The Civil War was about States Rights
The Right to own Slaves
States rights mostly is why it started. But not about slaves, mostly about taxes, tarrifs, etc.
The slavery issue was thrown in to garner support in the north for the war.
I understand what you are saying but there is one point that brings this right back to slavery.
The taxes , terrifs, etc, you are talking about would have NEVER exsisted to be taken from the south had they not had slaves to do all the work which produced all the wealth in the south.
My Mother once told me to not forget the people in the south built this country with their business accumin.
I then told her in response " give me 100 people who have to work for me for nothing but scraps of food and little else and I could be wealthy myself in no time.
She had no response.
The south was built by slaves. They never seem to get the credit.
Wild exaggeration and misrepresenting history.
Black Slave Owners Civil War Article by Robert M Grooms
"In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.
The fact is, large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large.
In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves)."
"The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).
In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented slave holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6)."
Many like to pretend that the South invented slavery.
There were slaves in the North.It was a legal practice in the entire U.S.
The U.S. Constitution had upheld slavery in the Dred Scott case in 1857.
There were slaves in Washington D.C.
The white population of the "South" was about 9 million in 1860. The number of slaves was around 3 million.
75% of white people did NOT own slaves. Most slave owners owned one or two. They were very expensive. Not many people owned "100" as you claimed.
Not all negroes in the South were slaves.
Free negroes in the South owned slaves.
Unfair and disproportionate tariffs and taxes on the South was the main reason. Lincoln's "Spot Resolutions"..etc..
See the "Kentucky and Virginia Resoultions", "The Alien and Sedition Acts", Timothy Pickerings' plot for a New England Confederacy (in opposition to the Louisiana Purchase),
"The Hartford Convention", the nullification crisis (opposing high tariffs)
Those affected EVERYONE...Slave owners were few and far between and far wealthier than the average person.
The conflict was about far more than just slavery.
Lincoln's inaugural address, 1861;
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so
Lincoln/Douglas debate 1858:
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
His letter to Horace Greeley in 1862:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
The War of Northern Aggression was not fought to preserve slavery by the South, or to end slavery by the North. It was economics and states rights. The industrial revolution was just around the corner..slavery would have ended anyway as it wasn't practical or moral. The South wouldn't have to strictly rely on its' agricultural advantage and would be able to industrialize.
