It is interesting to read how woefully uninformed people are these days. I tend to blame it on the school system that no longer teaches history, only revisionist history.
The civil war was not about slavery. If it had been, the North would not have had slavery before the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation (issued Jan 1, 1963) only freed slaves in the Southern States, it did not address slaves in the North. Read the document. The slaves in the North, yes Northernors had slaves, were not freed until after the war.
I suspect that the Civil War had less to do with emancipation and more to do with providing a source of cheap labour for the North's growing industries. A place where, unlike Dixie, industrialists had no moral obligation to provide for their workers beyond paying them a pittance. In comparison, planters had a moral obligation to provide food and shelter for their slaves
Whether this is fact or fallacy, I'm far from certain, but the story has it that my ancestors never so much as raised a hand to their slaves. They were essentially benevolent paternalists
I make no secret of my antipathy towards the GOP and much of it stems from the Civil War and Reconstruction
I'm an ancestral Democrat and proud of it!
Dave
You've hit the nail on the head.
The Civil War wasn't about anything economic. It was about statess right and the idea of whether the US was a union of states or a union with states. Slavery didn't move to the forefront until the Emancipation Procalaimation.
Wars are hardly ever about economics. No one who goes to war over money fights as hard as the soldiers of the Civil War (you can't spend your money if your dead), only deeply held principles can create something like the American Civil War.
