RateItAll: The Opinion Network

It wasn't all about slavery. Be that as it may, the union had to be preserved.

I don't think the South seceding was as big of a deal as slavery in general. Slavery of Africans was a huge problem that some white people allowed to exist for too long. Seceding from the Union wasn't necessarily a bad move, but slavery was.

Abolitionism having been completely suppressed in the south prior to the war, and a political party formed exclusively dedicated to the single issue of slavery, slavery was indeed the primary issue. Yes, there is plenty of rhetoric about "states rights" throughout the official and unofficial records, but like affirmative action today, it was a code word for what people really thought. There were cultural and economic issues, but even those were heavily integrated with the issue of slavery. But for slavery, there would have been no civil war. The "states rights" issue was again raised a hundred years later in defense of segregation policies, and now it's trumped by southern cultural revisionists in denial of the racist character of their heritage. Southerners wanted free labor performed by people whom they believed to be less than human. It was their culture. That's why they fought.

Duh. The Founding Fathers didn't address it at the Continental Congress because political solidarity was a necessity for survivial in the early stages of the nation- in other words, they dodged the issue and took the easy way out for political expediency. . .it was a case of survival taking precedence over morality- something that still bothers us today. Rhetoric still thrown around today (legal, social, and economic) does not even come close to taking the spotlight away from slavery as the primary issue of the conflict. Cannot be logically explained away with any rhetoric about 'state's rights'- this was a financial, political, and social move to keep a system of slavery because they were unwilling to face a dramatic change in their structure. . .this was a decision based on fear and ignorance. . .but man, they sure had good generals. . .

Get out the braille history books. The southern states maintained that the issue of the legality of slavery was an issue to be decided on a state-by-state basis, each state being an independent governmental entity, with its own distinct, legitimate constitution and laws, while "united" as a sovereign nation under the US Constitution. Authority for any area not specifically delineated in the US Constitution was to be left to the states, joint and several. Slavery was not specifically addressed in the body of the US Constitution, or could I have missed it? The "conflict" arose when the federal government overstepped its authority (in the opinion of southerners, in general, most of whom did not own any slaves) and sought to abolish the practice on a nationwide basis under a federal statute, an action which southerners feared would devastate their economy, which relied on slavery to remain competitive in the cotton industry, its most important product. The Founding Fathers (including Jefferson) debated the issue at length but decided NOT to address it in the Continental Congress, in order to facilitate the southern "colonies" joining the original union, knowing they would not join were slavery to be outlawed. A unified country which allowed slavery was better than no country at all, they reasoned. They kicked the can down the road, the US stumbled over it many times, it finally being resolved by the Civil War. The Civil War was about many things, slavery was one key point, as was the sovereignty of the laws of each state. Limiting the federal government to the letter of the constitution is one of the things the south (and all Americans) lost through the Union victory in the Civil War and we'll never return to such a strict constructionist worldview.

I agree that secession was about the economy as well as slavery and state's rights. I would say even more than a significant part of the economy, and rather the primary system for economic advancement in the South. Keep in mind there were black slave owners as well as white ones (although relationships between the two instances were probably not always similar). Of course, saying it was about the economy as well does not really give a separate reason from slavery since the two were intertwined. I also think that the state's rights argument was not just one of convenience, because to southern states slavery was an issue for states to determine, thereby making slavery just a single issue that the larger issue of state's rights would solve from region to region. Slavery, of course, was a morally bankrupt social system and deserved to fail. But the South claiming state's rights as the reason is not totally incorrect.

While slavery was a component that lead to the civil war, it was a mere drop in the bucket of tension between two entirely different lifestyles. There were virtually no similarities in between the North and the South at the time. The South had a very State's Rights, anti-tax, pro-slavery, hawkish, Bible Belt lifestyle. The North on the other hand was pro-Fed, very liberal, free soil, weak, secular lifestyle. Both of these lifestyles have their benefits and actually worked well together economically. However to say that the Civil War was really about slavery is something a BLIND person would say. It's what we're taught in school until it makes us sick, but that's not the truth. It really is a revisionist's version of history that it was all about slavery. While slavery was always at the back of people's minds, the number one hope for the South was to live in a nation more similar to the one made under the Articles of Confederacy, where individual states for the most part were their own individual entity that would tax and manage itself, the main purpose of the Federal government being to resolve disputes between states and help band together during war time. Besides, was it not fellow "powder faces" that fought against "slavery" (not mocking that slavery occured, just that it was the forefront)? I consider this only mildly embarassing to whites, nainly because it is so often shoved down our throats that this event over 140 years ago is considered our fault.

I like CanadaSucks but this site is really stupid. We all go over the top once in a while. I am a scholar on the War of the Rebellion, and and please, the South seceded from the Union, it didn't "suceed' from the Union. If you are going to post an inane subject, please use a dictionary!

It was not entirely about slavery. It was about economy of which slavery was only one component (albeit a significant one). The Civil War reflected the transition to an industrial society from a largely agrarian one.