# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/121 "2016-01-24T16:34:58Z")
Well, technically, there was due process in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 of a sort, because in order to capture a fugitive, you had to apply for a warrant from a court appointed commissioner, and show “satisfactory proof”, although in practice, “satisfactory proof” tended to be “eh, whatever.” But the reason that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed was because this: > [@](#): > > Most northerners would concede that the Constitution said a runaway slave had to be sent back to their owner. was becoming no longer true. You were getting state laws that said that state facilities and state law enforcement wasn’t allowed to cooperate with the earlier Fugitive Slave Law, and there were a bunch of cases of jury nullification, where juries ruled that people who were pretty obviously slaves weren’t slaves. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/122 "2016-01-24T16:49:16Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > To be fair, the return of runaway slaves was guaranteed by the Constitution at the time. Even the most ardent states rights supporter would agree that the things specifically mentioned in the Constitution to be national in character are an exception to states rights. This is a completely false claim. Ardent States Rights supporters frequently and loudly object to the 14th amendment, especially when it’s applied to minorities that they don’t like. The Confederate states, which people are arguing were pro-States Rights, objected to the first amendment by censoring abolitionist mail in the years leading up to the Civil War. > [@](#): > > Is it hypocritical for someone to claim to support states rights but not object to having an army or allowing Congress to print money? Having a Federal army and printing money don’t touch on States Rights, requiring other states to arrest and extradite their own residents without a trial is very much against anything that could reasonably be called “States Rights”. ---
**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 24, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/123 "2016-01-24T19:51:48Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > You were getting state laws that said that state facilities and state law enforcement wasn’t allowed to cooperate with the earlier Fugitive Slave Law, and there were a bunch of cases of jury nullification, where juries ruled that people who were pretty obviously slaves weren’t slaves. The 1850 law certainly didn’t fix the problem. Let’s call running away a crime for the sake of argument. The law took a process in which some people who were probably guilty were found innocent and replaced in with a process in which virtually everyone was found guilty, regardless of whether they were innocent or guilty. The post-1850 due process was even more biased than the pre-1850 due process had been, albeit in the opposite direction. And politically, it was a disaster for the slave states. Prior to 1850, most people in northern states had “live and let live” attitude towards southern slavery. They figured slavery was the concern of southern people who lived where slavery existed. Abolitionists were looked down on as people who were trying to interfere in somebody else’s affairs. And with slavery being far away, it was easy to ignore its evil. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 changed that. Now it was southerners who were coming to northern communities and telling people what to do. The previous annoyance directed against abolitionists who had talked about interfering in local affairs in the south was now redirected against slave owners who were actually interfering in local affairs in the north. And far worse to the slave owner cause was the legal principle the law promoted. Prior to 1850 most people had regarded slavery as an area for state control. The southern states pushed to have slavery put under federal control so the national government could be used to support slavery. They got their wish but it quickly turned on them. Once they gave the federal government authority over slavery, the power they wanted to be used to support slavery could also be used to oppose slavery. The southern states suddenly found themselves trying to rebuild the states rights argument that they had just successfully torn down. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/124 "2016-01-24T20:03:37Z")
> [@Anarcho\_Liberalist](#): > > I could go on and on about what I read and heard, but the point is: I’m not buying the simple view anymore. I find it very hard to believe that in the 1860’s the Union spent millions and sent thousands of young men into battle over a late 20th century abstract idea of universal human rights. The cities in the north didn’t have slavery but I’m pretty sure the average WASP didn’t consider a black man as his equal, so why care so much how they were treated in the deep south? The secession was most definitely over slavery - it was absolutely the primary cause. Stealing from another here, but “People who know nothing about the Civil War say it was about slavery. People who know a little say it was about States rights. But people who know a lot say it was about slavery again.” The North went to wear to preserver the Union after the South seceded. But the South seceded over slavery. You can read the declarations of causes of secession from various states to see this is true. Here are a couple of the stronger examples. > [@](#): > > **Georgia:** > > The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. > [@](#): > > **Mississippi:** > > In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. > > Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Now, the issue of slavery had been a problem for a long, long time. There was “[Bleeding Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas)” in the second half of the 1850s, but also the [Missouri Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise) of 1820. It was actually the Kansas-Nebraska act effectively overturning the Missouri Compromise that led to the Bleeding Kansas events, if I recall correctly. So that the nation should eventually end up going to war over it isn’t really all that surprising in hindsight. The hostility between states and [congressmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner) in the 1850s was astounding. Slavery, and more specifically, the expansion of slavery into new territories/states was the driving issue for the South to secede. You have to understand that the south (or at least Virginia) had been in control of the government at the Federal level since the Revolution. Most presidents had owned slaves or been slavery friendly or neutral (not all John Quincy Adam was anti-slavery). Take a look at the Wikipedia articles showing the seat-distribution in the houses of congress through those years. The party stronger in the south, but weaker in Northeast (Democratic-Republican party) had overwhelming majority in both houses from 1803 until 1825 (usually over 70% of seats to one party, and sometimes 80%+). After this, new parties formed and the supermajority went away, and they become much more evenly split. First there was the Jacksonian (more popular in south) and Anti-Jacksonian parties. There was several sessions where Jacksonian had both house and senate, and several where it was split. Then in 1837, there were the Whig and Democratic (popular in south) parties. Many sessions after this still had Democratic majority in both houses, some were split, and I think one Whig. But then the Republican party, with anti-slavery built into its purpose was created in 1854. That was a time when things were heating up. The Republican party itself was threat to the slaveholding states. and yet it only formed as result of the Kansas-Nebraska act (which was driven by the South). Like I said, a loop of incompatible values and goals. My point about the changing make up of congress is that the constituency was changing. More and more people were coming to the northern, non-slaveholding-states, and voting accordingly. And more and more money was coming from non-slave-driven industries. So the power of slave-holding states was lessening. The government tried the Missouri compromise (one new free state admitted, one new slave state admitted) to keep the balance of power between slave-holding and non-slave states in the senate, but that just couldn’t hold but for so long, and polarization increased. And states in the house of Representatives are allotted seats by population, so as the population of the northern states increased, so too did their representation. No, most Northerners did not see black people as equal. Even many abolitionists did not see them as equal (a few did, though). And many would have been fine laving slavery alone in the south. The problem was expansion into new territories. The South needed new territories/states to be slave states. If they weren’t, they’d likely vote against the needs/wants of slave states. If Republicans continued to gain power, slavery might even become illegal. The south was very much afraid of being **outvoted**. The northers were more likely to want them free because if they went out west (and some were immigrants with not much holding them to the cities they were in), they wanted there to be land available for them to claim - if big plantations had all the land, there’d be nothing left for them. A few rich, many poor. And well, we don’t call them “Planter-Aristocracy” for no reason. The anti-slavery sentiment of those who wanted new territories to be free were not generally about abolition or equality. Heck, Oregon was free, but banned any new black people from settling there in 1849. There was a fundamental difference in culture. Different versions of “The American Dream.” On one side, you had each man dreaming of his own homestead, owing land, working for himself. On the other, the dream of one day being one of those great, powerful, rich plantation-owners. Of course, that’s a vast over-simplification and only deals with the agricultural sector, anyway. But anyway, the election of Republican president was alarming to the South. At the very least, Lincoln was dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery westward, which meant slave-holding states would become a permanent minority in government, meaning they’d be outvoted and not have their needs (regarding slavery) met at a federal level. And, of course, the odds of slavery itself being outlawed go up as more and more of the nation thinks it should be. And, yes, many thought Lincoln planned to take action to deprive them of their slaves right then (think of all the fearmongering current US presidents get regarding “taking our guns”, “FEMA camps” and “martial law” and multiply by 10,000). Ironically, Lincoln had no intent of doing so at the time, and he was only able to manage the “Emancipation Proclamation” _because_ they rebelled. However, I will say this: perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I think they were right about their long-term prognosis - if no more slave states were being admitted, they at the very least in for increasing lessening of power with slavery eventually being ended. Much later than in the original timeline, though. I actually wonder if seceding sooner might not have been better for the South’s chances of success in secession, but don’t know enough about it to say. So, the slavery issue had been causing problems for decades, and with the election of a Republican president, the South rebelled. Then the Confederates fired on Union troops at Ft. Sumter. So, the Union went to war to keep the Union (not let them secede). Freeing the slaves as a cause came only later. But the reason for the war was Southern secession, and the South seceded over slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/125 "2016-01-24T22:24:21Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > [Conscription] wasn’t as bad as the slavery of the antebellum South, but I don’t know what else you could call it. I had to do what I was told, even if it was extremely dangerous or morally repugnant to me, and they could kill me if I refused. I had to eat what and when I was told to, sleep only where and when allowed. I had to wear a uniform that made it clear to everyone within visual range that I was of a lower class than those in authority, and I could be punished if, in the opinion of someone in authority, I was not sufficiently obsequious to him. > > Yes, I was paid ($139 a month to start, IIRC), but so were many Roman slaves. This analogy doesn’t make sense to me, because as a draftee _you had a predetermined fixed term of service and a raft of military regulations codifying your rights and obligations_. Slaves in pre-Civil-War America were nowhere near so lucky. Your situation as a military conscript seems far more akin to a form of bonded labor or indentured service, where a servant agrees through an indenture contract to serve a master for some specified number of years, than to actual chattel slavery where the slave (and any offspring they may produce) is literally the master’s legal _property_ in perpetuity. Indentured service persisted in some areas of the US (especially for immigrants) even into the 20th century, and none of the antislavery laws applied to it, or to military drafts. I’m not arguing that either indentured service or military conscription is a _good_ thing, but it seems way out of line to describe either of them as tantamount to real chattel slavery in the antebellum US. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/126 "2016-01-24T23:54:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I’m not arguing that either indentured service or military conscription is a _good_ thing, but it seems way out of line to describe either of them as tantamount to real chattel slavery in the antebellum US. You would have a point if I had done that, rather than explicitly saying it was not. You might also look at the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant) on indentured service, which calls it “white slavery” when it was not voluntary. But since this is off topic, I will leave it at that. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/127 "2016-01-25T01:39:25Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > You would have a point if I had done that, rather than explicitly saying it was not. Um, no, you did in fact say that military conscription in your opinion **could not be called anything other than slavery** , _tout court_. Yes, you acknowledged that you didn’t consider conscription to be the absolutely _worst form_ of slavery. But my point is that calling it slavery at all is a gross exaggeration, at best. > [@TonySinclair](#): > > You might also look at the Wikipedia article on indentured service, which calls it “white slavery” when it was not voluntary. Wrong again: the article calls it “white slavery” when white people were _ **illegally kidnapped** _ to be sold into indentured servitude. Which is dramatically different from being **legally required** as a citizen to perform a fixed term of military service. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/128 "2016-01-25T02:19:07Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Um, no, you did in fact say that military conscription in your opinion **could not be called anything other than slavery** , _tout court_. FFS, you even quoted me saying it wasn’t as bad as the antebellum south, and saying it was closer to the Roman form. Then you turned around and said, “it seems way out of line to describe either of them as tantamount to real chattel slavery in the antebellum US.” Do you know what “tantamount” means? > [@](#): > > Wrong again: the article calls it “white slavery” when white people were _ **illegally kidnapped** _ to be sold into indentured servitude. Which is dramatically different from being **legally required** as a citizen to perform a fixed term of military service. So whatever is legal isn’t slavery? I guess that means it wasn’t truly slavery in the antebellum South or Rome, either. And again, this is a hijack. If you still disagree with me, I’ll just have to live with that shame. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/129 "2016-01-25T10:46:09Z")
Slavery was in do doubt the underlying cause of the war. Frankly though the USA was probably going to have a civil war eventually with the states bickering over states rights. Some might say it had already had 2 before - the revolution itself and the whiskey rebellion which required federal troops. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/130 "2016-01-25T11:25:48Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Slavery was in do doubt the underlying cause of the war. > > Frankly though the USA was probably going to have a civil war eventually with the states bickering over states rights. Some might say it had already had 2 before - the revolution itself and the whiskey rebellion which required federal troops. There may have been various local revolts from time to time, but there is no reason to believe that a full fledged civil war was inevitable. As noted earlier, every single “states rights” issue was, itself, rooted in slavery. Without an issue that was so massively entwined in economy and social organization and culture, there is nothing inevitable about such a conflict. The Whiskey Rebellion’s involvement with Federal troops set a precedent that made even local rebellions less likely. The Mormons considered a defensive, armed resistance, but eventually came to a peaceful resolution, (the Mountain Meadows Massacre, notwithstanding). ---
**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 25, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/131 "2016-01-25T15:54:07Z")
How was the Whiskey Rebellion a states rights issue? The protesters were as opposed to the Pennsylvanian government as they were to the federal government. State militia fought alongside federal troops to put down the rebellion. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/132 "2016-01-26T00:16:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > How was the Whiskey Rebellion a states rights issue? The protesters were as opposed to the Pennsylvanian government as they were to the federal government. State militia fought alongside federal troops to put down the rebellion. I don’t think that the allusion to the Whiskey Rebellion was in reference to states rights, but to the notion of the country inevitably having a civil war over some issue or another, using that insurrection as an anticipatory event. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/133 "2016-01-26T17:03:22Z")
This is where I am getting most of my information. It might be useful to share a common set of facts about the battle of fort sumter. It was not an unprovoked attack that came out of nowhere. It (or something like it) was probably inevitable considering the situation and the tone and tenor of the times. > **[Battle of Fort Sumter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter)** > > Confederate victory > The Battle of Fort Sumter (also the Attack on Fort Sumter or the Fall of Fort Sumter) (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina, by the South Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender of the fort by the United States Army, beginning the American Civil War. > Following the declaration of secession by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, its authorities demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. O... > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This is not anything close to a reasonable excuse, in my opinion. If the Southern states had written letters, conducted protests, lobbied Congress, and the like, for US forces to withdraw from this specific piece of property that the Southern states no longer considered US property, for some period of months, then perhaps there would be some slight justification that the US soldiers were an attacking or offensive or occupying force. THEY DID!!! The governor of South Carolina asked in 1860 (the battle of fort sumter was in April of 1861) then blockaded the fort to prevent resupply for several months and the attack only came after Lincoln was elected and he sent a military convoy to resupply the fort (and even then the fort was given an ultimatum to leave or suffer attack). That seems like a pretty basic flaw in your understanding of what happened. I linked the wikipedia article above so we can operate from a common set of facts. I am not trying to make excuses for the south, I’m not a big fan of the ante-bellum south (or Jim crow south , or even modern day republican dominated south). I am telling you what I think their perspective was. I think it could very well be reasonable for them to attack a military fort next to a large city deep inside their territory. > [@](#): > > But that doesn’t come close to the Fort Sumter attack. It’s not at all reasonable to say, for the real world Fort Sumter attack at the beginning of the war, that it was anything but an attack on US forces, on US property. That is your opinion. The folks in the south Carolina disagreed, they might have viewed Fort Sumter as a hostile occupying force. There is a concept of pre-emptive attacks, you don’t have to wait for the other guy to actually fire on you before you can defend yourself. Fort Sumter trained their cannons at Charleston within days of the secession. South Carolina repeatedly called for the evacuation of the fort by the north, they north declined. So they laid seige to starve them out. The North sent a military convoy to resupply Fort sumter. The south could not effectively blockade the fort so they gave fort sumter an ultimatum. For sumter declined. Then they fired on fort sumter. What part of that seems “not at all reasonable”? > [@](#): > > If the Brits had been working there, peacefully, for more than 30 years, and we attack them out of the blue? Then definitely us. Fort sumter was not attacked out of the blue. Do you have a cite stating otherwise? The attack was not only predictable, the occupants of fort sumter were given an opportunity (several in fact) to vacate. In fact, after the battle, the occupants were permitted to leave peacefully with no casualties from enemy fire. So what exactly did we do about British military bases we when we declared independence? I don’t recall seeing any British military bases on mapquest. Is it possible that it doesn’t fucking matter who fired the first shot, the war was inevitable not because the south really wanted to fight the north but because the north wouldn’t let the south go and the south would not stay because they wanted to keep their slaves and the balance of congress was shifting as new states were being created that had no use for slave labor? The notion of what America meant was still unclear at the time. The civil war cleared things up pretty nicely, hell we didn’t have national parks until after the civil war. I think the notion of federal property was largely limited to DC, the territories and some property that became federal property as additional states were admitted to the union. The land of the 13 original colonies were probably seen as belonging to the 13 colonies until after the civil war. > [@jayjay](#): > > No, that US property was inside the United States. And so were those soldiers. The Confederacy never had any more legitimacy thann SCA kingdom, regardless of its delusional inhabitants. I’m pretty sure that the governor of South carolina didn’t think that Fort Sumter was on US property, I’m pretty sure that the thought that the fort in the middle of charleston harbor was part of south carolina. I think war was pretty much inevitable given the tone and tenor of the times and the notion that the Civil War wouldn’t have happened if the south never fired on Fort Sumter as it was being resupplied by northern warships seems naive. I think its also silly to place all the blame for fort sumter on one side. What would you do if hostile force on Ellis Island trained their cannons on manhattan? > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And there was a legal obligation. The people in the southern states were American citizens, even if many of them didn’t wish to be anymore. But all of them were being denied their rights as American citizens by the secessionist governments that were preventing the American government from protecting its citizens. So the American government had to use force to reassert its authority. (And this wasn’t a completely disingenuous argument. There really were a lot of people in the seceding states that had opposed secession and wanted to remain American citizens.) There were a lot of loyalists during the revolutionary war as well. I’m not saying that the north was unjustified in taking military action but the notion that the south started it and it was all their fault is a little one sided unless you view their secession as the proximate cause of everything. > [@](#): > > Finally, there was the biggest issue: the United States didn’t start the war. The Confederates did. They attacked the United States, which then defended itself by shooting back. The United States didn’t choose to wage war; war was waged on us. I’m not sure that bears very much resemblance to the truth. Fort Sumter is in Charleston bay and it had its cannon trained on Charleston (its a pretty big city in South Carolina). South Carolina laid seige to fort sumter then Lincoln sent a military convoy to resupply the fort. > [@Pantastic](#): > > From the perspective of international law, they weren’t. Really!?!?! Which international law are you referring to? > [@](#): > > Have you ever heard of Hong Kong or Guantanamo Bay? If China had attacked Hong Kong before 1997, or Cuba had attacked the US, they would be the aggressor. Same thing if the US had allowed Britain to buy or lease land and set up a military base in US soil. Please link to the lease or purchase agreement between south carolina and the united states that gave the federal government ownership of the islands in charleston bay. Please link to a cite that shows the brits aiming cannons from hong kong island to a large city in china or the United states aiming cannons from guantanamo towards Havana. [quote] If you’re actually planning to peacefully split the country and go your separate ways, you divide up the sovereign debt of the former mother country. It’s what would have happened if Scotland voted to leave the UK, and what did happen with the USSR split up into separate states. If the US did let the South secede without taking their share of the debt, then there would be a huge incentive for other parts of the US to secede (especially if they could get Federal money spent for them) and leave their debt with the ‘US’, eventually leading to some rump ‘US’ with no economy and a lot of debt. Or, more realistically no one would lend the US money at reasonable rates, which would be devastating too.[/quote How much do you think the national debt was in 1860? You realize that we paid off the entire national debt in 18356, right? Our antional debt was about 60 million before the civil war. That was about $2/person, or just over one day’s wage. I don’t think anyone was trying to run way from debt and if it came down to it the south would have paid. what they couldn’t do was wait for slavery to be abolished. You are the only person I have ever seen express the notion that the national debt justified the civil war. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/134 "2016-01-26T17:08:22Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > No, and I stated the opposite, so I’m not sure why you would think I said that. The issue of slavery does, however, rather break any arguments that secession was justified from a perspective of individual rights, voluntary association, or any other moral standpoint - and there are a lot of revisionists who make said arguments. How does slavery “break” any arguments that secession was justified from a perspective of individual rights, voluntary association, or any other moral standpoint? Are you simply saying that slavery makes the south wrong about everything because your arguments seem awfully close to saying that. Slavery is horrible but if you can’t divorce that issue from all the rest then you are simply going to see {south=slavery=evil} and nothing else really matters. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/135 "2016-01-26T17:10:01Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > It always chaps my hide when southern apologists say that most of the Southerners didn’t own slaves, as if that’s significant. Most Americans didn’t care who ruled in Korea or Vietnam, either. Most didn’t care how much money Halliburton made in Iraq. Most English peasants probably didn’t care whether or not Henry V ruled France. And most Mongols didn’t care what happened in Poland. > > Wars have always been fought over what the ruling oligarchy wanted, whether it was a kingdom, a dictatorship, or a democracy. It doesn’t matter if most southerners didn’t own slaves. Most of them were in favor of slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/136 "2016-01-26T17:13:43Z")
> [@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”. I disagree. It was mostly "let’s secede so we can keep our slaves. There was really only one issue that the north was pushing them on and frankly the pushing had been mostly going the other way since the Dredd Scott decision. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/137 "2016-01-26T17:25:31Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > This is where I am getting most of my information. It might be useful to share a common set of facts about the battle of fort sumter. It was not an unprovoked attack that came out of nowhere. It (or something like it) was probably inevitable considering the situation and the tone and tenor of the times. > > [Battle of Fort Sumter - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter) > > THEY DID!!! The governor of South Carolina asked in 1860 (the battle of fort sumter was in April of 1861) then blockaded the fort to prevent resupply for several months and the attack only came after Lincoln was elected and he sent a military convoy to resupply the fort (and even then the fort was given an ultimatum to leave or suffer attack). That seems like a pretty basic flaw in your understanding of what happened. I linked the wikipedia article above so we can operate from a common set of facts. The first shots of the Civil War were indeed at (or near) Fort Sumter, but they were fired on [January 9th, 1861](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter#Civil_War), several months before the Battle of Fort Sumter, by cadets at The Citadel, to prevent Fort Sumter troops from being resupplied. _Those assholes attacked US forces days after US troops moved to Fort Sumter_. So no, it’s not a flaw in my understanding. US troops moved from one base to another that had been under construction for a while, and when US logistical forces tried to resupply them, they were attacked, and the resupply was prevented. > [@](#): > > I am not trying to make excuses for the south, I’m not a big fan of the ante-bellum south (or Jim crow south , or even modern day republican dominated south). I am telling you what I think their perspective was. I think it could very well be reasonable for them to attack a military fort next to a large city deep inside their territory. From the point of view of “slavery must be defended and preserved at all costs”, the attack made sense. But I don’t think that’s what you’re saying. US troops moved from one fort to another that US engineers had been constructing for a while, and days later a supply mission was attacked. Those were the first shots of the Civil War. > [@](#): > > That is your opinion. The folks in the south Carolina disagreed, they might have viewed Fort Sumter as a hostile occupying force. There is a concept of pre-emptive attacks, you don’t have to wait for the other guy to actually fire on you before you can defend yourself. > > Fort Sumter trained their cannons at Charleston within days of the secession. South Carolina repeatedly called for the evacuation of the fort by the north, they north declined. So they laid seige to starve them out. The North sent a military convoy to resupply Fort sumter. The south could not effectively blockade the fort so they gave fort sumter an ultimatum. For sumter declined. Then they fired on fort sumter. > > What part of that seems “not at all reasonable”? When the SC assholes, days after announcing secession and after US troops moved to another fort, fired guns at a resupply mission, it’s not reasonable to blame anyone else but those assholes for starting the war. > [@](#): > > Fort sumter was not attacked out of the blue. Do you have a cite stating otherwise? See above. SC assholes fired at US troops days after secession, and days after US troops moved from one base to another, waiting for supplies. > [@](#): > > The attack was not only predictable, the occupants of fort sumter were given an opportunity (several in fact) to vacate. In fact, after the battle, the occupants were permitted to leave peacefully with no casualties from enemy fire. Bullshit – they were attacked within days of moving to Sumter. > [@](#): > > So what exactly did we do about British military bases we when we declared independence? I don’t recall seeing any British military bases on mapquest. > > Is it possible that it doesn’t fucking matter who fired the first shot, the war was inevitable not because the south really wanted to fight the north but because the north wouldn’t let the south go and the south would not stay because they wanted to keep their slaves and the balance of congress was shifting as new states were being created that had no use for slave labor? The notion of what America meant was still unclear at the time. The civil war cleared things up pretty nicely, hell we didn’t have national parks until after the civil war. I think the notion of federal property was largely limited to DC, the territories and some property that became federal property as additional states were admitted to the union. The land of the 13 original colonies were probably seen as belonging to the 13 colonies until after the civil war. Sure it matters who fired the first shot – the South definitively started the war, because they could see the writing on the wall – slavery was unsustainable with the South remaining in the USA. They could see that slavery would have inevitably ended had they remained in the long term, even though the North was willing to allow them, in the short and maybe medium term, to keep their slaves. All the blame for the Civil War lies with the South, for building up a society based on extreme brutality and oppression, and for being unwilling to see a future without it. The North was a shitty place too, with regards to the treatment of black people, but not as bad as the South, and more importantly for this discussion, _they didn’t start a fucking war to support this mistreatment_. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/138 "2016-01-26T17:37:01Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You are the only person I have ever seen express the notion that the national debt justified the civil war. I never made a claim that the national debt justified the civil war, and it is an absurd strawman, so you haven’t seen anyone express that notion. Rather, I ‘expressed the notion’ that the South was not behaving like a part of a country attempting to peacefully secede and listed that as a specific example of behavior supporting that claim. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > How does slavery “break” any arguments that secession was justified from a perspective of individual rights, voluntary association, or any other moral standpoint? Are you simply saying that slavery makes the south wrong about everything because your arguments seem awfully close to saying that. Slavery was a core value of the Confederacy. Perusing the documents of secession clearly shows that the Confederacy believed in it as a moral good, and wanted to found the country on the principle of preserving the institution at all costs. When you are defending a country founded specifically on the principle of denying people their individual rights and denying them the option to voluntarily associate, you can’t legitimately make an argument from a principle of individual rights for your actions in founding the country diametrically opposed to individual rights. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/139 "2016-01-26T17:43:27Z")
You know **Damuri Ajashi** , it’s hard to justify the righteousness of the Confederate [Casus belli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casus_belli#American_Civil_War) of the civil war; while simultaneously denying the righteousness of all the Confederate’s slaving/belligerent/domineering actions that lead them to start the Civil War. Contrary to what you claim, who fired the first shot **does matter**. Now if (as you say) it doesn’t matter, what were the reasons that drove both sides to attack/not attack? If everyone was to throw out _Casus belli_; the Confederacy would still come out as Nazish-evil in comparison to the union. This whole discussion just reminds me of what I read about the war from Ta-Nehisi Coates. It wasn’t a tragedy, but legitimately the most ethical war ever fought by the USA. Take pride in it my American brothers. ---
**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 26, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766/140 "2016-01-26T19:30:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > This is where I am getting most of my information. It might be useful to share a common set of facts about the battle of fort sumter. It was not an unprovoked attack that came out of nowhere. It (or something like it) was probably inevitable considering the situation and the tone and tenor of the times. > > [Battle of Fort Sumter - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter) But [just going by that article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter#Decisions_for_war), it was absolutely seen–North and South–that the question of who fired the first shot was a hugely consequential political decision: > [@](#): > > Lincoln and his new cabinet struggled with the decisions of whether to reinforce the forts, and how. They were also concerned about whether to take actions that might start open hostilities and which side would be perceived as the aggressor as a result. Similar discussions and concerns were occurring in the Confederacy…President Davis, like his counterpart in Washington, preferred that his side not be seen as the aggressor…Only Secretary of State Robert Toombs opposed [the decision to attack Fort Sumter]: he reportedly told Jefferson Davis the attack “will lose us every friend at the North. You will only strike a hornet’s nest. … Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-america-civil-war-fought-over-slavery/743766.md?page=8)