. Sumter was the arrival of the first few ships of a War Fleet Lincoln had sent to force his will on the people of South Carolina. The Confederates knew the warships were coming, and they knew what their orders were, and it was in an effort to prevent having to wage a battle where they were being attacked both from the Sea and from the Fort, that they reluctantly decided to neutralize the fort before the Ship's firepower could be brought to bear on them.
There is no victory above the graves of 500,000 Americans.
Best survey of the casualties so far puts the numbers at closer to 750,000, but you are right. Killing that many people to subjugate other states was just wrong. It should have never happened.