Perspective is right.
Today, many Southerners will tell you that the War of Northern Aggression was about States’ rights. (That’s the point of the comments that make up the thread title; see, most Southerners weren’t slave owners so that couldn’t be why they fought...)
Yankees will tell you the Civil War was fought over slavery.
Both perspectives have value.
Indeed, the two issues were intricately linked from our founding:
The 3/5ths compromise was designed to prevent an overrepresentation of the pro-slavery position in the new government. Our founders punted this issue down the decades.
The 3/5ths clause that kept apportionment down in slave areas kept representation down in the South, generally. The two issues, slavery and representation, were tied together from our start.
I believe that it’s correct to say that the average rebel fighter was fighting to protect his home and not slavery (or States’ Rights for that matter). His leaders had a different agenda. They wanted freedom from a representation mismatch that put them at a disadvantage, for sure. They also believed that the “necessary evil” would be essential to provide the economic freedom that would be an integral part of the political freedom they sought. Cotton is King.
To say that the War was only about slavery misses the point just as much as to say it wasn’t about slavery at all.
It was about States’ rights. For those making decisions in the South, that meant the war was about slavery as well.
A reasonable perspective. Except that the only states’ right southern leaders really were concerned about, or that they felt was threatened was the right to own slaves.
Thank you, sir!
The dodge that the war was about slavery misses a crucial point. The Union did not launch an invasion of the South to stop slavery. They launched an invasion of the South to stop Independence.
The slavery dodge is just good propaganda, but at the start of the war, the union was going to stop independence, but continue slavery.
"Stamping out Independence" doesn't make for good press, but "Abolishing Slavery" does, so they pulled the old bait and switch.
A bunch of people are still falling for the con.
At the same time, though, poor whites in the south were some of the most ardent supporters of slavery because they didn't want to have to compete with free black labor. In the years before the war, there were efforts in parts of the south to either expel or re-enslave free blacks for exactly this reason.