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Lets chat in an educated manner. Don't hand me your elementary answers about slavery because we all know that 650,000 white men didn't die just over slavery, which was their free labor source at the time. What were the real issues?
I'm pretty sure the topic of other contributing factors to the Civil War has already been discussed in this forum - you can use the search function to find them.
secede from the union. at this time, the government federally weak-it was all about what the state thought. this concept spread into the citizens of states. this is why many who did not own slaves or believe in slavery still fought for the Confederacy. the biggest example of this is seen in Robert E. Lee-he opted out of leading the Union Army because Virginia seceded.
Union General U. Grant made a few statements about the war, claiming that if the war had been about slavery, he wouldnt have led the Union army.
subjects, especially war, are easily sugarcoated by the media and history. take the "war on terror" for example. we invaded Iraq when
from the Washington Post, via 2004: (on the hijackers of 9/11)
The breakdown was 15 Saudis, one Egyptian, one Lebanese and two from the Union of Arab Emirates (UAE).
None were from Iraq. we were just told that.
the truth is that the U.S. has always wanted a military base or bases in the Middle East but we never could get one. in Iraq, they are now building bases 10X the size of U.S. homefront bases
we heard it was about retaliation, when it was really just about construction
same case here-rather than say the war was about economics and states rights, why not put a spin on it and say it was about freeing the slaves? that makes it sound sweeter...
However, you are missing the fact that while the debate was about economics and states rights, the primary issue that the North and South disagreed over was slavery vis-a-vis economics and states rights. The Southern states felt it was their right (and any states right) to decide the issue of slavery among itself. The issue held large sway in the South since the Southern economy was universally agrarian and dependent upon slave labor to harvest and process the cotton and other crops.
The crux that pushed the fight was the position of the new territories entering the Union. The Northern side wanted all territories to be "free states" whereas the Southern side wanted those territories to be free to decide since they knew that a majority of the territories would turn pro-slave. If the Northern side won out, the balance of power in Congress would tip further to the Northern side that already enjoyed a large population advantage over the South and was being further swelled by immigration.
The South felt that if the territories were all made "free states" they would lose their power in the Federal government and it wouldn't be long before slavery was abolished and they were powerless to stop it. When push came to shove and they couldn't win they went down the road to secession.
Slavery was the central issue as the slavery issue was directly tied to state's rights and the Southern economy. Southern propaganda did a fantastic job of convincing the poor white southern farmers that the war was about states rights as it is doubtful that many of them would have fought simply to preserve the plantation owners way of life.
If anything you're the one attempting to spin the war as not being an issue of slavery. While it is true that many Northerners would not necessarily fight solely to abolish slavery, they were more than willing to fight to preserve the Union and used that as their pretext for supporting the war.
Might as well post "Let's chat in educated manner whether abortion should be legal or not".
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