We all agree that slavery was/is an abhorrent practice that needed to be abolished...but the reason a huge majority of Southerners fought and died had NOTHING to do with maintaining the economic status quo because most southerners didn't own slaves. The Patrician Plantation Owners were Effete Elitists...just like the Northern Mercantilists who forced the North into the War!!! What's so hard to understand about that?!
There were plenty of ways for the abolitionists to triumph without plunging the Country into a Civil War, but the Yankee Effete Elite would have none of it because it would have cost them profits, IMHO. And Honest Abe simply knew where his bread was buttered and reacted accordingly.
MUD
You just made my point.
For the south, it was almost all about slavery but not, I believe, just for slaverys sake. It was the advantages that slavery gave the south over the north in production that was the reason the south wanted to keep slavery so much.
You can rewrite history but you can't remove words from the mouths of men once they are spoken.
Again, you've made my point. The Union (north) HAS, for all practical purposes, rewritten history. I really DON'T believe that it was ONLY about slavery for the north. That was an incidental that would look good for the common man.
Well, have some direct quotes from the people you mentioned.
Mississippi Secession Document (January, 1861): "That they have elected a majority of electors for President and Vice-President on the ground that there exists an irreconcilable conflict between the two sections of the Confederacy in reference to their respective systems of labor and in pursuance of their hostility to us and our institutions, thus declaring to the civilized world that the powers of this government are to be used for the dishonor and overthrow of the Southern section of this great Confederacy.”
South Carolina Secession Decree (December, 1860) “In the present case, the fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the states have deliberately refused for years past to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.
“We affirm that these ends for which this government was instituted have been defeated, and the government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the nonslaveholding states. Those states have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the states and recognized by the Constitution.”
Virginia Secession Document (April, 1861): “The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the constitution of the United States of America, having declared that the powers granted under the said constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the federal government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the southern, slaveholding states.”
Alexander Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech”, (March, 1861): “Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”