150th Anniversary of the Civil War

I'll bet you could amasss your "lifetime of knowledge" on the Civl War and its causes in a thimble and still have plenty of room for water.

And if you think I've proven your initial point, you're a bigger idiot than I thought.

 

Yeah. OK.

The North went to war because the South seceded. The South seceded to protect slavery.

War came because of slavery.

Well, OK - if you want to phrase it that way. But that doesn't change one thing: The war was over the South's desire to preserve slavery.


Lincoln didn't campaign on emancipation in 1860. But he did pledge to stop the spread of slavery to the new territories, and the South faced the prospect - for the first time since the revolution - of not holding a majority stake in the federal government.

If the new territories were permitted to join the Union as free states, it was only a matter of time before the slave-holding states were outnumbered in the electoral college, the house, and the senate.

So the southern states had two choices: Accept the eventual end of the practice, or rebel.

They chose the later, and the North went to war to preserve the Union (because, of course, a Union where one side or the other could just walk away whenever it didn't like an election's result isn't much of a union at all).

 

Yes .. it was a free labor.
The end of slavery (free labor) meant the end of the South's economic power (King Cotton). The economy was a one-trick pony.
Slavery was not THE cause of the civil war.
To quote James Carville: "It's the economy stupid."
In the south's case it was free labor ... While "slavery" ended with the passge of the 13th amendement (the first of the crippling Reconstrcution measures) cheap labor continued in form of share-cropping.

The North didn't give a shit about blacks, free or slaves. They, like the southerner still viewed them as sub-human.
My incidental points where if the war was about slaves, why then did the Union not take the immediate measures to free all slaves and embrace into the union.
It was a battle for economic power. Slavery was vital in that fight, but not THE cause.

 

The south fought to protect slavery. The north fought to preserve the union.

 

That's the important part ... But for two reasons ...
The South had known for years the end of slavery was coming... It was inevitable so long as they lost they power in Congress.
With the election of Lincoln it appeared the expansion of slavery would be stopped, but not the current practice. Those states that already had slaves were allowed to continue the practice.
That might have continued for years. Who knows?
Again, slavery was not the reason ... the economy was.

 

Say what?

Starting with the constitutional convention, the South fought for compromises to extend slavery to the new territories. Your post makes it sounds like they had accepted the eventual end of slavery.

The Missouri Compromise. The compromise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The end of the expansion of slavery WAS the end of the current practice, because it waas then only a matter of time before federal laws ending the practice were passed.


Yeah - it was about the economy ... the South's desire to protect their slave-based economy.

 

I noted with interest the re-enactment of firing on Fort Sumter. I wonder if plans are in the pipeline in South Carolina for a 2015 re-enactment of the burning of Columbia, so the locals can see how the noble cause of secession worked out for their ancestors.
Really, the Civil War was the most horrific event in U.S. history, and any commemoration that doesn't make that plain to current Americans, whose knowledge of history is as lacking as their knowledge of most other subjects, is a disgrace and disservice to the country.

 

I'll second that you can't blame Pickett for Gettysburg. Conversely, you have to admire his division's bravery to even press the fight despite walking a death march in retrospect. Similar to what the Union troops faced at Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg.

And Pickett pretty much held disdain for Lee to his death for that day.

 

That's not what I meant... I meant they could see the writing on the wall the balance of power was shifting and they were going to be on the losing end.

Rather than face the consequences they thought they could bug out and start there own confederation of states.
The election of of Lincoln, who sought to end the expansion of slavery, was the last straw.

Dan Oregon summed it up well: for the south it was slavery. For the North; they didn't give a damn about the slaves or slavery. It was keep the southerners in the union.
The North's attitude and actions prove the war - on their end anyway - was never about slavery.


You'll note when W.Va formed (the only state formed as a result of the war) slaveholders in W.Va (few as there were) were allowed to retain their slaves.

To say the war was fought over slavery too simplistic an answer - and not entirely correct.

 

Evil, at the risk of drawing yet another ad hominem attack from you that will only confirm what plenty of other people on this board think about you, I'll simply say that without slavery, there would have been no Civil War.

 

Longstreet was widely considered the best corps commander of the war on both sides. Forrest was the best cavalry commander. He enlisted as a private and within a year had been made a general. In some circles, it's said that Jackson didn't really deserve the credit he got for being a great general. His successes were as much through circumstance and dumb luck as his own brilliance.

 

I'll admit my Civil War history is a bit rusty, but didn't Richmond fall in April 1865?