re: Was the civil war over slavery?

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Yes, the number of families that owned slaves were less than 50%, but a lot of those that didn't own slaves just couldn't afford them, but would have liked to one day.

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It was slightly less than 1 in 3 people being slave owners. Clearly the rich/powerful dominated that 32%. Who knew 160 years ago the rich and powerful used to wealth and money to run amok. There's a reason the south had a draft long before the north, because the other 68% had reason to fight for something they didn't own.

Can't believe this thread continues. From that great state that continues to pay tribute to the grand old days, we get our answer:

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A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

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.

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If you don't believe them, then you needn't look further than the first sentences out of Georgia's mouths:

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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.

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Carrying on the narrative, South Carolina, among 17 references to some form of the word slave, said:

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The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy

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And of course, as Texas puts it while referencing some form of slave over 20 times:

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They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

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And note how Virginia doesn't cast it as oppression against "State's Rights States" but rather:

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and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.

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Alabama at least were gentlemen about it and referred to slavery as a "domestic Institution":

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Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama

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Yes the Civil War was about slavery.

Thankfully Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln had the brains and the balls to beat the hell out of the traitorous slavery-loving south and it's loser leadership.

Then, for some reason, the south built statues to the most famous losers making them like proud victorious winners and convinced themselves they were "preserving history" by doing so.

And here we are today. Fighting each other over statues of losers.

No secession - no war. Slavery might have been stamped out over time politically, but the federal government was not going to take out slavery by force.

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My point is that the South didn't have to secede to keep slavery.

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But they did so anyway.

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My point is that the South didn't have to secede to keep slavery.

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Thats your opinion after the fact, not what they thought and why they seceded

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My point is that the South didn't have to secede to keep slavery.

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The casus belli of the south couldn't be more obvious, man.

To those who do know the history of this country the southern reaction is no surprise at all. In 1858 Lincoln held a series of debates with Stephen Douglas in Illinois. Both men were vying for a senate seat at a time when the state legislatures appointed senators, therefore they were each campaigning for their respective parties in the hope to taking control of the legislature and securing the appointment. Lincoln spoke on behalf of the new Republican party and Douglas on behalf of the Democrats. Lincoln effectively torpedoed Douglas' eventual bid for the presidency although Douglas was appointed to the open senate seat. It was precisely because Lincoln forced Douglas to come out against slavery in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that the former vice president John Breckenridge split the Democratic party in the 1860 election. He provided pro-slavery Democrats a candidate in preference to Douglas. Douglas beat Breckenridge in the popular vote, but Breckenridge carried all of the southern states and therefore took more votes in the electoral college. The effect, of course, was to throw the election to Lincoln and the Republican party.

So the response of the south is obvious. The election of Lincoln lead them to believe that the institution of slavery would be abolished, never mind that Lincoln had no such power and never mind that had their congressional delegations remained in place the constitution could not have been amended. Therefore they violated the constitution by forming a confederacy, raising troops and levying war. They were not in the least subtle about it. They did so before Lincoln was even sworn in. James Chestnut, the senior senator from South Carolina, lead the state delegation out of the congress immediately after Lincoln's election and even before the state had passed a secession ordinance. The reaction of most of the rest of the states which would form the Confederacy was the same. Chestnut went back to South Carolina and immediately began organizing the siege of the federal installations in the harbor. He became a military aide to President Davis during the war and his wife's diary is one of the most important primary source documents for life in Richmond and the Carolina back country during the war.

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So I don't see how it could have been over slavery.

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It wasn't just border states that had slavery in the Union. Slavery was still legal in NJ in 1864.