If the North was pursuing the war because of slavery, why was Fremont fired early in the war because he wanted Lincoln to proclaim the war was for slavery? In the book, "
Seeing The Elephant published in 1989 the authors researched the reason for the men fighting at Shiloh using letters and reference and the statistical method for verifying the findings. The chapter that answers the question, why did they fight?, none of the combatants were fighting for the defense or abolition of slavery. One Yankee Captain remarked that he'd be lucky to get two companies from either side if the fight were to be over slavery. The men on the battlefield were fighting for other reasons other than slavery. The main reason was "because you are down here" as remarked by the Southerners. Other than that particular book there hasn't been a concise and thorough study on why the men fought and academics have referred to the politicians' speeches to justify and use as documentation. The Northerners were even more racist than were the Southerners when the letters were studied thoroughly. Slavery was the straw that broke the camels' back and is easy to point to as the cause of the entire conflict.
Stephens is vilified in this but compare it to Lincoln's speech of the 1850's. Are they not much the same?
If the North was pursuing the war because of slavery, why was Fremont fired early in the war because he wanted Lincoln to proclaim the war was for slavery? The United States was fighting the war because of a massive rebellion against the government. It was the south that instigated the rebellion in order to protect what they perceived as the threat to slavery posed by Lincoln's election, as innumerable contemporary documents will attest. Claiming that the US was fighting the confederacy because of slavery is sorta like saying that the US fought Japan because of the trade embargoes imposed on them. That may be the reason THEY attacked, but it's not the reason WE responded.