Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire More Proof That The Cival War Wasn't Over Slavery

If I had a choice I'd go with "wrongly" on this one.

And, as has been noticed, this is the same argument the Nazis used regarding the Jews.

"Not all of those who appear human are in fact so. Woe to him who forgets it!"






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10-4 on that, regardless of ancestry. Overall, more whites are on the dole than blacks. Percentage-wise, I can't say. The poor sections of this country are full of welfare dynasties, SS cheats and drug addicts, often under the same roof. Many in this class are also professional thieves, preying on the working folks. They even steal the electrical panels off porches. My former mother-in-law couldn't keep a phone because thieves kept stealing the cable. One got killed trying to steal the power lines. This stuff doesn't make the news, except when they make a big drug bust somewhere.

Jobs are the answer, but there aren't any where this stuff goes on. Gotta get out.

Many do not seem to understand that the opposition for the western expansion of slavery was not very much at all about the opposition to negro slavery, but for the opposition to cheap labor competition. That and political power. There was a tremendous amount of political power struggles in that time period, as much and possibly more so than seen today. Northern politicians that had gained political control consistently passed huge taxes on exported products mostly produced in the southern states, such as cotton and tobacco. This amounted to somewhere between 70 to 80% of the entire federal revenue sources. To make matters worse, very little federal money was spent to the benefit of any of the south, the vast majority being spent on projects to the specific benefit of northern interests by northern controlled politicians. Incidentally, few may realize that in the original constitution of the State of Oregon it was specifically forbidden for any negro or mulatto to settle there. This was also the law in none other than Abraham Lincoln's home state of Illinois. Doesn't quite sound like these states were so so welcoming to negroes. Yes, there was an abolitionist movement in both the north and some actually in the south. However, the war was NOT a great crusade by the north to free the poor oppressed negroes from the evil southern slaveholders. Slavery was a problem for the south and was certainly going to have to be dealt with somehow. There were a number of radical abolitionist groups, such as those that supported John Brown and the earlier Nat Turner rebellion, that openly advocated and promoted the actual murder of all white southerners, actual slave owners or not. These were the anarchists of that time. How would you feel about that if you were a white non slave owning southerner who was under the real threat of anarchists that were inciting slaves to brutally murder your family simply because they were white and lived in the south? That is exactly what such "heros" as John Brown did. Brown himself and his followers hacked to death with axes Kansas citizens in front of their children and sometimes their children first in front of them before killing them as well because they would not support them. I'll bet that few know that the first person that the great John Brown killed on his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia was a free black man that refused to join with him. I am not making excuses for slavery, nor am I going to buy into the great and glorious Union bull$hit either. This after war bull$hit put forth by the northern states to justify their treatment of the south before and after the war is just that. Bull$hit. I am an avid student of history of this time period and while I do readily admit a southern affection, I try to look at things objectively. Yes, there certainly was blame on both sides as is usual with these things. However, if all of the facts are examined, the south was pushed into this great tragedy.

No,it was over egregious and obvious spelling errors.

For the record, I'd go with "wrongly" as well. But this is now and that was then.

I can't imagine the physical, mental, and spiritual strength it took for those slaves to endure what they did. It had to have been awful. But it was the best thing that ever happened as far as their descendants are concerned.

You mention western expansion, and that was one of the great fears of the South. As new states were formed to the west, most were destined to be anti-slavery either from the start or would become so fairly quickly and the South would lose even more power in Congress leading to anti-slavery laws. Eventually the South would almost surely drop below the 25% necessary to stop an Amendment to free slaves.

The South could keep slavery intact long term only if they split off to form a country consisting of purely slave holding states. This is what the top Democrat politicians and rich landowners attempted to do - all while trumpeting in the press that they were splitting off because of various things like states rights and discriminatory taxes. Just as the Democrats of today say they are fighting in the streets against fascism - when they are really fighting freedom of speech. Democrat political machines lie, now and always.

Was the Civil War fought over slavery?

Look, I'll take Alexander Stephen at his word. In his Cornerstone Speech in 1861 he states:


Did the South secede over Slavery? I think so.

Did the North fight to free the slaves? I think not. The major motivation for the North was the preservation of the Union. To Southerners, it might have looked like that meant that a bunch of Yankee meddlers wanted to screw with the South's "Peculiar Institutions" and subjugate the south once and forever, but try and look at it from a Northern perspective.

1) Since the time of the Revolution, the South had been running itself as a throwback to the Middle Ages. Serfs had been replaced by Negro slaves, but the idea was you were only as important as the number of humans you owned. John C. Calhoun said it best in his speech to the Senate in 1837:


2) The North and the South were forever at odds on the subject of the sovereignty of states. The kind of system envisaged by the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions just were not going to make for a long term workable solution. The United States of America, if it was going to survive in the world needed a strong Federal government. A system whereby the states could nullify federal law just was not going to fly. Oh sure, all the best and brilliant Southerners believed in it, but they were also sending their kids to Europe to be schooled. The Brits loved telling Americans how goofy and backward we were. Of course they're going to come home with ideas that were contrary to American ideals. My belief is that the US would have been picked apart in the 20th Century and divvied up by the world powers if we had not fought the Civil War to the conclusion it had.

3) The North was booming with Industrialization, Immigration, and technological advancement. The Southern way of life discouraged Industry. It was an unpopular place to immigrate, relative to the North, and a lot of the new technologies coming into common practice in the North were rare in the South.

You only have to look at the wartime experience of the North and the South to see where this was all going. In the North, folks hardly noticed the war was going on in day-to-day experience. In the South, there was privation, starvation, food riots, and mass confiscation of personal property. Those who got the South going down the road of secession and war were not thinking about the general welfare of its citizens and least of all its African non-citizens. This was a bunch of elites who wanted to take their nation to ruin over the issue of whether or not you could own another human. They were blind to everything else.

One other thing, before I start hearing about this "War of Northern Aggression" being about Southerners defending their homes: In his memoir, U.S. Grant states that after Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, he was using a strategic estimate of 1 regiment/day loss to the Confederate ranks due to desertion. That means a thousand men were quietly laying down their arms and going home and no one at home was particularly upset at their defection. Yes, 85% of the eligible males went to war, but they didn't stay at it, despite this being a defense of their homeland. Something important brought them home and ended up being far more compelling than Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying they were cowards. I'm just saying a lot of those that took up arms against the Union were not all that happy with how it went.


And another thing, on a personal note, I really did not have all that much of an opinion on this when I joined the Campfire back in 2002. My Dad's family came from Germany in 1923. What should I care? Since then I've done a lot of reading and investigation of family history, and a lot of it was driven by what I read here. If nothing else, I have only to look at Lewis Davisdon Williams my great great grandfather. I don't have all the details yet on his service. However, I do know he was born in Wales and had come to the US less than 8 years before the outbreak of hostilities. He volunteered for service shortly after Virginia seceeded and stayed in until 1865. He was an artilleryman. He probably served at Shiloh. You got to ask yourself, why did this guy, with a pregnant wife and a new farmstead in NE Ohio, drop everything and run off to war?

No, it wasn't to free the slaves.
No, it was not to subjugate the South, defile their women and loot their farms.

He did it, because in Wales he was a harness maker. His dad had been a harness maker. His son would be a harness maker. When Lewis came here, it was to be something new and different. My great grandfather, Elmer Ellsworth Williams, was able to grow up in a country that did not dictate your life based on what your father did. Lewis came here to be free of all that. He was an educated man and a devout Methodist. He chose to go to war to preserve-- okay we call it The Union, but to Lewis it was a way of life that was far different than what he'd faced under British Rule. It was also certainly going to be different from what he'd face in the South. It was an ideal of self-determination. Guys like Lewis did not want to be judged by how many other men they owned as a value of their wealth, their standing in the community, or the estimation of their peers.

Not to mention spacing issues.





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There sure are a lot of speeches by both northerners and southerners given about slavery in an attempt to prove that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. 😁

People back then sure spent a lot of time and effort talking about something that had nothing to do with their reasons for war.

Whatever the war was or was not about, it should have never happened. It should have never had to come to secession, and when it did it shouldn't have then came to war. I know /i wouldn't have been signing up to invade the South if I were alive then.

Henryseale, thank you for what I believe to be the best post ever written on this subject. I agree with your sentiments entirely. I have argued in the past that most Southerners did not fight so they could keep slaves, and northerners fought to union rather than end slavery.

That said I want to ask the same basic question in this simple way. If there was no slavery would there have been a civil war? The answer: NO, ergo.........

I really don't see any other way it could have gone. Too much money invested in slaves for the power players running the southern states to give up slavery willingly, and eventually it had to go away. Even if the South had successfully split off peachefully, there would have been insurrection after insurrection, border disputes with southerners chasing their fleeing slaves into the North, and probably a later war with the North over accusations of northern instigators starting slave riots. Which would have happened.

The only peaceful resolution would have been for the people of the south - the vast majority that were non-slave holders - to massively override their neighbors who owned slaves and vote to free or to return the slaves to their homeland. But that was a loooong way away for many of the states.

So much for freeing the slaves.

The war is over. Maybe the slaves won? Their descendants won't give up their EBT cards after review of this conversation. Lincoln was a shyster first, a dick second, and lastly a short range target. Their was little honor to be found in the Union camp, maybe a small part in that of the South. 150 years have passed.....let us contemplate something more joyful. Mushrooms sprouting in the Mideast for example, or Hillary's suicide? Or P.O. Ackley's line of cartridges.

The war was over secession.
The secession was over, among other things, slavery.

The North should have evacuated Ft. Sumter and allowed the South the human right of freedom of association.

Which is what the North wanted of the south but the south refused that "freedom" to others. 😉

Atlanta lost.

And THAT is the bottom line as to what the War came down to. At great cost it was decided for all time that they were people not property. All men created equal...

Try selling that to the "colored folks."

Regardless of the reason for the US Civil War, all North America is still paying for slavery.