150th Anniversary of the Civil War

Proctor: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter–
Proctor: Wait, wait… just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

 

The weather was against him, but yeah - he had VI Corp, which had missed the fight ...

Pickett didn't fuck up. He did as ordered. The battle was lost on the second day, thanks to failures on both flanks by Longstreet (on the right) and Ewell (on the left).

Saying Pickett fucked up is like blaming the receiver for not catching the last-second hail-mary (that everyone knows is coming, and with four defenders surrounding him).

You need to read better history books.

 

Lincoln was being coy. If his paramount objective was to keep the Union together, without freeing a slave, he could have done it on April 11, 1861. Just state that the South could keep it's slaves and each state coming into the Union could decide for itself whether to be a slave state or a free slave. War averted. One of the immense miscalculations in human history was the perception, from December 1860 until the Summer of 1861, was the failure to recognize how awful a war could actually be. They fought most of the war, until Grant took control of the Army of the Potomac, like 18th century wars, but the weaponry was too advanced for those set piece battles.

Slavery was the catalyst and the engine driving the War.

The single most rewarding reading experience of my life was Shelby Foote's 3 volume Civil War: A Narrative. At about 3,000 pages I was sad to finish it.

 

I would love to hear some of these other causes of the civil war that you seem to be hinting at.

 

Yeah, I'll stick with my lifetime of knowledge on the subject; you can lick it around the edges all you want. But thanks for proving my initial point.

 

While slavery might have been driving the bus as far as those in power on both sides were concerned, for 90 percent of the average soldiers in the field, it wasn't an issue. Sure, there were staunch abolitionists fighting for a cause and radical pro-slavery supporters fighting for a cause. But for the overwhelming majority of those who actually did the fighting, they weren't on some kind of crusade one way or the other. The average Confederate soldier from East Tennessee or the average Union solider from Michigan didn't really care whether a plantation owner in South Carolina or Mississippi had slaves or not.

 

And the average soldier didn't take the southern states out of the Union.


The slave-owning aristocracy did, dragging along the average joe with him.

 

Same as it ever was: the rich manipulating the poor and/or middle class to enlist in its pet cause, so the rich don't have to spill any blood in the process, and everyone gets to pretend they're fighting for the noblest of causes.

 

After Reading Foote's book, without any knowledge of Longstreet, I came away holding a high opinion of him. He's the Confederate General I respected the most.

 

Incidentally,
If the Civil war was fought over slavery, why weren't slaves immediately freed?
Why was there a separate term (abolitionists) for those who wanted to free slaves. If the North wanted to end slavery wouldn't they all have been "abolitionists?"
Wanna explain the piss-poor treatment of freed slaves by Union soldiers? Not everybody was a fan of freed slaves.
Why weren't blacks initially allowed to enlist, muchless fight?
Most Importantly:
As for the hailed Emancipation Proclamation: It was issued until almost two years into the war. And it did NOT (NOT!) apply to slave-holding states that remained in the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware).
This was an economic fight ... The south was a producer of raw materials, while the north maintained the factories and production facilities.
Did you know when Richmond fell early in the war, the south's ability to manufacture small arms ceased. They had to purchase supplies. They had to purchase practically everything because of their farm-based economy. After the fall of Richmond (pay attention to the geography of the south and location of Richmond) the south was fighting a defensive war.
The fear of the ending slavery (which didn't actually happen for several years) was the straw that would break the South's economy because it would force the plantation owners to pay for labor.

 

Nothing you just wrote goes about disproving the fact that the reason the South wanted to secede and start the war was because their aristocracy was worried that slavery would be taken away from them. The catalyst for this was the fight over making the new western states slave-holding or non-slave-holding states.

Also, you even point out at the end that the South was worried about having to pay for labor instead of having slaves. So in your big rant about the Civil War not being about slavery, you close with the fact that the South feared the end of slavery ???