Not necessarily. I agree that the War was over Slavery ultimately, and though one could corner the justifications down to slavery, that was not actually the reason everyone gave for the War. It is undeniable that the South seceded over slavery, but the issue that war was actually declared came over the power of dominion, and whether a State could declare certain areas of the US no longer part of the Sovereign nation.
The States rights argument actually does NOT stem from the Southern reasons for the War.
They South really only had one argument, which was slavery.
The States rights argument comes from the North and THEIR reasons for War. Lincoln himself was never interested in actually abolishing slavery, despite the South's preconceptions of it. Indeed, when given the chance during the War he instead emancipated the Slaves of the South, but let the Slave States of the North keep merrily going on (and when they finally DID have that abolished in those states, we see a conflict that is basically ignored [if you can even find books or articles on it today] due to the North's emphasis in later years that they had to be the good guys because the slave holders were in the south (which was untrue). The North had another conflict later over the issue of the abolition of slavery, which though passed in Congress, was heavily contested in some areas leading to some rather large issues NOT covered these days in US history (or at least a majority seem ignorant of the remaining slave states that were part of the North and the issues that came in ending slavery in those areas after the War).
The reason the North went to war was over the question of whether the Southern States actually had the right or power to secede. Lincolns argument was that they DID NOT have that power, and that when they tried to do so, the Federal Government, or Central Government could override such decisions. However, this would end up with having to use force to do so. It was the entire a House Divided and unifying the nation creeds that popped up.
This was not the most successful theme to hold many to the war effort, and the morale surrounding this was flagging. Lincoln eventually brought a more unified theme of freeing those slaves in the Rebellious states, but showed no desire at the time to abolishing it in those states that had NOT seceded. Kentucky in fact refused to support the amendment abolishing slavery, which leads to an interesting historical conflict of a Northern State still trying to hold onto the idea of States rights, which invariably they lost due to the preponderance of evidence from the Civil War regarding the Federal Government over-riding a States power in many issues (and we still see this type of local vs. Sovereign govt. today with Sanctuary cities that refuse to support the Federal Government mandates and the issues surrounding this).
This is why it is, in many ways very IRONIC that these positions on what the war was about reversed sides after the War in the 20th century. At that point the North would say it was all about Slavery, and the south would say it was about States Rights, specifically, whether a State could take power in itself to secede and ignore Federal mandates with the Civil War showing that the Federal Govt. held sovereignty and if nothing else, utilize force to make a State follow those mandates.
The North's reason to go to war was NOT actually about Slavery at all. The reversal of how each side saw the war in the 20th century is perhaps a bigger irony, in that it was the South then looking at it form the States Rights angle, and the North looking at it from the Slavery angle.
Anyways, waaay off topic. I do enjoy history, especially on this, but I think it also illustrates one of the reasons the Creator of Deadlands pointed out to retconning things. Instead of discussing the game, we are discussing the history of the US and perhaps conflicting views of it. Maybe it did not happen at a lot of tables, but invariably there were probably a few that got derailed on this very topic. Rather than playing the game and having fun, they got caught up in the minutia of history and historical differences. With that in mind, it convinces me that perhaps the decision to recon was even more wise that I thought at first, as it hopefully makes people have more fun focusing on the game itself, rather than variances with history.
