It's too bad the victor of the war began revising history. Sure, slavery was part of the reason for the war in many peoples minds, but it was not the primary reason for the war.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of Southerners fighting the aggression of the North never owned a slave. They were too poor. So, what were they fighting for if not defending their right to own slaves?
They were fighting what they perceived as a federal behemoth attempting to control their lives, tax the hell outta them. Also the North was placing embargo's on goods from Europe, particularly farm equipment.
To be fair, there were also lots of stories of “beloved slaves”, the first chance they got, bolted towards Union lines and ratted out the Plantation owner’s gold and silver stash.
I always call it the war of northern aggression.
All you hear is the stories written by victors, but a lot of people don’t realize that even those that owned slaves, they were expensive, and it didn’t make sense to mistreat expensive farm workers.
Of course there are horror stories, nobody is denying that, but not as common as the movies would have you believe.
Slavery was on the way out too because of industrialization, and was naturally ending. The war was to subjugate an independent south and consolidate power in DC.
“...a federal behemoth attempting to control their lives...”
It was a time when people had more loyalty to their state than to the federal government. The nation had compromised away federalism, but the people hung on to it.
Northern views of the war may not have been 100% accurate, but it was Southerners who revised history after the war to write slavery out of the story.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of Southerners fighting the aggression of the North never owned a slave. They were too poor. So, what were they fighting for if not defending their right to own slaves?
When you talk about population that includes married women and children who didn't own anything. The percentage of slaveowning families in the Deep South states was over 25% and in Mississippi and South Carolina over 40%. Of course many Confederates fought because of loyalty to their state and region, but slavery was at the root of the North-South conflict.
They were fighting what they perceived as a federal behemoth attempting to control their lives, tax the hell outta them. Also the North was placing embargo's on goods from Europe, particularly farm equipment.
Talk about rewriting history. You are projecting present-day concerns back on the past. There was no federal behemoth in 1860 and there wasn't much of one after. Southerners had been powerful in Washington before 1860 and feared losing power (and what losing power would mean for the "domestic institution" of slavery).
Southerners didn't pay most of the taxes and there was no embargo on farm equipment. How much farm equipment did Southerners want when slave labor was available? Reliable and effective cotton harvesting machines wouldn't be invented until decades after the war, and shipping large quantities of large agricultural machinery across the ocean wouldn't have been that easy or widespread or profitable.