(January 30, 2014 at 9:32 pm)Chad32 Wrote:(January 30, 2014 at 9:17 pm)jumbojak Wrote: What other issues are you referring to and in what way was the United States at fault?
I'm not really all that learned about the war, but seeing as how the north had slaves too, the slavery problem couldn't have been all it was.
The so called "border states" did permit slavery, however the majority of the non-rebelling states were free states who failed to even recognize slavery as an institution. This was actually a major sticking point for the south:
Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union Wrote:The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
You can read the whole declaration for full context (Be warned though, it's boring!) but the basic takeaway is that slavery was the primary reason for secession by the southern states--the theme put forward by South Carolina was emulated elsewhere--and secession set the stage for the Civil War. In a strange way the south was trying to use the concept of state's rights to nullify the laws granting freedom from bondage duly passed in other states!
Fortunately it didn't work, whatever constitutional argument they were advancing at the time, and today we have a society which is free from, at least explicit, slavery. The de facto sort, well.... that's a different story.
