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Originally Posted by Tripper
You're denying facts if you think the issue of slavery had no bearing at all on southern secession. I'm not saying it's the only issue at all, but you seem to think it has absolutely no relevance.....
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negative is not saying that slavery had no bearing, only that slavery was but one of many issues that led to secession. I think that may be what you are saying too. The difference is the degree of importance. You seem to think it was the number one issue. It was not. I would say that taxes and free trade were the issues that pushed everything over the edge. We may not have gotten to the edge if slavery were not there. But we would not have gotten to the edge if slavery were the only issue either.
One interesting way of looking at it is to think about the debates over the new western states. Some Southerners wanted to move there and take all of their property with them. (this property included slaves). Northerners wanted those states to be more politically aligned (or allied is a better term?) with them and the best way of doing that was to prevent Southerners from moving there. Slavery as an institution, was not an issue debated in terms of right or wrong, but was used as a way to increase political power. So although slavery was an issue in this case, it was the fight for political power that was the cause of the disagreement. If slavery had not been there, the Northern politicians would have used some other issue to gain what they wanted. So, to me, to say that slavery caused the war or that slavery was the reason for the war is wrong in the very critical sense that the war was probably inevitable, even in the absence of slavery.
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Originally Posted by Tripper
The confederates didn't like northerners telling them what to do, in turn taking away their right to their "peculiar institution," a.k.a slavery. The abolition of slavery would hurt the southern cotton industry, which flourished after cotton gin was invented. The issue of slavery was part of the "states rights" that you were refering too.
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True, but most Southerners felt that slavery was on its way out eventually. The Southern Constitution even prohibited the importation of new slaves. This was a law in the US but it had never been added to the US Constitution. If the South was so "pro-slavery" why would that have been included in their Constitution? In fact, the New York Times wrote an editorial shortly after the CSA published their Constitution that said that it was such an improvement on the US Constitution that it should be adopted in the North immediately.
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Originally Posted by Tripper
I suggest you read up about your own countries history some more:
[url:5d771]http://www.swcivilwar.com/cw_causes.html[/url:5d771]
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Nice site. It is a good idea to read several versions of the events to get a true picture. But be careful, there is alot of revisionist history being written and taught in schools these days.
(EDIT - I usually try to read the accounts written by the men who were there. To get a true sense of the Southern perspective you should read "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" By Jefferson Davis, The original is a very long two volume set, but you can get an abridged version from the museum store at Beauvoir) I think it is because it makes us look better to have fought to abolish slavery than it does to say with were bickering over taxes and land like a bunch of children and couldn't solve our differences peacefully.
As a little side note..the whole dang war could have been avoided if Dis-Honest Abe hadn't started it. Near the end of the first page of the site, you link us to above, it mentions a supply ship forcing the secessionists hand. What it doesn't say is that a delegation from the Southern States was in Washington at the time trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Or that Dis-honest Abe had just told them he would
not to resupply the fort. (there was no need to - except for agressive military reasons - the Northern soldiers were freely allowed to come into town and buy provisions, such as food, every day) Or that even after the shelling (in which no one was killed) the delegation again tried to resolve the matter peacefully but Abe had his heart set on war.