Slavery was the decisive factor leading to war,
How could it be when it was already legal in the Union? Lincoln was even offering them more of it if they would just stay in the Union.
The one non negotiable of the conflict was independence, not slavery, therefore slavery wasn't a decisive factor leading to war, independence was.
Yes, money was a cold hard factor as always. Yes, there were a multitude of other factors....but the divide over slavery fueled the rancor and drove the division that led to rebellion.
The abolitionists of that time period were considered liberal nuts, not unlike abortion or homosexual activists nowadays. If there was rancor over slavery it was because liberal nuts were creating rancor over it.
Charles Dickens had it right, and he was very ant-slavery.
"I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed the South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
As for Lincoln, without his steadfast devotion to maintaining the Union....and then his drive to abolish slavery...the greatest nation the earth has ever seen would not have risen to greatness, and saved the world from Nazis, Soviets and a host of other existential threats.
A weaker United States would not have intervened in WWI. Germany would have arrested and imprisoned Lenin instead of transporting him to Russia, and Germany would have won World War I.
Europe would have become a Union dominated by Germany, just as it is now. The German economy would not have crashed in the 1920s, and therefore a corporal wouldn't be able to blame Germany's misery on Jewish Bankers, and so he would have never risen to power.
No Hitler, No Third Reich, No World War II, No Holocaust, No Japanese Imperialism, No Soviet Communism in Russia, No Chinese Communism in China, about 120 million people wouldn't have been killed in all these bloodbaths, and you are telling me that we are better off the way things turned out?
Intervening in World War I was what I regard as a pivot point in history. A Weaker America likely would not have done it.
So this meme that "Lincoln killed people over money" is just a simple lie.
It is the simple truth. The only reason Lincoln opposed the states leaving was because they were making so much money from the European Trade, and most of his government, plus the subsidies to the North were being payed for by the South.
Nobody objected to the fact that slave labor was paying 75-80% of the cost of the Federal government. They objected to the fact that it was to be stopped.
If anything, the South seceded over money.
Pretty much. They would have gotten an instant 100 million dollar per year windfall from getting out from under the tariffs and shipping costs. This would have capitalized a lot of industry in the South, and of course, capitalization is synergistic.
But their reasons for leaving are irrelevant to their right to do so.
Frankly, money was, is and always has been a factor in every war...but in our civil war, it was not the driving force.
It was exactly the driving force. Why do you think the first thing Lincoln did was throw up a blockade? It was to STOP THE EUROPEAN TRADE. If it wasn't going through New York, they weren't going to allow any trade to happen.
Blockade runners easily brought in Guns and military items, but merchant ships (you know, the kind you make money with) couldn't do it. The South couldn't ship it's cotton, and the Europeans couldn't ship their goods. The Blockade didn't interfere with any military efforts by the South, it just stopped the commerce and forced all European commerce to go through New York.
Responsibility for the millions of deaths lies in our nation's inability to resolve the issue of slavery without war.
Slavery wasn't the issue. It was Independence that was the stakes. The South wanted it, the North (four times it's population) refused to let it have independence. Abolishing slavery got tacked on more or less at the end of the war both for revenge against the South for having put up such a fight, and to break the South economically and politically so the South couldn't get revenge back for what the North had done to it.
Nobody gave a D@mn about the slaves, other than as a political tool.
