People who claim the Confederate Flag is a symbol of racism are usually the same people who were taught that the ‘Civil War’ was fought over slavery. That’s what I was taught in my California government school. Revisionist history...After seeing the PBS TV Series “The Civil War” I decided to do my own research and studying. It was a much more complicated war than we were taught in school.
I did the same. I spent about 15 years studying it.
It was complicated. It was about more than slavery.
But slavery was THE motivating factor. Any serious study of what the rebels were saying, in speeches, writings, and letters, proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
All wars have multiple causes, and the Civil War is no different. But it never would have happened if 4 million Blacks were not chattel slaves.
I have to wonder if people aren't oversimplifying what they were taught in school. They boil it down to one simple answer and then, years later, "discover" that it's "wrong."
Sure, it's more complicated than simply saying the North was against slavery and the South was for. That kind of simplification is something good teachers warn their classes against.
But if you absolutely have to give the cause of the Civil War in one word to save your life, "slavery" wouldn't be a bad one.
Of course not all Southerners fought for slavery. And few Northerners wanted to abolish slavery in 1861. But slavery does account for the rift between the two sections, and concern over the future of slavery does explain much of the secessionist fervor that led to war.
Some people want to go on from that to say that this made the Northerners "good" and the Southerners "bad," and other people angrily rebel against such moralizing, but that's getting beyond reasons to passions.