Changing history

[Rhondazvous]

I might be wrong, but I always thought the North and South were fighting for different reasons. The North were fighting to keep the country whole. The South were fighting mainly to retain slavery.

This is an excerpt from Mississippi's Declaration of Secession.

Remember, we discussed this not too long ago.

The issue of Slavery did not arise with the North wanting to abolish slavery and the south wanting to maintain it. The north wanted to contain slavery where it was. The nation was expanding west and the north did not want slavery in the new western states because it would take jobs away from White men. This has been an issue as far back as the revolutionary war when the British promised freedom to slaves who joined them and then relocated them to a settlement in Nova Scotia. When the economy want bad and employers hired the Blacks because they could be paid less, the White men got angry and massacred them.

At the same time, the south was worried that a proliferation of free states in the west would upset the balance of power in Washington. Lincoln belonged to the party that wanted to keep slavery out of the west so it was easy for the south to paint him as the anti-slavery candidate. We know he was no such thing.

The north and south differed on the economic and political aspects of slavery, but, but as Dritch says, they were on the same page regarding the moral aspects. If we try to keep things simple by refusing to acknowledge these different aspects and just see slavery as a single monolithic issue that people can be either for or against, we won't come anywhere near the truth.