Lacadaemon wrote:It's not that I disagree with the characterization of the Confederacy as a slave owning state. It was. And clearly, one of it's prime goals (if not the only goal, though you can argue around the side of that) was to preserve and defend the institution of negro slavery. That much is historical fact.
What I don't like though, is the implication that the civil war was purely a war about slavery. It wasn't. While there is no doubt that for many New England Yankee abolitionists, going to war and punishing the south for its wretched "peculiar institution" was the entire point, the fact is that slavery alone would never have mobilized the north to war.
Inasmuch there were mostly black hats in the south, fighting for their right to own people, much of the necessary support of the war in the north came from people who were unmoved by the issue of slavery, and who were more concerned by the need to prevent free ports, or to sell railroad bonds &c.. Without that backbone, based upon a fundamental difference about how geography should be used, and how the United States should function economically, there would never have been a war. At best, the slave states would have been allowed to separate - and those who (rightly) violently opposed them would have been classed as John Browns - and at worst, slavery would have limped on in attenuated forms ultimately - much as happened after reconstruction was declared over, even though nothing was reconstructed.
And apparently, since I missed the point of the entire thread, yah, I'd like to make my own position clear. People who go around worshiping the Confederacy are wankers. My quibble is simply that huge wars that last for years are never really fought over a single issue.
This is basically what I'm trying to say.
Slavery was fuel for the fire; it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was not the only reason for the war.