Wrong. The War Between the States was not fought over slavery. It originated in a fight over the extent of states rights and the usurpation of these rights by the Federal government. Slavery wasn't the primary issue for 1 1/2 to 2 years into the war, and was put forward by Lincoln as a way to keep the north fighting (and to win re-election). If slavery wasn't brought to the forefront as the "primary" issue of the war, the north would not have re-elected Lincoln and would have sued for peace shortly thereafter, just to end things. It was a VERY unpopular war in the north until the slavery issue was manipulated by Lincoln. (A quite clever way, actually, to get what he wanted out of the war: a very strong federal government with essentially unlimited powers, and a way to hamstring the political power of the south. It was all about politics and federal versus state governmental power.)
This is disingenuous.
The very reason for the friction between North and South WAS slavery; the “states rights” at issue were those cases where the South demanded the North honor Southern slaveowners property rights.
Why did South Carolina secede ? What justifications did they use ? The answer is quite clear. It was at bottom a matter of slavery.
From the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, the complaint that precipitated the act is clearly specified -
“The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States. “
Basically they were complaining that the Northern states had passed laws declaring slaveowners property rights unenforceable in the North.
“Wrong. The War Between the States was not fought over slavery.”
Nope. It its aggregate the value of 4 million slaves represented the largest privately held asset in the world in 1860: 4 billion dollars (2.4 TRILLION in 2010 dollars) and the southern politicians, nearly all slaveholders, knew as new states were admitted it was only a matter of time until slavery was outlawed by simple majority vote.
Secession was the only way to prevent that.