# Was the America Civil War fought over slavery? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 21, 2016, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766 "2016-01-21T10:03:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/61 "2016-01-21T23:24:33Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > It’s possible that if you looked into the contemporary discussions in more depth than I’m up for, OK, so you don’t have an answer for how to square your claim that the Slave States were in favor of states rights with their direct statements and political actions which comprehensively opposed States rights. You can assert that ‘States Rights’ was the real cause, but you’ve failed to offer anything of substance to support that position, while I’ve shown the opposite merely by quoting what the Confederates said as they left. Not one State mentioned ‘States Rights’ in its documents, numerous ones listed the Fugitive Slave Act which is directly opposed to states rights, and plenty mentioned slavery explicitly. > [@](#): > > I am not aware of this. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but if you’re not aware of the Fugitive Slave Act, you really don’t know enough to make informed comments on the causes of the Civil War. It was a huge deal, and was cited specifically in several States’ declarations of secession. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/62 "2016-01-21T23:32:49Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > It’s always funny to hear people defend the Confederacy … I don’t think **engineer\_comp\_geek** is defending the Confederacy at all. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/63 "2016-01-21T23:43:56Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Also in the North you had the northern industrialists, and this is where a lot of the political and economic power was in the North. These industrialists felt that the world was changing from an agriculturally based economy to an industrial economy, and they felt that the southern agriculturalists were holding the USA back and were ruining the country economically. If I’m a Northern industrialist, why do I care two hoots about some other region of the country declining to make themselves into my competitors? (Not to mention, why didn’t Northern industrialists have all these conflicts with places like Iowa, which were and are overwhelmingly agricultural.) > [@marshmallow](#): > > It’s OK to admit might makes right. Is there any doubt if the Confederacy won they’d teach their children how their forefathers valiantly defended their freedoms and way of life from the elites in the North? They practically do that anyway. Based on their statements at the time of secession, I think that a hypothetical victorious Confederacy would have no problem with telling their children how they fought and won a war to protect their “beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery” from “the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color”. (Those quotes are from [Texas](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp), but there’s plenty more where they came from.) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/64 "2016-01-22T01:05:59Z")
The simplest way I know of to summarize it is that the South fought against abolition, and the North fought against states’ rights. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/65 "2016-01-22T01:43:40Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > It’s always funny to hear people defend the Confederacy using phrasing like ‘force their views down the other side’s throats’ when the Confederacy was founded on the principle that whites should be allowed to rape, torture, and kill black people at their discretion. I wasn’t defending the Confederacy at all. By forcing things down the other side’s throats I was referring to how conflicts were settled in Congress, which was simply those who got the most votes got their way. As the power struggle went back and forth, each side would force its agenda down the other side’s throats just by virtue of majority vote. It was both the abolitionists/industrialists and the southern slave owners and agriculturalists. 150 years later, we still do the same thing. While there are compromises in Washington now (just as there were then), a lot of stuff gets shoved down the other guy’s throats. How many Republicans happily agreed to Obamacare? 150 years later and we still haven’t learned better ways to settle our differences. The guys with the most votes win. Also, some people seem to think that slavery in the South was one big torture-fest. If you actually treated your slaves like that, you could be forced to sell them at auction. Murdering a slave was generally considered equal to murdering a white man in the eyes of the law. On the other hand, if a slave happened to die while you were beating him for misbehaving, that was perfectly fine. Raping your slaves was not socially acceptable, either. Of course, modern DNA analysis will tell you that it wasn’t exactly rare, but that doesn’t mean that Southern society found the raping of slaves to be perfectly acceptable. A proper Southern gentleman wasn’t supposed to do that sort of thing. Slaves weren’t routinely beaten and tortured on a daily basis. If you were a slave, you knew that you would be beaten if you stepped out of line, so for the most part, you didn’t step out of line. You did what you were told, how you were told, when you were told to do it. Slaves were controlled for the most part just with the threat of violence if they misbehaved. There was no need to be constantly sadistic to them. In fact, that kind of torture was counter-productive. Your slave couldn’t work as hard in the field the next day if you beat the snot out of him the night before. > [@MEBuckner](#): > > If I’m a Northern industrialist, why do I care two hoots about some other region of the country declining to make themselves into my competitors? (Not to mention, why didn’t Northern industrialists have all these conflicts with places like Iowa, which were and are overwhelmingly agricultural.) You give two hoots when those southern agriculturalists have enough votes in Congress to structure trade policies and tariffs to benefit international agricultural sales, allowing goods produced overseas to be sold at cheaper rates in your states, which prevents your own industries from developing. You see the entire world moving towards industrialism, but your own industries are struggling just to survive. As far as you are concerned, the South is choking your state’s economy and driving your people out of business. Clearly, something must be done about this. So then the industrialists get enough votes in Congress to reverse things, and they enact tariffs that drive up the costs of imported goods, protecting local businesses and allowing them to make bigger profits and to grow faster. But this prevents the southern agriculturalists from selling their goods as cheaply overseas, cutting their profits to the bone. Now the situation is reversed. The plantations are struggling and they blame the industrialists for trying to destroy all of agriculture. Folks in Iowa don’t sell too much cotton and tobacco overseas, so they aren’t involved in this so much. They may have an agricultural economy, but they aren’t tied economically to the southern agriculturalists. And while the folks in South Carolina and New York both really don’t give two hoots about what those guys do out in Iowa, both sides care very much about which way these guys vote. If you are a northern industrialist, you vote for westward expansion, like Lincoln’s support of the homestead act and Lincoln’s support of western railroads, things that will help the folks in Iowa economically. Iowa ended up splitting its votes between Lincoln’s Republicans and the Northern Democrats. The Democratic Party split during the 1860 election over the issue of slavery. The pro-slavery Southern Democrats received almost no votes in Iowa. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/66 "2016-01-22T01:50:14Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Murdering a slave was generally considered equal to murdering a white man in the eyes of the law. How many white men were convicted and sent to prison for killing black people in the 1800’s? Cite please. > [@](#): > > Slaves weren’t routinely beaten and tortured on a daily basis. If you were a slave, you knew that you would be beaten if you stepped out of line, so for the most part, you didn’t step out of line. You did what you were told, how you were told, when you were told to do it. Slaves were controlled for the most part just with the threat of violence if they misbehaved. There was no need to be constantly sadistic to them. In fact, that kind of torture was counter-productive. Your slave couldn’t work as hard in the field the next day if you beat the snot out of him the night before. wow… just wow… you definitely seem very undisturbed by all of this ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/67 "2016-01-22T02:20:28Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > How many white men were convicted and sent to prison for killing black people in the 1800’s? Cite please. I have no idea who was actually convicted, but I can tell you that this was the law at the time. Here for example is an excerpt from the slave codes of Alabama: [QUOTE=Alabama Slave Codes] 1. Anyone who “maliciously” dismembers or kills a slave will (if found guilty) suffer the same punishment as if he had dismembered or killed a white person, the one exception being if the slave was engaged in a rebellion. [/QUOTE] The full slave codes are here (warning, pdf): [http://www.archives.alabama.gov/ahei/Alabama\_Slave\_Codes\_in\_1833-What\_They\_Can\_Teach\_Us\_About\_Slaves\_Themselves\_September\_2011.pdf](http://www.archives.alabama.gov/ahei/Alabama_Slave_Codes_in_1833-What_They_Can_Teach_Us_About_Slaves_Themselves_September_2011.pdf) Note that this has been edited to be more readable to a modern audience. Other states had similar laws. I’ll poke around and see if I can find any cases of actual convictions of those laws. > [@Robert163](#): > > wow… just wow… you definitely seem very undisturbed by all of this Don’t take that the wrong way. Slaves had no freedom and a miserable life, and I find the racism and mistreatment to be absolutely horrible. My only point here is that they weren’t constantly beaten and tortured the way that **Pantastic** ’s post implied. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/68 "2016-01-22T02:23:29Z")
That didn’t take long. > [@](#): > > In 1811, Arthur William Hodge was the first slaveholder executed for the murder of a slave in the British West Indies. However, he was not (as some have claimed) the first white person to have been executed for killing a slave.[41] Records indicate at least two earlier incidents. On November 23, 1739, in Williamsburg, Virginia, two white men (Charles Quin and David White) were hanged for the murder of another white man’s slave. On April 21, 1775, the Virginia Gazette in Fredericksburg reported that a white man (William Pitman) was hanged for the murder of his own slave.[42] From here: > **[Treatment of slaves in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#Owners_convicted_of_crimes)** > > The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again. > In the decades before the American Civil War, defenders of slavery often argued that slavery was a positive good, both for the enslavers and the enslaved people. They defended the legal enslavement of people for their labor as a benevolent, p... ETA: Never mind. That’s 1700s for the non West Indies cites. Let me see if I can find anyone convicted in the 1800s. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/69 "2016-01-22T02:25:55Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > I have no idea who was actually convicted, but I can tell you that this was the law at the time. Here for example is an excerpt from the slave codes of Alabama: > > The full slave codes are here (warning, pdf): > [http://www.archives.alabama.gov/ahei/Alabama\_Slave\_Codes\_in\_1833-What\_They\_Can\_Teach\_Us\_About\_Slaves\_Themselves\_September\_2011.pdf](http://www.archives.alabama.gov/ahei/Alabama_Slave_Codes_in_1833-What_They_Can_Teach_Us_About_Slaves_Themselves_September_2011.pdf) > > Note that this has been edited to be more readable to a modern audience. > > Other states had similar laws. > > I’ll poke around and see if I can find any cases of actual convictions of those laws. good luck. i doubt you find any. > [@](#): > > Don’t take that the wrong way. Slaves had no freedom and a miserable life, and I find the racism and mistreatment to be absolutely horrible. Well, you have an odd way of conveying that. I was with you, more or less, when you were describing the rich slaves owners in the south then northern industrialists and the new western territories. It’s fine to be "objective about that. But your desire to be “objective” about the horrors of slavery is a bit puzzling. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/70 "2016-01-22T02:27:00Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > That didn’t take long. > > From here: > [Treatment of slaves in the United States - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#Owners_convicted_of_crimes) > > ETA: Never mind. That’s 1700s for the non West Indies cites. Let me see if I can find anyone convicted in the 1800s. that was for killing someone elses slave ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/71 "2016-01-22T02:38:02Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > The simplest way I know of to summarize it is that the South fought against abolition, and the North fought against states’ rights. The only “states’ right” the North fought against was the claimed right of secession. They were willing to negotiate the South’s autonomy-demands on every other point, they were ready to leave slavery alone so long as it wasn’t exported into new states. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/72 "2016-01-22T02:43:56Z")
Ok, found some from the 1800s. These were in South Carolina: A white man was executed in 1852 for the murder of a female slave. A white man was conviced in 1834 for killing a slave (no details given in the cite). In 1838, there is a record of the Governor of South Carolina refusing to give clemency to a youth who had wantonly killed a slave. There is no record of whether or not the execution was carried out, but without clemency, it probably was. All of these are cited in the book “The Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina” by Hoswell Meadows Henry (1914). The book also mentions the Broxton Bridge Horror. Basically, the son of a slave owner and an assistant captured a runaway slave, and spent an entire day and night torturing him to death. The two white men were executed. The Governor had the militia guarding the proceedings to make sure that an angry mob didn’t attempt to free the two white men. According to the book, from 1827 to 1854, there were 11 “bills charging murder”. Three were returned as “no bill” with one citing “bad treatment, not intentional murder” (which apparently everyone was cool with). One of the men in one of those no bill returns was charged again, possibly for the same crime, but was acquitted. Six men were tried and found not guilty. Two plead guilty, and one was found guilty. No sentences are recorded for any of the guilty verdicts. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/73 "2016-01-22T02:50:32Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Ok, found some from the 1800s. > > These were in South Carolina: > > A white man was executed in 1852 for the murder of a female slave. > > A white man was conviced in 1834 for killing a slave (no details given in the cite). > > In 1838, there is a record of the Governor of South Carolina refusing to give clemency to a youth who had wantonly killed a slave. There is no record of whether or not the execution was carried out, but without clemency, it probably was. > > All of these are cited in the book “The Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina” by Hoswell Meadows Henry (1914). > > The book also mentions the Broxton Bridge Horror. Basically, the son of a slave owner and an assistant captured a runaway slave, and spent an entire day and night torturing him to death. The two white men were executed. The Governor had the militia guarding the proceedings to make sure that an angry mob didn’t attempt to free the two white men. so we are up to 5… > [@](#): > > According to the book, from 1827 to 1854, there were 11 “bills charging murder”. Three were returned as “no bill” with one citing “bad treatment, not intentinoal murder” (which apparently everyone was cool with). One of the men in one of those no bill returns was charged again, possibly for the same crime, but was acquitted. Six men were tried and found not guilty. Two plead guilty, and one was found guilty. No sentences are recorded for any of the guilty verdicts. It says 11, it says 5 above and 6 here, is the 11 from both counts or is the count actually 16 (the five above plus 11 here). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/74 "2016-01-22T02:53:29Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > You could call this a war over slavery, and it’s very likely that had slavery not been an issue there would have been no war. But it was not the main direct cause of the war. IOW it wasn’t “let’s secede so that we can keep our slaves”. It was “these Northerners keep imposing their will on us (most notably WRT the slave issue) and we’re sick and tired of them pushing us around so we’re out of here”. Not really. States Rights was, as you noted earlier, a floating goal. The South adamantly rejected States Rights during Madison’s War, (1812 - 1815), when New England, which had not wanted the war and was suffering economically because of it, sent delegates to the Hartford convention to consider secession. Similarly, while the South spoke forcefully on the topic of Nullification, it was entirely opposed to the notion that Northern states had the right to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act and similar legislation. Beyond that, several seceding states explicitly noted in their declarations of secession/independence that they were seceding to ensure that their policies of slavery remained untouched by the Federal government. The notion that the South was simply tired of the North dictating policy, (something that was historically not even a legitimate claim as the South wielded somewhat more political power than the North through much of the first seventy years), is based on selective re-interpretations of events. Beyond that, every single conflict between the North and South was based on the economics of the South that only occurred because of slavery. Without slavery, the agrarian South would have looked more like the states created from the Northwest Ordinance and would have spent more effort building canals and railroads rather than opposing them and would have probably embraced manufacturing, placing their views more in line with those of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. The battle over tariffs, for example, was directly dependent on the Southern slave-based economy. The notion of a dominating North against which the poor South had to rebel was a fiction created during the presidential campaigns of 1860 and has no historical reality. The notion that a United States admitting more and more “Free” states that would eventually overwhelm Southern slave-voting states in Congress, thus endangering slavery, was a legitimate concern–but is still based on slavery. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/75 "2016-01-22T03:04:10Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > so we are up to 5… In one state, yes. I’d expect similar numbers from other states. I really didn’t expect it to be a very large number. > [@Robert163](#): > > It says 11, it says 5 above and 6 here, is the 11 from both counts or is the count actually 16 (the five above plus 11 here). I’m pulling stuff from different sections of the book, and they are talking about different sets of records. The numbers in that last set are not including anything from the other sets of numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/76 "2016-01-22T03:09:33Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > In one state, yes. I’d expect similar numbers from other states. > > I really didn’t expect it to be a very large number. > > I’m pulling stuff from different sections of the book, and they are talking about different sets of records. The numbers in that last set are not including anything from the other sets of numbers. Ok, there were 11 confederate states. Lets take a 50 year time period, some states/territories may be older than 50 years and some younger so we will use the figure of 50 years. So lets say each year 10 slaves are killed. A very conservative number, I think. (11x50x10= 5,550). 5,550. And we have 15 people that were maybe executed for killing a black person. Does that sound to you like a penal system that is focused on punishing white people who kill slaves? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/77 "2016-01-22T03:32:07Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > Ok, there were 11 confederate states. Lets take a 50 year time period, some states/territories may be older than 50 years and some younger so we will use the figure of 50 years. So lets say each year 10 slaves are killed. A very conservative number, I think. (11x50x10= 5,550). 5,550. And we have 15 people that were maybe executed for killing a black person. > > Does that sound to you like a penal system that is focused on punishing white people who kill slaves? Please take this hijack to a new thread. It is not relevant to the OP of this thread. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/78 "2016-01-22T04:25:17Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The notion that a United States admitting more and more “Free” states that would eventually overwhelm Southern slave-voting states in Congress, thus endangering slavery, was a legitimate concern–but is still based on slavery. That. That is the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/79 "2016-01-22T04:28:00Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Raping your slaves was not socially acceptable, either. Of course, modern DNA analysis will tell you that it wasn’t exactly rare, but that doesn’t mean that Southern society found the raping of slaves to be perfectly acceptable. A proper Southern gentleman wasn’t supposed to do that sort of thing. Talking about it wasn’t socially acceptable, modern DNA analysis shows that actually doing it was, in fact, quite acceptable and common. A proper Southern gentleman didn’t talk about boning his wife either, but that didn’t mean he was actually celibate. A proper Southern gentleman did an awful lot of non-gentlemanly stuff that he didn’t talk about. > [@](#): > > Slaves weren’t routinely beaten and tortured on a daily basis. If you were a slave, you knew that you would be beaten if you stepped out of line, so for the most part, you didn’t step out of line. You did what you were told, how you were told, when you were told to do it. I never made the claim you’re disagreeing with, that slaves were beaten and tortured on a daily basis. I did claim that a part of what those gentlemanly Southerners were fighting for was the right to torture black people at their discretion, and you appear to agree that torture was used routinely as a part of slave society, even if the threat of it was the most common use. I bring up the gruesome and disturbing side of slavery because people like to talk about it like it’s something out of Gone With The Wind or Song of the South, where slaves were maybe a little less well treated than poor whites, but were generally happy and singing cute songs and really. When in fact the whole system relied on torture to function (like you said) and raping slaves was a commonly used perk of owning them. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/80 "2016-01-22T07:37:30Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > If you didn’t have northern industrialist fighting politically against the southern agriculturalists, there wouldn’t have been a war. That argument breaks down pretty quickly. The mid-western and western states were all based around agricultural economies. If it had been an agriculture vs industry split, they would have joined with the south. But they all stayed with the United States. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766.md?page=5)