And yet you don’t have history right. It was about states rights, not slavery
Originally Posted by farmstud60
I read a book, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. The war happened in large part because the Yankees hated the southerners and the southerners hated the Yankees. It might never have happened if not for some extreme Abolitionists in the north, like William Lloyd Garrison, who made Southerners out to be devils and who were not open to any compromise. Private charities and government could have paid money for the freedom of the slaves, which is what Britain did. The cost would have been minimal compared to the damage inflicted by the war. And there was a movement in the U.S. that was actually doing this, but Garrison and others shut it down.
Very few southerners were actually slave owners. Seemingly, there wasn't an economic motivation among the population at large in the south for the war. However, people in the south, and the north, were concerned about what would happen when you had millions of unemployed blacks if emancipation happened, maybe somewhat similar to concerns of the labor unions of yesterday and many of Trump's strongest supporters today about immigration. And more importantly there was public security. There was a slave revolt in Haiti where all the white people were killed, and something similar happened in the south in a couple of places where slaves led rebellions. Many southerners were afraid if blacks were empowered they'd kill whites.
Anyway, that's the reason for the title of the book, "A Disease in the Public Mind." People were too wrapped up in their emotions and not exercising common sense and not open to compromise.
While I don't view the Union cause as overwhelmingly right and just, and don't believe Lincoln is a great hero, I have to come down with Jackie on this one, if for no other reason than it's something that would help bring the country together and potentially get more Republicans elected to the Senate.
Btw, I would view Lincoln as the greatest American president if he'd ended slavery and avoided the deaths of 600,000 Americans, and avoided putting the South into penury for a couple of generations. But that's not what happened.