re: Was the Civil War Fought Because of Slavery? It Depends on Which Side You View

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There is a bibliography available if anyone wants it.

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I would be interested in that.

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Notes:

(1) All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, Volume 6 LINK
(2) Ordinance of Secession, Wikipedia: LINK
(3) First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln: LINK
(4) The War With Mexico: Speech in the United States House of Representatives: LINK
(5) West Virginia Archives & History: LINK
(6) Liberty and Union: A Constitutional History of the United States, Volume 1: LINK
(7) New York Evening Post, March 12, 1861: LINK
(8) HistoryNet: LINK
(9) Lincoln’s Herndon: LINK
(10) Causes of the Civil War: The Differences Between the North and South: LINK
(11) Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired: LINK
(12) Bye Bye, Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels: LINK
(13) The Letters of Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826: LINK
(14) The Letters of Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826: LINK
(15) HistoryNet, Emancipation Proclamation Full Text: LINK
(16) A History of the American People: Critical Changes and Civil War: LINK
(17) Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln: LINK
(18) History Today Volume 61 Issue 9 September 2011: LINK
(19) Lincoln–Douglas debates, Wikipedia: LINK
(20) Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, Abraham Lincoln: LINK
(21) President Lincoln’s Second Annual Message December 1, 1862: LINK
(22) The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 6th Debate Part I: LINK
(23) Democracy in America — Volume 1: LINK
(24) New York Draft Riots, History.com: LINK
(25) The Lehrman Institute, Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom: LINK
(26) President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, History.com: LINK
(27) President Abraham Lincoln Executive Order — Arrest and Imprisonment of Irresponsible Newspaper Reporters and Editors: LINK
(28) ACTA Survey, April 14, 2015: LINK

Further reading.

I recommend:

Those Dirty Rotten Taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America

When in the Course of Human Events by Charles Adams.

Also, The Real Lincoln, by Thomas J. Dilorenzo.

All three books are well-written and well-cited.

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Anderson ordered Doubleday to divide the company into three details to man the guns in shifts. Their targets were to be the batteries on Morris Island and Sullivan’s Island.

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Well, Abner ignored the order because he lined up on the hotel instead

Anderson surrendered the next day. Likely because he had fired on a non-military target. At the surrender Abner was specifically asked as to why he fired on a hotel

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But no one was more hated in Charleston than Captain Abner Doubleday. The captain had enjoyed a cup of tea at the Moultrie House back in friendlier days, but no more. “Charleston at this period was far from being a pleasant place for a loyal man. I became quite unpopular in Charleston,” wrote Doubleday, “partly on account of my anti-slavery sentiments, but more especially because some very offensive articles” he had written appeared in Northern papers.

He soon received a letter warning him that if he were caught in Charleston, he would be tarred and feathered..

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Then Doubleday spied the Moultrie House. But its Palmetto state flag had been removed before the bombardment began. Through his glass he could see many spectators on the beach and piazza watching the duel between Sumter and Moultrie. “I saw no reason why the mere lowering of the flag should prevent us from firing at them,” wrote Doubleday.

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He knew he was firing on a civilian target, and did it anyway. Even reporters said the mortars were directed at civilians

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Captain James Chester of the Third Artillery remembered it differently. As he saw it, the two shots from the forty-two pounders struck the beach in front of the astonished spectators and bounded over their heads slamming into the Moultrie House. Even a newsman reported that, “a party of gentlemen were setted [sic] in the parlor, watching the fight.” When the balls hit the second story.

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He knew he was firing on a civilian target, and did it anyway. Even reporters said the mortars were directed at civilians

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I don't think that's accurate, and Anderson would likely have skinned him, if it was.

Anderson was a slaveholding Unionist.
He held no animus for slavery, or the South and hoped hostilities would wind down and settle quickly with the Union preserved.

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Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting that whole series

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You're welcome.

I've saved that for years on all of my devices because he did a good job condensing into a relatively reasonable number of words what many of us were taught by our families and schools growing up.

I have a fairly extensive library on the subject of the civil war, over 100 volumes including some journals and diaries handed down through my wife's and mine families over the generations.

This country has been lied to about the causes and effects of that war for 150 years now. There are many many other things not mentioned in that essay ... he omitted for brevity reasons.

Both of them, to one degree or another.

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It is like you are not reading the posts you are attempting to respond to.

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I am, but I've also read all the other posts to see how this is a strawman.

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Go on....

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Who has made a direct, morality-based argument in this thread?

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Strawman?
THAT IS WHAT IS TAUGHT IN HS.

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Who has made a direct, morality-based argument in this thread?

What you claim was taught in high school (all caps) is not directly relevant or responsive if nobody is making that argument in this thread. That's the straw man that's being created. And your successive posts, as well as those from others, show why you want to create this straw man and its digression.

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your historically naïve position that the CW was solely about slavery,

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Another strawman

Point out which post of mine claims the Civil War was solely about slavery.

Do better.

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Slavery was neither at issue

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Then why was slavery referenced so often in by the seceding states and their leaders?

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Slave state representation was.

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Then why was the property/value aspect of slavery referenced so often by the seceding states and their leaders?

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I said the majority of white northern men did not send their sons to die for an altruistic cause of freeing a people they hated.

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ok...

What does that have to do with this quoted text:

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The idea that the Civil War was some sort of a morality play about freeing Southern slaves is an ideological distortion that obfuscates many of the atrocities that occurred during and after the war.
But if we accept the idea that Lincoln was waging war to free the slaves, it helps justify the loss of over 600,000 American lives.

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being a strawman fallacy for this thread?

The post to which you just responded had nothing directly to do with anything you have said in this thread. It was isolated to the above quoted language (which you did not post, mind you).

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What was the CW about, in your view? Have you cited anything but slavery as the cause?

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I specifically covered this already.

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If we broke up the conflict leading up to the Civil War into slavery and everything other than slavery, there wouldn't have been a Civil War with only the "everything other than slavery" bucket.

So when people try to frame is only as "state's rights", for example, they intentionally ignore what issue was leading to that conflict. Without slavery in the mix, it would be similar to the modern, pre-Trump era of DEM-GOP debate on the issue. With slavery? Civil War.

Slavery was the cause that created all of the conflict and fractures in our society/government that led to the Civil War.

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The tariff issue is one of the causes of the war.

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One of? Sure.

The primary one? No.

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I can go on with similar posts, but this establishes early:

1. I argue slavery was the primary reason. This completely contradicts your strawman alleging I said it was the sole reason

2. While I reference other causes, those non-slavery causes alone (1) cannot be removed from the slavery issue as they were all intertwined by that point after decades of conflict over the slavery issue leading to policy changes to impact the South to change its slavery policies and (2) did not cause enough conflict on their own, removed from slavery, to create the necessary conditions for secession and the Civil War.

To summarize: had the South legalized slavery, there would have been no civil war, even with the other conflicts present. Also, there was no path forward with slavery being legal and practiced that would not have led to violence between the slave states and rest of the country. Slavery made that inevitable. Even if industrialization had made slavery obsolete as a major practice, had it remained legalized, we would have ended up in violence at some point.