Who is the worst president in history?

Threadjack continues, but ...

Was states' rights the CSA's primary reason for seceding? Yes. But "states rights" meant making sure those damn do-gooder industrial-town Yankee legislators wouldn't take their slavery away from them. Their argument: Constitutionally, the feds have no right to ban slavery. Unfortunately, states' rights has been used as an anachronism for slavery/racism because the anti-civil rights movement used it for 100 years after the civil war, which has been used to shout down many attempts to stop the consolidation of power in Washington.

Were many in the North upset about the war (and the draft -- which was not national, but each state was required to supply a certain number of soldiers)? Absolutely. Many northerners could have cared less about slavery. Their main issue was holding the union together and getting the South back into the country. To Lincoln, had he made the war about slavery, he wouldn't have got much popular support (and might have lost slave states DE/MD/KY/MO to the CSA). Only when the war had turned did he make slavery an issue, by issuing the emancipation proclamation (which conveniently exempted DE/MD/KY/MO), which gave the Union soldiers the right to free slaves.

 

There is a lot of truth to this, especially the second part. But crimson, you didn't take it far enough.

A big reason Lincoln issued the EP was because his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, had help from some of his generals (names of which escape me now) in realizing that slaves were helping the Confederate war effort by digging trenchworks, building forts, working as teamsters, etc.

By this reason, they could be -- and were -- viewed as contraband of war. They were helping the South wage war. So this needed to stop.

At the same time, then-Sec. of the Treasury Salmon Chase went into full-court press mode on getting Lincoln to let blacks fight for the Union.

Put these variables into the equation and you get the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

There were a couple of other factors into the cause of the Civil War.

Most Southerners didn't own slaves, and most slave holders had one or two slaves. The large plantation owners were the ones concerned that the North would take away their slaves. So they engineered their states' secession.

However, to get their fellow non-slave holding Southerners to fight, the slave-holders couldn't use the 'we're fighting so us rich plantation owners can keep slaves' arguement. So they convinced their poor that the war was based upon the north telling their state how to live their lives.

In 1860, there was considerable loyalty to one's state (such as Robert E. Lee). The railroad had only just started to make travel easier. Many people rarely went more than 50 miles away from home in their lifetime and politics and laws were pretty much local. So, the wealthy plantation owners kept yelling out 'states rights!' to appeal to the rest of the population.

In the North, there was considerable patriotism at the start of the war, kind of like a giant pep rally for a football game (or Bush and the media in the leadup to the Iraq war) to bring the South back into the Union. Slavery wasn't used as an issue, because for the majority of poor northerners, former slaves were competition for jobs.

As casualties mounted, passion for the war dissipated, which begat drafts (such as the one that caused the huge riot in NYC).

Ultimately, slavery was the cause for the war. But it wasn't sold that way to the public in order to get them to fight.

 

No kidding, I think I spent the entire second half of my Master's reacting to Genovese.

 

Cruel and unusual punishment, grad school style.

The department laughs its ass off behind closed doors after assigning the quacks.