> The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact.
Should I believe you or lincoln?
'...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...'
https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greele...
If the civil war was about freeing slaves, why did lincoln wait so long to end slavery? Why didn't he do it immediately?
> It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.
Who cares as long as it is true? I'm not a southerner. Not a fan of the confederacy.
Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people? Does that make any sense to you? Have you looked into lincoln's opinions of black people?
"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 [applause]—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 for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality..."
You said it yourself:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union"
The North wanted to keep the country together when they went into the war. Tax considerations weren't part of the equation.
> Should I believe you or lincoln?
Both.
The rebellion was about slavery for the rebels and preserving the Union for the Union.
GP addressed the former, Lincoln spoke for the latter.
No, they seceded after the north stopped respecting slavery, when "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."
They call out Lincoln's inauguration and his perceived attitude on slavery, not tarrifs:
"On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. "
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
> But the rebels seceded after the north raised tariffs
Wrong. The tariff bill only passed because the Democrats lost the votes in the Senate that had stopped it earlier in the same session of Congress because the states that had seceded weren't represented anymore. Literally all the South had to do to avoid the tariff bill was not secede.
Read what the states who left the union had to say about it:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
It was slavery.
An excerpt from one state:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. "
It took me about five minutes to find South Carolina's declaration of secession. And the first thing that document mentions is slavery:
"In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”"
South Carolina didn't secede because the North wanted to abolish slavery. They seceded because the North refused to return slaves to the South.
Many Northerners took a long time to follow this truth to its logical conclusion: either the North would have to accede to Southern demands and honor their claims to other human beings as property, or they would have to abolish slavery entirely.
While it discusses slavery, the first thing mentioned is constitutional obligations.
The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented. It felt it would be better on its own (regardless of the slave issue, there’s a whole mess there).
The north, decided it wasn’t going to let the south go its own way. That’s why the south calls it “the war of northern aggression”. (I say this from their perspective) First the north didn’t respect property rights, then it actively attempted to destroy the south’s economy (through tariffs, etc), then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
> The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented.
They received additional representation for their slaves, even though slaves couldn't vote. Just more lies on top of lies.
> First the north didn’t respect property rights
The "property" in question being "human beings"
> then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
Sounds like justice to me. And most of that land was given back, instead of being distributed to freed slaves as reparation. Which would have been the right thing to do.
With the war over, it's really easy for the side that doesn't depend on slavery for its economy to work to go out and put a feather in their cap by saying, "See? We're the good guys."
Don't ask Lincoln, he's not the one who seceded.
Ask the states who left. South Carolina, for instance, directly blames the North's increasing hostility towards slavery - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp :
"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
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. "
How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?
It was about slavery, racism was DEEPLY involved in US slavery, and racism and racists didn't just go away after the civil war.
Sometimes it's as simple as people say it is, over and over and over in their defense of slavery and their post-Civil-War racist laws and propaganda.
You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.
You’re missing the point. It’s one and the same. Slaves were valuable economic assets whose value was diminishing as industrialization intensified.
The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant. Slavery was about wealth and control, in losing control of poor white people. The northern industrialists wanted cotton. Abolitionists saw the moral disgrace of slavery as an evil. Lincoln was more moderate and prioritized the nation.
The “states rights” bullshit was always bullshit. But then “get shot to keep rich aristocrats rich” isn’t a compelling battle cry. Conversely, the poor Irish and others participating in draft riots saw abolition as competition from the one strata of society lower then them.
Hence, the noble abstract goals of “preserving the union” and “protection our sacred rights” are front and center.
> The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant.
Yes, I believe that's why they rejected the Corwin Amendment compromise, which would have allowed them to keep slavery in states that already had it. That deal didn't allow them to use slaves in the west, so they didn't like it.
> One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_second_inaugural_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_second_inaug...
You may be shocked to hear this, but Lincoln was a politician and was occasionally slightly disingenuous in order to achieve his political agenda. There wasn't public support for a war to end slavery. There was public support for a war to preserve the union.
Here's another quote from Lincoln:
"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
He could claim as much as he wanted, once the war started, that his goal was to restore the Union even at the expense of continuing to tolerate slavery, but there was no way the Confederates could possibly take him at his word when he said so.
This is another thing Lincoln said: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. [...] Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" (https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second...)
But hey, the Union wasn't the party who forced the conflict. Let's hear from Alexander Stephens, VP of the CSA, instead:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
(https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...)
This document was simultaneously published by the very committee that issued the initial ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and it explains the decision to secede at great length. It is all about slavery:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Address_of_the_People_of_South_Carolina_assembled_in_Convention,_to_the_People_of_the_Slaveholding_States_of_the_United_States https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Address_of_the_People_of_...
Additionally, articles of secession from other states also explicitly mention slavery in the actual text of the law, including Alabama's ordinance that proposed the Montgomery Convention at which the Confederacy was founded. Even more states explain it in similar justifying documents.
The vice president of the Confederacy delivered a speech establishing slavery as the primary motivator of secession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is on record before the war explaining slavery as cause, and after the war claiming it was about states' rights (to practice slavery).
This whole debate is semantics and pedantics about the word cause. The reality is that it doesn't make sense to reduce history to a single factor.
The south wanted to secede because the union was threatening their economic interests which relied on slavery. The union did not want the south to secede for their own reasons, of which slavery was not the foremost.
You can not remove any part of that explanation and still describe the "cause" of the war.
The war would not have happened if slaves didn't have economic value. The war would not have happened if the north was indifferent to the south leaving.
Trying to reduce things further than this is a fools errand.
Your linked document is a great example of this. It discusses a great many things. The first half is a history of grievances about states rights and failures of the union to uphold the constitution.
It starts to talk about slavery about half way through if you ctrl-f.
Anyone arguing for their singular preferred cause can find supporting evidence in it because the "cause" of the war was the interaction of multiple factors, so evidence exists for all of them.
The problem is that showing evidence that one factor was critical to the start of the war does not prove that other critical factors do not exist.
Lincoln wanted to save the union. He did not care about slaves (there was slavery in the north too, but the economy did not depend on it)
The South seceded because of the threat to slavery and the writing on the wall about the way that was going.
So, yes, the USA Civil War was about slavery. The fact that Lincoln did not fight "for the slaves" or even "free the slaves" (the slaves in the North were not freed by the Emancipation Declaration" but by the Thirteenth Amendment) is not relevant.
It is not "semantics", it is a simple fact.