It was that -- by the end of the war. It was no different at the beginning of the war. The evilness of Slavery didn't change between the start and the end, yet somehow it became a goal 18 months after the war started.
But if anybody told you that the war started because Northerners wanted to abolish slavery and you didn't question it something was terribly wrong with your education.
I went to Lincoln School for grades 1-3. On Lincoln day we made Lincoln Silhouettes out of thick paper. They told us Lincoln was famous because "He freed the slaves." That is all they told us. I showed my Mother my Lincoln Silhouette. She said "That's wonderful dear!"
It wasn't until HighSchool that I ever heard any of this "To Preserve the Union" business. Even then, the lessons were heavily concentrated on the Slavery issue. I actually never paid much attention to this civil war stuff until I visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and saw those quotes carved into stone.
What? He would have kept slavery? So what is the great moral crusade if it can be traded away with another "Let's Make a Deal!" ?
Why is "Preserving the Union" worth the lives of 750,000 people? (Latest upward revised numbers) This sort of shook my world view. When I thought they went to war to free several million people, I thought it was a moral crusade to do what was right. After learning that no, they didn't go to war to free anybody, they just went to war to force people back into their Union, then I decided it had lost all moral force, and became an expression of despotism.
Lincoln was doing exactly the same thing that George III was doing; Stopping people from getting their independence.
Anyway, I don't know how old you are or where you grew up, but 50 and 60 year old White Southerners who tell you they were taught in school to venerate Abraham Lincoln and never questioned this until they happened to read some book a few years ago, just aren't telling the truth.
I have driven through some of the States of the old Confederacy, but I have never lived in any of them. (apart from an overnight stay) I don't know what they were taught, and I can tell you nothing about that. I can tell you what *I* was taught, and it was that Lincoln was a great hero because he freed the slaves. They never mentioned that this was one of those "Let's make a Deal" things at the time.
No serious historian says that most Northerners went to war to free the slaves, but few would agree that the war was all about Northern greed. There are a host of motivations in between those to extremes that you don't take into account.
Well I think there are good reasons Historians have not suggested this scenario. First, they didn't think of it. Second, they have been taught the common propaganda their whole lives. Third, the University elite don't want our History going down this path. And so on.
I never considered the theory until just this year. I had seen that chart before, but it wasn't until I read accounts of how much money was created by Southern exports, versus how much tariff was collected at New York, that I began to realize that the money for virtually all trade ended up getting funneled through New York.
This was a curious thing, and it was not immediately apparent to me why this was so. It took me awhile to realize those tariffs collected at New York represent a much larger trade volume, 3/4ths of which were created by the value of Southern goods. Somehow (and I didn't know at the time how) The Value of Southern exports ended up in New York instead of their ports of origin.
Well I think there are good reasons Historians have not suggested this scenario. First, they didn't think of it. Second, they have been taught the common propaganda their whole lives. Third, the University elite don't want our History going down this path. And so on.
On the contrary, historians a century ago were very down on Northern capitalists. Google "Charles Beard Civil War" for pete's sake and you might learn something. Progressives, Marxists, and Southern revisionists actually had a similar take on rich Northern industrialists who supposedly caused the war.
So your POV isn't anywhere near as unusual or original as you might think. Over time, historians came to realize that slavery and slave owner expansionism couldn't be ignored. Also, the idea of industrialism or capitalism or Hamiltonianism as the root of all evil faded over time as historians came to understand that the world was more complex than that.
The North was extremely racist and intolerant of blacks. They *hated* them, probably more so than did Southern whites.
That is quite a generalization. WEB DuBois, who later ended up very radical and opposed to Whites, didn't have anything like that experience. There was some consciousness of race and color, but White feeling towards him was hardly unrelenting hatred. Many other African-Americans in the North had similar experiences. You are simply putting out your own simplistic generalization to replace another simplistic generalization that nobody believes anymore. You're comparing Southern gentlemen who may have professed war feeling for family servants with Northern mobs, but there were Southern mobs, and Northerners who weren't entirely focused on race (and maybe those Southern gentlemen and ladies weren't all you think they were).
I think the interests of my own family should come before much concern for others who live far away. I feel for them, but now we have our own problems.
So most Northerners would have thought at the time. That didn't mean, though, that they were indifferent to what happened elsewhere.
Because trade equations must balance. The way things were situated in 1860, the South was producing 3/4ths the value of all US exports. A huge chunk of that money was ending up in the US Treasury, and in the economy of New York.
Governments are a lot craftier than you think. Cotton mill owners recognized that their business depended on the flow of Southern cotton and thus didn't want to risk antagonizing the South, but the US government would have got along just fine.
Take that lost capital and return it to the people from whence it came, and the money would have created both development and it would attract more population.
Give it back to the slaves? I don't think the country was ready for that.
I notice that you haven't bothered to defend your absurd notion that Northern industrialists in 1860 were the Globalists of the day. Good move. Nobody who wasn't blinded by hatred and ignorance would make such an idiotic identification. True, I suppose somebody who loved Northern capitalists then and now might make such an association but that's not what we're talking about. There was a vast difference between somebody setting up a textile mill or iron foundry in the 1850s and Bill Gates and George Soros -- or Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros Ghali -- today. The only thing they might have in common was being rich (and in fact, many pioneering capitalists ended up poor).
I'm not saying that plantation owners and secessionists leaders were "globalist" in the sense of being for a UN or world government, but they were anything but "small is beautiful" localists. They were very much tied in to the world economy. They were willing to attach themselves to the expanding British economy and empire, and many had imperialist ambitions of their own. They weren't a bunch of anti-government guys meeting in a garage to talk about guns, either, but were in favor of setting up their own government which could be as oppressive as any that they opposed. They weren't opposed to the idea of empire. They just wanted their own, or one that would pay them enough and not interfere in their own dominion.