Ok. I'm not going to get into another endless argument over this so I'll just post the information and let people read it. In the southern declarations of secession they said, point blank, that one of the main reasons they were seceding was to protect slavery and to allow it's "natural expansion" into the western territories.
link 1:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
In his first inaugural address Lincoln said that while he couldn't end slavery where it already existed, he didn't see any constitutional reason why it had to be allowed to spread to the new territories. He also said the constitution was silent on whether fugitive slaves had to be returned by state or by federal authority.
link 2:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
The southern states saw both as and attack on the institution of slavery and said as much in the declarations of secession. (See link 1).
As for the banks, they international bankers were very much AGAINST Lincoln and they funded the south.
See:
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/lincoln3.htm
That should come as no surprise. The previous president to oppose secession (threatened to hang secessionists) was Andrew Jackson and he was very much against the international bankers.
http://haysvillelibrary.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/andrew-jackson-the-nullification-crisis/
Now about this time someone might be thinking "But if secession was in part about slavery why would slave owner Jackson be against it"? Because
when the south finally seceded they did so for multiple reasons ONE of which was slavery! People get stuck in this "it was either about slavery or it wasn't" mode and don't do a broader analysis. Remember,
when South Carolina first tried to secede they got little support. It wasn't until slavery became an issue that support for secession reached critical mass.
Now, I know already that posting this will do absolutely no good. People will probably go off on "Lincoln was really an evil racist SOB that hated blacks" tangent, or "Sherman really did the south in" tangent or my favorite "northerners were racists too" tangent. I've even seen someone go so far as to claim the declarations of secession were "made up" or that they "didn't mean anything because not every man, woman and child in the south signed them" (forgetting that the Declaration of Independence was also signed by a minority of people.)
I'm not sure where the "we can't admit that slavery was even a partial factor in the civil war" mentality comes from, but I suspect it has something to do with the moral stigma attached (in modern times) to slavery. In fact in the past I've seen people jump to the "you're just trying to put the south down" argument when I've said no such thing. The truth is nobody is perfect and no society is perfect. Ron Paul, no defender of Lincoln or "southern hater" by any stretch of the imagination, had this to say about slavery and the civil war.
link 3:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul76.html
Instead of guaranteeing liberty equally for all people, the authors themselves yielded to the democratic majority’s demands that they compromise on the issue of slavery. This mistake, plus others along the way, culminated in a Civil War that surely could have been prevented with clearer understanding and a more principled approach to the establishment of a constitutional republic.
That's a common sense approach to evaluating the history of the civil war that I wish more people would take.
Regards,
John M. Drake
Good grief. It's this kind of stupid hair splitting that makes such arguments a chore. Even when someone attempts to agree with the basis of your argument you still chose to be contrary. Whatever. Go do your civil war re-enacting and pretend the south was a perfect utopia that never did anything wrong.
