How was the civil war not about slavery?

[Spatula]

"How was the civil war not about slavery?"

Basically, it wasn't about slavery for some folks because we, as humans, have a need or a desire to see our ancestors as good people. The attempts over the years to revise or ignore the historical record aren't anything new or special. You can see the same desire to deny the ugly actions of past generations in plenty of other parts of the world, like Japan and its WWII record, or Turkey and the Armenian genocide.

Also, IBTL!

 

[Hand of Evil]

4 million slaves, 27 million free people. That's not peanuts.

You have to watch that Census, blacks were counted as .25 of pop for the longest time, so the numbers may be in error.

 

[Umbran]

While wikipedia is by no means definitive, it is often a good starting place for investigation.

American Civil War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Issues at the time were somewhat more complicated than, "can we have slaves". There was growing schism between North and South in terms of economy, culture, and political values. There was conflict over not just whether states that allowed slavery could continue, but whether slavery would be allowed in new states as the Union grew. This tied into the cultural split - Southerners wondered if their culture would be allowed to grow, or if it would get fenced in and marginalized, and whether their needs were going to be represented on the Federal level going forward.

There was conflict over whether a slave-owner could travel to the North with slaves, and retain what he felt to be his property. There was conflict over whether property in new territories would be bought by wealthy slave-owners and worked by slave labor, or owned and worked by individual "yeoman farmers".

Ultimately, there was conflict over whether it was legal to leave the Union. The Constitution contained no provision for such. To many people at the time, this was often as important a question as the issue of slavery. If you asked a Northern soldier of the time why he was fighting, he would probably answer, "to preserve the Union," not, "to abolish slavery."

 

[Elf Witch]

i tend to avoid these discussions because they become emotional and words like good and evil start getting thrown around. If you are going to discuss it you have to be able to divorce your modern perspective on the subject and look at it dispassionately.

The south's entire economy was based on slave labor the north economy was not.

As more states joined the union and it looked like the abolitionist were going to control the federal government and pass laws outlawing slavery. The south felt that they and their needs would not be fairly represented in Washington and that people who had no ties to to the southern economy would be in a position to tell them what to do even if it destroyed their economy.

So they did what the colonies did in 1776 they rebelled.

So yes the issue of slavery was the root cause but it was more than just that a lot had to do with just how much power the states would have and how much the federal government would have.

Lincoln did not go to war to free the slaves he went to war to keep the country together.

As a Southerner who had family who fought in that war my dad's grandfather fought in it for the south and someone who has studied and read a lot of books on this subject my opinion is this I don't blame the south for going to war they were fighting for their way of life and it was becoming increasingly obvious that it would be a fight. That the abolitionists did not want slavery phased out but wanted it ended right away. Something that south's economy could not have handled.

The north should have backed off on abolishing slavery and worked with the south to phase slavery out like was done in the Caribbean islands. Read about how they did it and you see that it worked with far less loss of life without destroying the economy and with less repercussions for the former slaves.

As a modern American I feel that Lincoln did the right thing in fighting to preserve the union and I feel that in some cases the federal government should step all over states rights. I don't believe that the majority has the right to pass laws that effect the minority. For example issues like gay marriage imo belongs at the federal level not the state level.

One thing that does bother me is the idea that if you had family who fought in the war on the south's side that you believe slavery was right and that you are wrong to admire them for taking up arms to preserve their way of life.

I can admire Robert E Lee as military man and still think slavery was a dark chapter in our history. I can admire men like my great grandfather who fought a war with little resources in the end fighting in their bare feet with not enough ammunition for a dying cause.

I also admire Lincoln for having to try and deal with one of the worse chapters in American history and I find it a shame he was assassinated because he didn't want to punish the south and the south would have been better off if had lived.

 

[Jack7]

Personally, I think it was both a series of States Rights/Union issues and a Slavery issue.

However, it is simply not possible to have a true and voluntary Union when part of a Union keeps people as chattel, and the other parts disavow themselves of the same.

That is simply too large a moral gap to maintain such a Union indefinitely. Eventually such a moral gap will lead to a War, an Insurrection, or a Split.

I am a proud Son of the South. Born and raised in the first state to secede. However slavery, like murder, sex slavery, etc. is simply too large a moral gap for me to have crossed.

I would not fight a war whose end result would have been to retain men as slaves, no matter whatever other good arguments could have been made in defense of that war. I simply believe as an American and as a Christian that slavery is an immoral act (others at the time may have felt differently, that's their right, but I don't think their rights would have trumped the rights of other men's liberties), and that I could not support it as a principle of either Just War or Basic Law. I feel confident that if I had lived in that era I would still have felt the same way. I would have either moved to Texas to become a Ranger or Frontiersman, or moved northwest and fought for the North. Maybe I would have been a spy, but more likely a guerilla fighter or frontier's scout.

But I would not have fought to promote or maintain slavery, and would not have apologized for such an act of treason against my state. An Unjust state is to me a state I feel no loyalty too.

To me a state has to meet a certain baseline moral standard for me to feel loyalty to it. So no matter the validity of the other arguments concerning possible war grievances, I personally could not have crossed the slavery divide.

 

[Relique du Madde]

It was a states rights issue. What the abolitionists don't want you to know was that someunion states had slavery until the end of the war (preexisting slaves were ok, new were not).

The emancipation proclamation only really was aimed at the confeds and not union slaves. The reason: the South conscripted slaves into their army. Since slaves made up a sizable part of the population, and did not need to be paid wages, it was only natural for lincoln and his administration to attempt to gut the souths army especially when they spent half the war fleeing the confederate advance.

-Sent via Tapatalk

 

[Spatula]

It's very easy to say that the situation should have been handled peacefully and that the Civil War shouldn't have happened. That dodges the question of why the slave states would have wanted to participate in any scheme to abolish slavery, peaceful or otherwise. Slavery was their entire economy.

It's not like there weren't plenty of proposals at the time to deal with the problem. Lincoln himself was in favor of buying the slaves (it's up in the air if the federal government could have actually afforded this) and forcibly resettling them in Africa (ditto on the logistics here). But the fact is, any measure to end slavery would have required the cooperation of the slave states in Congress. And the slave-holding states did not want to end slavery. They had no economic reason to do so. Heck, they had every economic reason not to do so.

 

[Starman]

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a lot about the Civil War and why slavery was the driving force behind it. As to the economics of it, here he is about how valuable slaves were.

 

[Elf Witch]

Personally, I think it was both a series States Rights/Union issues and a Slavery issue.

However, it is simply not possible to have a true and voluntary Union when part of a Union keeps people as chattel, and the other parts disavow themselves of the same.

That is simply too large a moral gap to maintain such a Union indefinitely. Eventually such a moral gap will lead to a War, an Insurrection, or a Split.

I am a proud Son of the South. Born and raised in the first state to secede. However slavery, like murder, sex slavery, etc. is simply too large a moral gap for me to have crossed.

I would not fight a war whose end result would have been to retain men as slaves, no matter whatever other good arguments could have been made in defense of that war. I simply believe as an American and as a Christian that slavery is an immoral act (others at the time may have felt differently, that's their right, but I don't think their rights would have trumped the rights of other men's liberties), and that I could not support it as a principle of either Just War or Basic Law. I feel confident that if I had lived in that era I would still have felt the same way. I would have either moved to Texas to become a Ranger or Frontiersman, or moved northwest and fought for the North. Maybe I would have been a spy, but more likely a guerilla fighter or frontier's scout.

But I would not have fought to promote or maintain slavery, and would not have apologized for such an act of treason against my state. An Unjust state is to me a state I feel no loyalty too.

To me a state has to meet a certain baseline moral standard for me to feel loyalty to it. So no matter the validity of the other arguments concerning possible war grievances, I personally could not have crossed the slavery divide.

Please don't take this wrong way but you can't say for sure that being raised in that culture that you would hold the views you hold today.

I am a product of my environment I grew up during the civil rights movement and the ideas of equal rights for both sexes so I am different than my parents were. My dad was born in 1918 in South Carolina and until the day he died in 2004 he felt that interracial marriages were wrong that everyone should stick to their own kind. After serving in the Army Air Core in WW2 he never trusted the Japaneses. He was a good and honest man he didn't belief in the Klan or in lynching or any kind of violence in his job at Delta Air Lines he treated all the passengers with equal courtesy. He was a product of his time.

His mother was born in 1886 her father had fought in the war when he was 16 out of his six brothers and father he was the only one who came back. Until the day she died she hated Yankees. She also believed that the carpet baggers who came in after the war made it worse for the blacks then they had it before the war.

My point is that you can't guess how you would be or what your views would be if you were raised in a different environment.

 

[Chairman7w]

One thing that does bother me is the idea that if you had family who fought in the war on the south's side that you believe slavery was right...

Who said that? I've never heard anyone claim that. Ever.

and that you are wrong to admire them for taking up arms to preserve their way of life.

You would be, because they took up arms to preserve their right to keep slaves. That's wrong. Not really a debate there is there?

I can admire men like my great grandfather who fought a war with little resources in the end fighting in their bare feet with not enough ammunition for a dying cause.

You COULD, but why would you? He was fighting to preserve slavery. Just cause he didn't have shoes doesn't make it a noble thing.

Just cause someone's family doesn't make it your life mission to admire what they did. (not YOU personally, I'm just talking in a general sense)

If my great grandfather fought for slavery, I'd be ashamed of what he did, whether he had shoes, socks, ammo or a can opener. It wouldn't matter if he was my grandfather.