[QUOTE="Xx_Hopeless_xX"][QUOTE="-Sun_Tzu-"] So how exactly do you reconcile that with your opposition to tyranny? Thanks to what was a strong abolitionist movement in the north, when the North won the war, slavery was once and for all abolished. Had the outcome been different and the South had won, about four million people would have still been in chains, with absolutely no freedom to speak of. That's the equivalent of roughly 39 million people being enslaved today in proportion to the current population. That's what the south was primarily fighting for - to guarantee that those in chains stay in chains. For all their talk about "state rights", that didn't stop the drafters of the Confederate federalconstitution from making it unconstitutional for any individual Confederate states to abolish slavery.
-Sun_Tzu-
It is a fact that when the armies for the North and South were first formed, only a small minority of the soldiers on either side would have declared that the reason they joined the army was to fight either "for" or "against" slavery.Most Southerners were small farmers that could not afford slaves. Most Northerners were small farmers or tradesmen that had never evenseena slave.
That basically makes your argument about the Southerners owning slaves null..
Um, no it doesn't. Yes, slave owners were a minority, but they were a very wealthy minority and many, especially in the deep south, where slaves consisted for about half the population, wielded a great deal of political power. When you look at most conventional wars throughout history, they are triggered primarily by the interests of a very influential and well off minority, as was the case in the Civil War, which was triggered by very, very, wealthy slave/plantation owners. A very small minority...
The South had an economic interest in the spread of slavery to the new territories so that new slave states could be created and the South's political influence would remain strong. The North had an interest in limiting the spread of slavery into the new territories for both purposes of controlling Southern political power AND support of the moral issue.
Although the majority of the American people-- including many moderate politicians like Abraham Lincoln--wanted to avoid Civil War and were content to allow slavery to die a slow, inevitable death..
Southern politicians convinced their majority that the North was threatening their way of life and their culture. Northern politicians convinced their majority that the South, if allowed to secede, was really striking a serious blow at democratic government. In these arguments, both southern and northern politicians were speaking the truth--but not "the whole truth." They knew that to declare the war to be a fight over slavery would cause a lot of the potential soldiers of both sides to refuse to fight.
It was less about morals...
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