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The American civil war wasn’t about slavery.
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Confidently Incorrect
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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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It wasn't about slavery, I mean yeah the vice president of the confederacy made a speech saying slavery was the cornerstone of the CSA, and multiple seceding states released documents that explicitly stated they were seceding in large part because of slavery, and all the seceding states were slave owning states, and West Virginia exists because they split from Virginia as they had no slaves and thus no reason to fight to hold them, and the CSA constitution mandated that any new state would be required to be a slave state... but... umm...
Whenever a chud gives me the “it wASnT AbOut SLavErY!” Line I always go ask them to read the seceding states articles of secession. South Carolina is my particular favorite since they started all.
Not about slavery though… fucking dipshits
Mississippi's is exclusively about slavery as well
A few years ago one of my conservative neighbors tried to drop the line on me that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. I opened up the South Carolina Articles of Succession and read it out loud to him. To his credit, he accepted it and changed his mind.
You have to really have some heavy cognitive dissonance to hear the words and not realize the lost cause myth is bullshit.
Insert the Bobby Hill meme “if those guys could read they’d be really upset.””
Seceding / secession.
Whoops, my mistake
You missed that CSA states weren't allowed to end slavery.
So if conservatives meant things when they say words - the civil war was coincidentally about slavery-having states seeking new slavery-having allies to continue doing slavery together, after flipping out when an anti-slavery party took the white house.
But it was totes mcgoats about states' rights. Except the right to end slavery.
No it was about states rights, like the right to, ummm, nevermind.
I mean they're not entirely wrong, fighting slavery was a political tool not a moral imperative as it should have been and Lincoln didn't in fact want to unilaterally shut it down he wanted the nation to figure it out ideally without violence.
Ed: books people, I'm not interpreting anything Lincoln was extremely vocal about it. Listen to Lincoln, he knows Lincoln weirdly enough.
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm
You're part of the problem when you give "but ackshually" cover to them to continue this nonsense
It was a moral imperative for much of the North. Lincoln only barely scraped out the Republican nomination. His main opponent was William Seward who was a "radical" abolitionist. Had Seward won the nomination, there may have been some fracturing of the newly formed Republican party. So while there was indeed a portion of the population who felt the complete abolition of slavery was too far, a huge chunk agreed with Seward. In particular, his own wife, Francis Seward. She abhorred slavery and I urge everyone to read her writings upon the subject.
Not enough to change it by force federally, clearly. I'm well aware, that doesn't change the fact Seward did not win and Lincoln and his supporters didn't want radical emancipation they wanted to slow roll everything.
And to be clear the South viewed a loss of slaves to the North as a loss of property and thus trade to the North. It's dumb and tedious but very accurate to say it was a trade dispute, a horrific hard to visualize in full one but a trade dispute none the less.
I'm neither american nor well versed in american history. That being said, from the quotes I read in your linked article about Lincoln's views on slavery it does not seem to me that the northern states had a lot of money/resources to gain from freeing slaves in the south. So, correct me if i'm wrong, but how can you call it a trade dispute if one side views it as losing property while the other side does not view it as obtaining property?
Well, I've had a neighbor claim I was doing things on his side of the property line, which he placed in the middle of my driveway. For him, it was a property dispute. For me, it was the ravings of a not-quite sane person. Think of it that way.
You are right, it was not a trade dispute, but the raving slave-owners would say whatever they could to justify their actions and make it sound noble. Much like Putin says he invaded Ukraine to "save them" from "embedded Nazis". For Putin, it's a mission of peace. For everyone else, it's an unjustified invasion.
Fair enough.
They wouldn't gain money or resources no, they would instead reach a more even economical footing with the South. It's one of those things I think I would have to provide links to because I don't think I could adequately explain it myself.
I mentioned the South specifically but both sides took it as a loss of valuable property to the free North. The North in many actual laws regarding freemen specifically refer to slaves as property as does the Confederate Constitution if I'm not mistaken.
It depends on the answer to this question:
Did the South start the Civil War by seceding, or did the North start the Civil War by not letting them?
If the South started it by seceding, it was absolutely, unquestionably over slavery. A simple look at the various articles of secession makes that abundantly clear.
If the North started it by not letting them secede, then the Civil War was about preserving the Union, which the South was trying to leave because of slavery. The North wasn't fighting to end slavery. The north in general may or may not have wanted that, but that wasn't why they went to war.
Sure.
The South literally declared war so that would be hard to argue plus the whole succession thing.
Correct.
Also correct, those that l two things aren't mutually exclusive nor are they in this case. I mean they don't particularly care about the union, they wanted to keep the territories and keep the trade. If all the people of the South wanted to leave with their slaves the North world have cheered it on and in fact did with a number of southerners who went to places like Brazil and Argentina before during and after the war. Weirdly enough much like Nazis.
I would say the constitution didn't let them secede.
It feels disingenuous to remove morality from the equation. Morality clearly played a role which is why thinkers like Frederick Douglass are still remembered to this day. Clearly there were other forces at play- political and economic which shaped how this played out, but morality was certainly involved.
Gonna get a little preachy here - skip this part if you don't wanna hear that.
All of American history from the Revolutionary war to today can be summed up with people trying to reconcile the conflict of individual freedom and equality. Those two cannot coexist, and a boundary must be placed on one in order to allow the other ideal to flourish.
The civil war is a great example, individual freedom allows one to own another person if that is their desire. Equality says that your individual freedom cannot impede another person's. This means slavery cannot exist in such a value system and equality was valued above individual freedom.
The current abortion debate has the same bedrock conflict. Does an individual's personal freedom allow them the right to stop being pregnant if they wish? Well equality says the unborn child should be considered, as the choice to terminate violates their individual freedom to exist.
Let me be clear - in this post I am not advocating for either side in the abortion debate. I am merely trying to show that most of American history has been defined by trying to draw the line between the two founding principles of the nation.