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Haley declines to say slavery was cause of Civil War
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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I think what most people are trying to get at here was that Lincoln himself was not particularly a pro abolishinist. He was a lawyer who just wanted the Union to stay together and follow the current laws.
He was up against difficulty when he wanted new states to not allow slavery. This made the southern states mad, etc, etc, war. Even still at first, he did not free slaves. It wasn't until the war was underway and not going as well as hoped that freeing slaves became a thing. This was after a southern slave commandeered a southern ship and escaped to the north with it. A general then had to decide if they were required to "return property" or free the slave. He freed the slave, stating he had no obligation to "return property" to a force that was an enemy. This was a big decision at the time. I think that event set the ball rolling on freeing slaves.
So people are being pedantic. Yes it was about slavery. No, it was not (at first) about freeing slaves. That came later.
I think it's not pedantic because it's very important to recognize that Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation was reacting to what slaves and abolitionists had decided the war was going to be about. When people say "it was about slavery" and attribute that to Lincoln, who very clearly did not believe he had the power to end slavery even despite people telling him in times of rebellion he did, and this is incredibly well documented, this takes away credit from the slaves, former slaves, and abolitionists who decided they would fight for the war to be about abolition and succeeded in that.
In another comment I shared a letter written by a freed slave to the mistress who owned his child, a letter who's contents would have been punishable by death even from where he was writing it in the north, but it expresses perfectly the sentiment that caused the war to be about abolition. In the letter he says a thousand black soldiers and him are coming and that she will burn in hell etc.
So when we say "it's about slavery" from the very beginning we need to be clear that it was specifically the confederates going to war over the right to own slaves at the start, while the north was going to war to preserve the Union. It became "about slavery" in the sense of freeing slaves and abolition after slaves, freed slaves, and abolitionists fought for that. It could very well have been a senseless conflict if it weren't for abolitionists, and they fought despite the racism they faced in the north as well, because they had a higher purpose for fighting even above the generals who they fought under.