What was the Civil War about?

[Draggingtree]

 What was the Civil War about?

CivilWarTalk Start date Apr 18, 2012

 The origins of the American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States as my Southern friends would call it, is sometimes a difficult subject to pin down. The attention of historians has been drawn to the subject, and many discussions and sometimes heated arguments have developed. The events leading up to and during this period of war and civil strife have shaped our nation, but no person should attempt to use one solitary issue as the only cause for this war.

What was the Civil War about? Causes of the Civil War & the Fight over Slavery

The Founding of the United States

As the British colonies in North America became more settled, the economy of the southern colonies gravitated toward the so-called money crops of tobacco and sugar grown on large plantations. Farming these crops, however, required significant manpower. The solution was provided by slave labor.

The economy of the northern colonies was more rooted in manufacturing and shipping. While farming in the North was a profitable venture, it wasn't the primary source of income in the region.

Eventually both North and South would be involved in the slave trade: the South using slaves as workers and northern shippers transporting the slaves in from Africa.   

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/what-was-the-civil-war-about.71619/

( As I see it,what the war should be called War of Northern Aggression)

[Draggingtree]

Is Secession Treason?

By H.V. Traywick, Jr. on Jun 3, 2021

And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves…
Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1)

The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled that secession from the Union was unconstitutional. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, in 1869, wrote the majority “opinion of the court.” His opinion was not that of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, in which he had written:

Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security… (2)

Nor was it the opinion of the Virginia Convention that ratified the Constitution, in stating the condition upon which Virginia was joining the Union:

We the Delegates of the People of Virginia … Do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression… (3)      https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/is-secession-treason/

[Valin]

What was it about? Contrary to what our Neo-Confederate friends say..SLAVERY

[Draggingtree]

The idea that slavery was the one and only cause of the Civil War is really an oversimplification of an important historical event. Slavery was definitely an important contributing factor that led to the war but there were other issues involved. Some of the other reasons for the war include state sovereignty, sectionalism, and the nature of the Constitution. Wars can be complex events that have more than one cause. However, people like to have simple explanations for complicated historical events.

[Draggingtree]

Secession Was Not About Slavery

 

 Original in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society.(Should be returned.)

First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling for emancipation. There was none! Southern secession was a result of 70 years of defending itself against Northern economic exploitation, Northern unwillingness to abide by Constitutional mandates and restraints, and a more recent Northern inclination to centralize sovereignty in the general government.  Slavery issues were only the latest “occasions” regarding Northern Constitutional infidelity. Therefore slavery issues were a derivative of a more fundamental concern over the North’s history of disregard for the Constitution in its quest for political and economic control of the US. 

More @ The Abbeville Institute