Montezuma,
It pains me to see that you have been taken in by Northern propaganda.
Ask yourself this question: Why would poor white farmers in the Southern states risk their lives to defend slavery? It would be well to remember that the elimination of slavery did not because a major goal of Lincoln and the Republican Congress until the end of 1862. By that time, the war had already been raging for the better part of two years.
The Southern state governments were more afraid of a Northern controlled Congress which would pass economic and tariff laws that would benefit Northern manufacturing but hurt Southern trade. South Carolina threatened to secede as early as 1828 over passage of the Tariff of Abominations.
It was Republican Congressional election victories as much as Lincoln's election that threw the Southern States into a panic in late 1860. Majority control by the North in both houses of Congress had grown so strong that Southern representatives could no longer hope to block legislation detrimental to their economic interests.
Slavery was definitely a major issue, but the abolitionist movement had not yet garnered enough sympathy in the North to force Congress to write legislation to eliminate it. Northern legislators were more concerned with the passage of legislation that would benefit Northern manufacturing and trade interests.
The secession crisis of late 1860 and early 1861 was the inevitable result of the doctrine of
state's rights , which was embraced by the South as a defence against Northern control of the government. Refutation of that doctrine, and restoration of the Union, was the main goal of the Northern government and of Abraham Lincoln. The elimination of slavery only became a goal after the Battle of Antietam, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation at the request of Frederick Douglass, a move which Lincoln made to place the North's war effor on a higher moral footing to bolster support by the North's dispirited population, with an eye to preventing the entry of Britain into the war on the side of the South.
The average, non-slave owning Southerner fought to defend their home states in a struggle that some called the
War of Northern Aggression. They had little to gain by defending slavery. They fought out of a sense of patriotic pride in their native states, which was a very real and powerful emotion in those days.
The romantic fascination with the noble war that ended slavery often obscures these other factors that led to the start of this bloody spectacle. Slavery was the great sin of early American society, but it was not the only cause of the Civil War.
Regards, Shuckins
