re: Do you think the Civil War was started over slavery?

the reason it happened in 1861 was due to radical southern democrat politicians brainwashing po white trash good ole boys who didn't own a single slave that Lincoln was gonna end the southern way of life. only 20% of southerners owned a slave.
most planters (50 slaves or more) were conservative and did not support secession. they had everything to lose in a war. those on the bottom (dirt farmers) had everything to gain in a war. when Lincoln won in 1860, the south bolted.

It was started over money. The northern share croppers didn't want to compete with super cheap labor. The south was full of racists that viewed their slaves as less than human property. They were also wealthy due to said slaves. The only "states rights" the south cared about protecting was the "right" to own slaves. The only social justice the north was looking for was a little more cash.

No. Sumpter firing started it. No chest for the north before. Slavery fed the fire.

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Stonehog

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y u do dis?

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This is very well said, and about as brief as you can get. I applaud you.

If anyone wants to read the link that Tbird posted to Georgia's reasons for succession, and few of you will because it is a very long wall of oldish English text, you will see what we mean when we talk about state's rights.

In a nutshell, northern manufacturing, mining, and fishing/shipping were all getting special treatment from the federal government through trade restrictions and such, for decades. Meanwhile the South was getting fricked on agriculture.

In 1841 or 42, a new Act of Congress ended a bunch of the crooked shite that had been going on for the northern economy, but didn't do a whole lot to end the buttfricking that the southern economy was taking.

This is when all of the northern interests came up with a new political party through which they could regain control of the federal government to put their special shite back in place. They knew the only thing they could do to unite enough northerners was to create an abolitionist party. The crooks called it the Republican Party.

This party failed in it's first round of elections in 1856 but finally got Lincoln in in 1860.

All under the guise of some great humanitarian plan to free the slaves.

The south said frick yall, not only are you NOT going to go back to your crooked business practices at our expense, you DAMN sure aren't going to outlaw slavery down here as a ruse to justify your crooked existence.

Read the Lincoln Diaries. He hated black people. Do some knowledge on how/why Liberia was formed and why they use a "dollar" as their currency.

Sorry for any spelling grammar mistakes, no time to preview.

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Nailed it in a nutshell ... well, a coconut shell, but it would take a battleship shell to take it back to 1812 and really start the whole explanation from the beginning.

What always kills me about these shithouse historians is that they honestly believe this country suddenly disintegrated overnight and boom, we South Carolinians were firing on Fort Sumter (which was manned entirely by Yankees, yet no one ever asked why a fort in the middle of Charleston harbor was manned entirely by Yankees) ... and boom, the Civil War started. It was all our fault and it just came out of nowhere.

Hell, it had been brewing for fifty years for all the reasons already stated but beginning with the knowledge that there was going to be another war with England ... yet this time we were going to be the aggressors in Canada. But the South didn't want anything to do with it - we were getting along fine trading with Britain who needed our goods for their wars with Napoleon.

But the Yankees, they had a case of the arse for both the South and the British and even Canada for that matter.

Thus the need for the Erie Canal on many levels. Fast access into the great lakes and Canada (although historians will tell you it was for trade purposes), in fact, it was first devised, in 1807, as a way to troop and logistical transport into Canada for the express purpose of taking more territory from the British ... we Southerners were dragged into the mess as part of an agreement to settle some unsettled issues leftover from our War of Independence ... even though all those issues could have been settled diplomatically by the South, with England, had the North not acted like little bitches and wanted more territory from Canada as well as revenge for some high seas stuff here and there.

The North took offense that the South sided with England's attempt to handle things diplomatically ... even though in the end we did fight them in the gulf and the battle of NOLA and all that ... but the North held a grudge.

Fact of the matter was that the north and South had never gotten along ... we were two different cultures altogether and we always had been from the inception of the country and the first settlers that landed on the various shores.

There were hatred issues between the north and South long before the first slave ships landed in the Caribbean.

So the Erie Canal was delayed by the War of 1812 and didn't get underway, the big dig, until 1817 and it was funded by Southern money as eluded to in Deeprig's post.

Now ... pay attention.

Sectionalism - everyone knows what Sectionalism is, amirite?

Tarrifs caused a lot of Sectionalism long before the first shots were fired beginning with the funding of the Erie Canal and later the Tariffs contributed to sectionalism between the North and the South really beginning with The Tariff of 1824 that was instituted in order to protect northern industry even though the South advocated lower tariffs in order to take advantage of tariff reciprocity from England and other countries that purchased raw agricultural materials from the South. Then came The Tariff of 1828, also known as the Tariff of Abominations, and the Tariff of 1832 further accelerated sectionalism between the North and the South. South Carolina threatened to secede in 1832 over the tariff issue. Not a fricking word was mentioned about slavery then ... and that's what pisses me off when we get into these discussions and all you shithouse historians quoting your bullshite speeches from 1860 and to postwar ... well, nevermind. Because in 1833 in a half-hearted effort to ease tense North-South relations, Congress lowered the tariffs and then in 1856, as Deeprig alluded to, the South gained greater influence over tariff policy and made subsequent reductions which really pissed off the North and BAM ... now we're getting to what led to the Civil War and slavery was not the prime fricking issue except in the disillusioned minds of the fricktard revisionist historians and those who worship them.

It's late and I'm drunk as piss and that's all I can do tonight. I can barely see much less type.

Some of you need to do some fricking homework and get off your Obango pedestals.

Edited: 1932 to 1832 because I'm drunk. frick it. I'll reread it in the morning.

Unpopular around here I know but the letters, constitutions, and formal documents make it clear as day that slavery was the issue.

That said, I DO believe economic issues played a role - the problem was the biggest one the wealth/dolla dolla bills associated with slavery (later sharecropping and in my state both black folks and white folks were sharecroppers post-slavery to a much a higher degree than elsewhere).

Keep in mind tho' I'm from an area within an area (E. TN) that was fiercely pro-Union and antislavery (first paper dedicated solely to abolition was started here just outside of Knoxville and the region was considered the 'freest soil in the entire Union (north or south) to talk abolition. We were also openly condemned and reviled by the rest of the South for 'mingling too much socially' with black folks and treating black folks like humans. I knew old timers (diehard mountain republicans - different breed) who actually went to their graves calling democrats rebs.

I didn't always know this (and much more about my area) but I'm damn proud of this region now that I do.

More about States rights than slavery but slavery certainly did contribute

No ... you're absolutely right. East Tennessee from Knoxville to Bristol was mostly Yankee ... still is for that matter. It's a very pro-Obama, pro-Democrat liberal area even today. Some of the most obnoxious blind destructive liberal progressive idiots this side of the Mississippi still come outta there. Hell ... that evil POS Johnson was from there.

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It's funny to me that those people that claim the war was fought over states' rights cannot name a single state right other than slavery that was lost after the war was over.

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It's funny to me that people like you would post something like that.

lulz

Good gosh man ... we were a conquered country! We lost all of our rights! Reconstruction is why there is so much bitterness lingering still today.

Southern states did not have all of our states' rights restored until WW I ... and even them only out of necessity for another war.

Slavery motivated the elite who, as always, sent the poor to do the fighting. Most Confederate soldiers couldn't even afford slaves. My home state of Virginia didn't secede until the Union raised an army to invade.