It just happened to be that the nation was finally ready to fight over the issue. The southern rabble started bloody hostilities by raising treasonous armies and finally attacking Ft. Sumter. And the traitorous leaders ordered it in order to preserve the barbaric notion that some people could own other people - completely antithetical to the founding spirit; clearly those people were not Americans. It was high time that the barbaric notion was choked out of existence, and many of the (more educated) people knew it.
Our American shame is that it took so long for a people of good conscience to permit such a disgustingly evil system to exist as long as it did.
And also a pure wonder and bloody effort, with God's help, that the people managed to fling it off.
Good comment. You might also have mentioned that one motivation Lincoln had for the emancipation proclamation was to keep Britain from recognizing the Confederate States as a sovereign nation. The British public was very anti-slavery.
Here you are wrong and are letting your own petty provincialism color your otherwise factual assessments.
The planter aristocracy initiated hostilities. The "rabble" as you put it only involved themselves after northern states raised armies and, in their perception, invaded and threatened their homes and families.
I know both sides very well, planters and "rabble," have them both in my ancestry. You have it precisely backwards. Maybe you merely intended to slur all southerners or something, if so, ho-hum, nothing new or original there.
I'm giving you the benefit of a doubt. At least you know the Emancipation Proclamation was a military document intended to raise a slave rebellion in Confederate states only, as it did not deign to free them elsewhere.