Againsheila
Gold Member
I have a hard time understanding why this point is so hard for people to understand. It's beacuse the South was fighting to preserve slavery, but the North was fight to keep the union together. When the North decided slavery was the reason the south was fighting they decided to end it. Slavery supported the divisions in the nation, it had to end sooner rather then--as Lincoln would have had it ideally in 1860--later.
Again, why were the slaves in the north not freed until AFTER the civil war? Why were they exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation? The answer is that the war was not about slavery, not for the north, nor for the south. However, many in the north did go to war to fight for the freedom of the slaves as the union touted the war being about slavery.
Had the south succeeded and won the war, slavery would have been over in less than 40 years anyway. Only 5% of the population owned slaves, do you really think all those soldiers in the south were fighting so the plantation owners could keep their slaves? Did you know that there were black slave owners as well?
In fact, if you see an African American decended from slaves walking down the street next to a white American, chances are much, much greater, that the black man is more likely to be decended from slave owners than the white man.