i may have misdirected my statement of dancing around the issue. lincoln knew he couldn't use the abolition of slavery as a central point of the war, because he wanted the south to have confidence that he would protect their economy. however, even though he didn't state it directly before the war towards we did end up seeing the emancipation proclamation.
Originally posted by JaTo: Since only 10% of the Southern population was known as owning slaves, where was this overwhelming economic burden with the bulk of the citizenry?
because the southern economy had become almost exclusively a slave based, cash crop agricultural one. add to that close to between 80 to 90% of all land in the slave states was owned by the approximately 10% of the population who were slaveholders. and even further, more than 80% of the southern economy at the time was based in agriculture! is that not an overwhelming economic burden? and since we know that economy and politics were synonymous back then, is it not obvious it would be in south's primary economic/political interest to protect their right's to slave labor?
Originally posted by Jato: I would say it was intermingled with most of the issues that were cropped up to a varying degree. As a moral disagreement, it was NOT the reason behind the conflict. It was a part of a financial and power struggle, and only became a popular moral argument once the fight was under way.
i agree, i'm not saying slavery was a cause of war as a moral issue for the confederacy, but rather an economic/political issue.
from my recollection of the confederacy's constitution it's not hard to deduce that they wanted to establish a political institution which would guarantee its two most important "state rights" directly related to: human slavery, and free trade economic policies.
Originally posted by Jato:If Southern States were given more control away from Federal mandates, this perhaps could have changed things. One can totally remove slavery from the equation (reckless, I know) but the fact still stands that there exists MANY serious grievances that the Southern states would have had against the Federal government.
true but ALL of their most serious grievances were a result of economic control and political representation. and once again ALL of those grievances can be traced back to the importance of slave labor in the southern economy. i haven't seen one major grievance in all of my studies and reading that could not be traced back to economic/political issues related to slavery. can you provide any examples?
i'll let you have the last word on this one jato as i've thoroughly enjoyed the threadjacking. now i'm off to play pool.
