Why can't you accept that those who fought on the Southern side had just as much claim to that Union as the Yankees, and that they were fighting to protect the States THEIR grandfathers had established PRIOR TO THE UNION?
And that the Southern States were the ones invaded by a foreign power and exercised the right of defense.
And that they likely viewed Abolitionists with the same contempt most of us feel toward Obama and his minions.
You appear to be so blinded by the fact that slavery is wrong and has always been wrong that you can't grasp another, older fact; People have the right to defend themselves against aggression.
I have never questioned those motives, the tragedy of that war being that the rank and file on both sides, literate and free Americans all, were firmly convinced they were in the right.
However the fact that the Southern Leadership, all from the wealthy slave-owning Planter Class, apparently could not imagine a South without slavery cannot be written out of the script. Neither can the appalling prospect for the South of four million suddenly freed slaves in their midst in the event of a Free State-imposed Abolition be ignored. Same thing with the fact that by 1860 the South had collectively placed most all its economic eggs in the slave-grown cotton business, along with making the enormous societal and social adjustments for the same.
Birdwatcher
