[bobjam]

With one exception, the ancestors of mine who actually owned slaves did not fight yet those who did not own slaves fought in the Confederate Army.

If the war really was about slavery, then why did one third of the the slave states remain in the Union? Those states were Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia. The latter was part of Virginia but left in order to remain in the Union.

[wku man]

Kentucky was divided; saying it was a Union state is revisionist history. Federal troops occupied the northern half of the state, mostly to deny the rebels the Ohio River as an easily defendable border, while the southern part remained loyal to the Confederacy. So much so, that Bowling Green, where I graduated from Western Kentucky University, was the Confederate capital of the state. To this day, remnants of the old fort are part of campus, at the top of the hill that gives the Hilltoppers their name.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[the OlLine Rebel]

Maryland was forced at gunpoint to stay in the Union.

So they would not engulf the precious feds in DC - land given to them by MD as well as VA.

Why they couldn’t move their fed butts out of town to the north to stay intact, like the Congress of old left Philly, I don’t know. Instead they showed their might by forcing MD to stay in.