Yeah, right. Some still can’t shake those old democrat party/confederacy fantasies about why the war was fought. The democrat slaveowners stated in writing and by their speech that it was about how Lincoln would free the slaves and would hear no compromise that was offered by him to let slavery be where it was already established.
Secession was about slavery, period. The “states rights” meme was what the democrat aristocrats sold to the non-slave holding population to get them to fight for them. Many of the southern troops came to realize and referred to the war as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”, and they were right.
Elaborated on greatly after the war, when defense of slavery wasn't considered a valid reason any longer even by those who led secession.
There was a particular book in my US History I class (going from the pre-colonial days to Reconstruction) that was part of our syllabus; it was essentially a compendium of letters by Southern politicians in the lead-up to the Civil War.
I wish I could remember the title, but the dominant focus of these letters was about slavery. It was actually quite jarring how much of a focus it was.
The slavery meme was what yankees had to invoke, at the behest of their oh so righteous elitist former slave runners of Boston, who were then running in the china clipper/opium trade and importing coolie labor for the westward expansion railroad. Oh, and also slaughtering the Native Americans who got in their way and creating the reservation/plantation for them to stay on and dissolve. Nice people those oligarchs.
Horace Greeley, the yankee, paid for Jefferson Davis’s legal defense and many of his post war debts. Such was the passion against slavery. Yup. Go West young man.
It is ALWAYS “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” Name ONE that was not when reductively analyzed to causality— including WWII one could certainly say. And the American Tories still celebrate the engineered rescue of the dregs of the english empire, as well as the inheriting of the piss poor management disasters from their former colonies. Like... Iraq, or ... Iran..or....
And anyone who doubts that should read the states' declarations of secession.
You missed my point entirely
Slavery was the issue, yes, but because the Fed was trying to force the states to eliminate it, and it was not up to the federal government to decide that - it was a state issue.
Not that Slavery was good, and should have been ‘allowed’, but it was not a federal issue.
Imagine if the issue was about the Federal govt forcing the states to buy health care. do you see what I mean now?
It WAS about states rights. Slavery was just a vehicle to assert federal power over states rights.
I know facts are a troubling thing to have to deal with, but necessary none the less.
Fact #1 - Only 5% of people who lived in the Confederacy owned slaves.
Fact #2 - Slavery was legal in this country at the time. Lincoln freeing the slaves on his own would have been unconstitutional and likely impeachable.
Fact #3 -Democrats in the North were perfectly content with slavery, working behind Lincoln’s back to negotiate a separate peace with the North. That is called treason.
The war supposedly ended in April, 1865. However, there are a number of people who insist on continuing the fight against the Confederacy, even some here on FR.
And to the NSA trolls, FU.
You must admit that the North invaded the South. thus the
South was primarily defending their homes.
Maybe you should listen to your hero and take his advice:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln