It was not because of Slavery. There is a reason that the Southern states called themselves the Confederate States of America. That reason was that they thought the Federal Goverenment was getting to strong, and that the power of the republic should be held by the states. They thought the Constitiution gave the Federal Goverenment to much power and the states very little power. That is why the Confederates based their government off the Articles of Confederation. This give more power to the states, instead of the centeral government. Slavery was only added as the cause toward the end of the war when the North was losing. Lincoln needed another cause in order to get support from the North, and in order to keep other nations out of the war. There was more reason for Lincoln to keep the South, because of the grains, and food it provided to the USA then slavery. That was one of the reasons the North did not want the South to leave the Union in the first place. Like I stated, slavery was an issue but it came late in the war. People want to make it a war about slavery just to make it seem worth a war to fight for, and not a useless loss of lives. As someone stated, Lincoln did not free the slaves, as everyone thinks, he just freed them in the states that rebeled. If the war had been about slavery he would have had to free them all.UGADawgs wrote:
What were the states wanting the rights for? You're correct in that the actual fighting started because Lincoln and the South disputed over whether a state could secede, but most of the causes leading up to the war were associated with slavery. The South felt that slavery was threatened because Lincoln's election ended the South's political power. It didn't help that he wanted to curtail the expansion of slavery, and most Southerners felt that eventually the Republicans would attack slavery directly. You're correct that we bombed Ft. Sumter because we thought we had the right to secede, not because we immediately felt the threat of emancipation. It's also true that the abolishment of slavery didn't become the focus until later. However, it's pretty dishonest of you to take the spark igniting the conflict and expand it to be the cause of the entire war. The differences over slavery were the major reason why secession occurred. The South would not have seceded if it thought that it could protect slavery by political means.dubbs wrote:
So it shows that you truely do not know anything that happened during the Civil War. First the war was not about slavery. It was about state rights. Second, the war only had anything to do with slavery near the end, this was to get support for the war.Reciprocity wrote:
we shouldn't have to ban things. common sense should dictate that any use of the Confederate flag is offensive and insulting and displays nothing more than ignorance and bigotry.
Now with that said, what if that person is honoring the people who died to defend that flag? Does that mean that we should not respect anyone at all? What do you do at Civil War reenactments? Do the "Southerns" just go out without a flag? Or should they just carry a white one? What do we do with states that have the Confederate flag in them, like Mississippi? Should they have to change their flag?
Even though it is a part of US history that we all wish we could forget, we have to live with it. By showing the flag we remind people of the mistakes that we had in the past, and hopefully we remember them, and not repeat them in the future.
As I wrote this, I came to ask myself, if Lincoln did not die in office, was would we have said the war was about?
