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#26 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: the far corner of my mind
Posts: 8,711
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I asked the question because I think your assertions may be somewhat obfuscating. We always think of slavery in terms of civil rights. Then, I think it was more about political power and economics. The civil rights component was secondary or even tertiary until nearer the end of the war. Slavery was the issue the set up the battle. The north was against it, mostly on moral grounds, but was not very interested in dying for it. The South saw they would likely lose their economic viability without slavery and that slavery was going to be lost if they stayed with the North, so they started the war. They couldn't very well say they were fighting to enslave people, so they couched it as states rights, but really those are the rights they had in mind. The North/Lincoln couldn't successfully maintain support for the war (until later, when he played the Emancipation card as a way to muster support relative to his reelection; in fact, the reason he didn't issue the Emancipation proclamation before then was primarily for political reasons, even though he seemed to think all along that the war was about slavery) by saying we are fighting to free slaves, so he couched it as a war on secession. These characterizations were credited with both causing the war and sustaining it, but most people paying attention knew that, at root, it was all about slavery, as an economic issue for the South but maybe not as just a moral issue for the north, but as perhaps an issue of power. Either way, who is it that you think disagrees with your basic premise here?
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Sorry for th e tpyos. |
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