"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message link.net...
"Larry Roll K3LT" wrote:

(snip) If the Civil War wasn't about racism and slavery,
then (snip)


If the Civil War was about slavery, then why was there a war at all?

Because the states with the most slaves could see that eventually they
would either have to face the complete abolition of slavery *or* leave
the Union.

Prior
to the war, the slave states were the majority in both the House and Senate,
insuring no legislation could be passed to end slavery.

When? Check a map of 1860. There were 19 slave states, of which 4
stayed in the Union. Delaware was a slave state but it did not secede.

Slavery was only
abolished after the war by not allowing the former Confederate States (which
included several, but not all, of the slave states) to participate in that
vote.

The Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1863. It legally freed
most (but not all) of the slaves.

The South has a lot to answer for, IMHO. (snip)

Why would they have any more to answer for than the Northern states that
profited from the sale of slaves?

Which states were they? Slavery was abolished in the North by 1804. In
many northern states it was abolished before the Constitution was
written.

Or more to answer for than those who used
indentured or bound black workers in the North, even into the early 1900's?

Where was that done?

Indentured servitude is in no way comparable to slavery, btw.
Indentured servants *voluntarily* agree to work for a specified period
of time, usually as payment for training or a debt.

Or more to answer for than the many countries around the world which
practiced slavery in this last century (the 1900's), the previous century,
or in the many centuries before that?

(snip) Modern-day Rebels with the Confederate flags on
their pickup trucks don't do much to heal the wounds of
the past. (snip)

Perhaps because they have absolutely no responsibility for what happened
in a past long before they were born.

All depends on what that flag is meant to symbolize.

--

Here's what I learned about the War Between the States:

First off, it didn't start as a war to end slavery, but rather as a
war to keep the Union together. Lincoln's early (1861-1862) writings
make it clear his focus *at that time* was on preserving the Union at
almost any cost.

The Constitution, for all its wisdom, did not have any clear provision
for what should be done if one or more state(s) decided that they
simply wanted out of the Union at one point or another.

When the Constitution was written, there was a fairly even balance
between slave and free states. Compromises were reached in order to
get the new Union formed as a country rather than a confederation.
These were compromises with evil, and they could not last forever.

But over time the two parts of the US developed in such radically
different ways that the compromises and balance could no longer be
maintained. It was clear by 1855 or so that slavery's days were
numbered because eventually the abolitionists would reach enough of a
political majority to simply outlaw it everywhere. The trend was clear
- it was only a matter of time. Revolts like John Brown's and the
strengthening abolitionist movement made the moral issue unavoidable,
and the Supremes were starting to come around, too.

So, given the choice between leaving the Union or abolishing slavery,
15 states tried to leave. Some outside the 15 states said "Let them
go", but it was clear to Lincoln and others that if even one state was
allowed to secede, the Union would eventually fragment - and those
fragments would be ripe for takeover from other countries, many of
whom were patiently waiting for the "American experiment" to fail.

Once the war began, however, it slowly became clear to Lincoln and
many others that what had caused the split in the first place was the
idea that a country could proclaim itself "free" and yet allow
slavery. It became clear to him that the only way to preserve the
Union was to abolish slavery completely. Thus the Emancipation
Proclamation and the constitutional amendment.

Is any of the above incorrect?

What's interesting is that Great Britain, from whom the colonies split
on the issue of "all men [sic] are created equal", abolished slavery
years before the USA did.

73 de Jim, N2EY