I've always wondered why non slavers felt so strongly about fighting for the south and suspected the real history has largely been rewritten as always. Probably more to the war than I'll ever know. I had a southern friend tell me it wasn't about slavery it was about state rights. I then asked him which rights in particular? He said the right to own slaves and laughed.
This is the part that is most often overlooked. The percentage of people in the South who owned slaves has been estimated at around 5%, with what is called "extended families" at anywhere from 15 to 25%, depending on the source. So, did that mean that only the people who owned slaves actually fought..........no, of course not. Then if that was not the case, why did someone who did not own any slaves want to fight in a war that was sait to be over slavery. The answer is pretty simple.........because it wasn't being fought solely over slavery.
The average Southerner went to war against the Union because for years that Union, who thought of its self as "big brother," had become of what it percieved as the South becoming too big for it's britches, so to speak. The states that had long controlled America were a handful of Northeastern ones. They were industrial states, who had money, which in turn bought them political power. They had long controlled the markets at which most of the agricultural goods that the South produced were sold. However, that was beginning to change, as the South had found lucrative markets for it's products, mostly cotton and tobacco, in Europe.
The South was starting to make money, and with that money they were aquiring power, and the North didn't like it. So, what better way to bring "little brother" back in line than to put the screws to them and try and take away their new markets. They did that by passing tarrifs that meant that the South would be forced to sell it's goods to the Northern markets, along with other legislation all designed to keep the South just where the North wanted it.
That is why men from the Southern states, who owned no slaves and never had, joined the Confedrate army and fought against the Union. It was because they understood that it wasn't about slavery, but about the North and Lincoln throwing the Constitution out the window and forcing the hand of the South. The North could claim anything they wanted to as a reason for their actions, but those non slave owning Southern men knew differently. They didn't fight a war to preserve slavery, they fought it because in their minds it had been forced upon them and they were defending their homeland.
