[qiskit]

> The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact.

Should I believe you or lincoln?

'...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...'

https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greele...

If the civil war was about freeing slaves, why did lincoln wait so long to end slavery? Why didn't he do it immediately?

> It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.

Who cares as long as it is true? I'm not a southerner. Not a fan of the confederacy.

Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people? Does that make any sense to you? Have you looked into lincoln's opinions of black people?

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality..."

[ruined]

This document was simultaneously published by the very committee that issued the initial ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and it explains the decision to secede at great length. It is all about slavery:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Address_of_the_People_of_...

Additionally, articles of secession from other states also explicitly mention slavery in the actual text of the law, including Alabama's ordinance that proposed the Montgomery Convention at which the Confederacy was founded. Even more states explain it in similar justifying documents.

The vice president of the Confederacy delivered a speech establishing slavery as the primary motivator of secession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is on record before the war explaining slavery as cause, and after the war claiming it was about states' rights (to practice slavery).

[s1artibartfast]

This whole debate is semantics and pedantics about the word cause. The reality is that it doesn't make sense to reduce history to a single factor.

The south wanted to secede because the union was threatening their economic interests which relied on slavery. The union did not want the south to secede for their own reasons, of which slavery was not the foremost.

You can not remove any part of that explanation and still describe the "cause" of the war.

The war would not have happened if slaves didn't have economic value. The war would not have happened if the north was indifferent to the south leaving.

Trying to reduce things further than this is a fools errand.

Your linked document is a great example of this. It discusses a great many things. The first half is a history of grievances about states rights and failures of the union to uphold the constitution.

It starts to talk about slavery about half way through if you ctrl-f.

Anyone arguing for their singular preferred cause can find supporting evidence in it because the "cause" of the war was the interaction of multiple factors, so evidence exists for all of them.

The problem is that showing evidence that one factor was critical to the start of the war does not prove that other critical factors do not exist.

[Spooky23]

You’re missing the point. It’s one and the same. Slaves were valuable economic assets whose value was diminishing as industrialization intensified.

The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant. Slavery was about wealth and control, in losing control of poor white people. The northern industrialists wanted cotton. Abolitionists saw the moral disgrace of slavery as an evil. Lincoln was more moderate and prioritized the nation.

The “states rights” bullshit was always bullshit. But then “get shot to keep rich aristocrats rich” isn’t a compelling battle cry. Conversely, the poor Irish and others participating in draft riots saw abolition as competition from the one strata of society lower then them.

Hence, the noble abstract goals of “preserving the union” and “protection our sacred rights” are front and center.

[robonerd]

> The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant.

Yes, I believe that's why they rejected the Corwin Amendment compromise, which would have allowed them to keep slavery in states that already had it. That deal didn't allow them to use slaves in the west, so they didn't like it.

[emodendroket]

This is another thing Lincoln said: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. [...] Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" (https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second...)

But hey, the Union wasn't the party who forced the conflict. Let's hear from Alexander Stephens, VP of the CSA, instead:

> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

(https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...)

[philwelch]

You may be shocked to hear this, but Lincoln was a politician and was occasionally slightly disingenuous in order to achieve his political agenda. There wasn't public support for a war to end slavery. There was public support for a war to preserve the union.

Here's another quote from Lincoln:

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

He could claim as much as he wanted, once the war started, that his goal was to restore the Union even at the expense of continuing to tolerate slavery, but there was no way the Confederates could possibly take him at his word when he said so.

[majormajor]

How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?

It was about slavery, racism was DEEPLY involved in US slavery, and racism and racists didn't just go away after the civil war.

Sometimes it's as simple as people say it is, over and over and over in their defense of slavery and their post-Civil-War racist laws and propaganda.

You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.

[qiskit]

> How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?

"Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people?". What about racist white northerners and racist white southerners confused you?

> You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.

Saving their reputation by calling them racist white southerners?

You do realize that some northern states had slaves too during the civil war. And the emancipation proclamation only freed the slaves in the south.

If you want to learn what the civil war was really about go look into why west virginia seceded from virgina. Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?

[majormajor]

History makes it pretty clear that southerners were, on the whole, much more openly and institutionally racist than northerners both before and after the Civil War.

The ones that seceded said it was about slavery. Many times. You don't believe them. Why? Why do you care enough to claim that you know their motives better than everyone else?

West Virginia split because they didn't want to go along with Virginia's secession. That's something that happened after the cause, not something that can tell you the cause, though! Maryland and Delaware were less dominated by the slave-holding interests. Its not that interesting.

[joshuamorton]

> Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?

It was economic in the sense that slavery was not central to West Virginia's economy, but was central to not-West Virginia's economy. A map makes this pretty apparent[0]. The argument isn't that the was was about racism, but about slavery. Those are often related, but aren't precisely the same.

[0]: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3881e.cw1047000/

[dragonwriter]

> Should I believe you or lincoln?

Both.

The rebellion was about slavery for the rebels and preserving the Union for the Union.

GP addressed the former, Lincoln spoke for the latter.

[majormajor]

Don't ask Lincoln, he's not the one who seceded.

Ask the states who left. South Carolina, for instance, directly blames the North's increasing hostility towards slavery - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp :

"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. "

[js2]

> One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_second_inaug...

[worik]

Lincoln wanted to save the union. He did not care about slaves (there was slavery in the north too, but the economy did not depend on it)

The South seceded because of the threat to slavery and the writing on the wall about the way that was going.

So, yes, the USA Civil War was about slavery. The fact that Lincoln did not fight "for the slaves" or even "free the slaves" (the slaves in the North were not freed by the Emancipation Declaration" but by the Thirteenth Amendment) is not relevant.

It is not "semantics", it is a simple fact.

[triceratops]

You said it yourself:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union"

The North wanted to keep the country together when they went into the war. Tax considerations weren't part of the equation.