Quote:
Originally Posted by whogo
The war was about slavery. Just read the secession documents.
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I don't believe it was that simple, at all.
The war was about states' rights vs. federal gov't power. Slavery was the issue that manifest the states' rights vs. federal power controversy.
However, from the very beginning of colonisation of what would become the US, the colonies were jealous of their individual sovereignty and to great degrees distrusted each other. It took oppressive acts by British Parliament to unite the colonies in war against GB, and when the war was ended, each of the original 13 colonies signed the peace treaty with GB individually, as sovereign states (state = nation).
When the original states formed the Articles of Confederacy, they did so as free and sovereign states, and again jealously guarded their freedom and independence.
When it became obvious that the AOC could not efficiently do what was needed, the states convened a constitutional convention and debated long as to the new form of the general (federal) government and regarding how to limit the power of the new general government.
The federalists debated the anti-federalists (then called republicans), and finally, the federalists convinced the anti-federalists that the new general government would be limited in powers and that the states would reserve their traditional rights and powers and autonomy.
Almost from the start, the federalists in the new government began over-stepping the limits set in the new constitution. In the 1790s, a case in the Georgia courts regarding a dispute over money owed to a private citizen loaned for the war was taken by the new Supreme Court, despite no power being granted SCOTUS to adjudicate such cases.
Of course, the industrial north did not rely on slave labor the way the agricultural south did, but, surely the northerners, excluding abolitionists, were no friends of black slaves (or later free men).
In any case, the argument over states' rights vs. federal power was an ongoing one that culminated in the US Civil War. Yes, then, slavery was the issue that manifest the dispute between states' rights and federal power. But, it was states' rights that the south fought for. Lowly Confederate soldiers, the vast majority of whom did not own slaves, often stated that they were fighting the revolution over again, for freedom from an over-bearing federal government.
Prior to the Civil War, people referred to and said, the United States
ARE... Only after the Civil War did we begin to say, The United States
IS...
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and some still stuck there-
what we need is some semi-friendly aliens from another planet to land and straighten our razzes right out. 
