Five causes of the War Between the States

I think the American Civil War was caused by States Rights vs. Federal System. All of the other causes listed in the article fall under this single cause. Slavery was an issue that Abraham Lincoln brought into the arena to gain support of the northern states and bring them into the war.

As to social and cultural differences between northern and southern states--today, to some degree, that still is apparent. Northerns don't know how to cook or throw a bar-b-que. :smilewinkgrin:

...Bob

 

I also think that a major factor was the fear of Southern politicians that Lincoln would try to outlaw slavery. Yes, there was a factor of states rights, but I highly doubt that the South would have seceded without slavery as a catalyst.

I don't think the average Confederate soldier considered slavery a major reason to fight against the Union, but I do think that for wealthy, politically influential Southerners, slavery was probably the biggest issue, as it was key to their economic power.

IMO, the Civil War can be viewed in economic terms with slavery as a major part of this equation (though not the only part).

 

The War between the States was not fought to end slavery; even if it were, why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countries such as Venezuela and Colombia experienced conflict because slave emancipation was simply a ruse for revolutionaries who were seeking state power and were not motivated by emancipation per se.

The War between the States settled by force whether states could secede. Once it was established that states cannot secede, the federal government, abetted by a Supreme Court unwilling to hold it to its constitutional restraints, was able to run amok over states’ rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today.

Not only did the war lay the foundation for eventual nullification or weakening of basic constitutional protections against central government abuses, but it also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

In XC
-

 

A large majority of Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. For some service was a states right matter. For others it was a matter of defending their home state from an invading army. For others is was simply forced service. The Confederate Congress passed the 20 slave law that, in essence, exempted owners of 20 slaves or more from military service. Thus to a large extent it became a rich man's war fought by poor men.

Victoria Bynum has written a very interesting book on Jones County, Mississippi during the Civil War. The title is "The Free State of Jones."

The 20 slave law was as follows:

This is a complex subject and there are no simple answers.

 

You mean like ribs & beans......yea we throw them out!

 

The south could net more from the cotton crop by selling it to England instead of New England states. The north passed tariff and tax laws to try to force the south to sell to them. So I read someplace.

 

Many folks in the South still refer to the conflict as the War of Northern Aggression.

--ktn4eg
Yankee by birth. Southerner by choice.

 

In one sense, the November 2, 2010 election results reflect a state rights vs. federalism conflict. At some point, it would be nice for our current president to understand and acknowledge that a majority in our country does not want more federalism (i.e., government control).

Do you agree? Are there other parallels between the U.S. in the 1850s and the U.S. today.

...Bob

 

I have no desire to get drawn into a long debate about this, but for what it is worth IMO, no matter how you slice it, slavery was the root cause.

 

If slavery was the root cause then Lincoln killed millions of Americans for no reason because slavery would have disappeared for economic reasons and moral pressure.

 

Many people picture Abraham Lincoln as a lover of the black people and as a rabid abolitionist.

However, if you look at his record while he was in Congress, you will find that he saw the black race as inferior to that of whites.

Moreover, in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates Lincoln himself said that he was more than content to keep the institution of slavery as it was in the South. He only opposed the extention of slavery into the new territories.

If he was such a lover of freeing the slaves, why did he take so long to issue his so-called "Emancipation" Proclamation?

 

Lincoln emancipated the slaves in the Confederacy. The US should, in the same way, emancipate the people in Iraq, Afghanistan . . . and bring the troops home.

 

Incredible!

How in the world can you say that? Everyone wants the troops home, but the situation holds us. We are not enslaving them. We have served them. Only the terrorists have wished us to leave them to their business of planning to destroy liberty on the planet; THEY want us to leave now. You must not be one of them, so what makes you say what you said?

I see the conditions of life under the Taliban and Saddam Hussein respectively as being slavery, at least for those who were not sharing the power of the individual regimes. Emancipation would be a better description of what our gift was to them.

 

No. 3, 4, and 5 are approx the same thing.

"On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture," and the north passed legislation to force the south to sell cotton to New England instead of England, where they made higher profits.

By the way, the northern factories tried slaves but it was more profitable to hire poor white people and let them starve when the factories were running slow.

 

>If we did, then none in Iraq or Afghanistan would be emancipated!!!

Why do you think they want to be emancipated? More likely they want their tribal leaders in charge.

 

Black soldiers also fought for the confederacy, as described in The Role of Black Soldiers in the Confederate Army.

...Bob