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[Rolan7]

That's very true, of course there were a lot of causes.  And I admit that the economic causes I mentioned were largely connected to slavery.

It just wasn't a bunch of paladins stomping down south and burning cities for "JUSTICE!!".  There was a lot of money in keeping the south as a lucrative source of cheap raw materials, and refusing to let them secede or export freely.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

In the same way, isn't "It was pretty much about slavery" a gross oversimplification? Lots of southerners weren't ferocious proponents of slavery.

I think people generally do a disservice to the war when they try to boil it down to one cause. I think everyone who's mentioned a cause so far has had good arguments for why it contributed. I'd say they might have all contributed.

... you're right.

BUT STILL I'M THE MOST RIGHT OF THEM ALL

Ninjaedit:

That's very true, of course there were a lot of causes.  And I admit that the economic causes I mentioned were largely connected to slavery.

It just wasn't a bunch of paladins stomping down south and burning cities for "JUSTICE!!".  There was a lot of money in keeping the south as a lucrative source of cheap raw materials, and refusing to let them secede or export freely.

Heh, the North wasn't that good either. Hell, I don't think there's ever been a single case in which a war was fought purely because it was the right thing to do. (Come to think of it, I don't think there's been many cases in which somebody did something right purely because it was the right thing to do.)

TL;DR: Everybody's greedy. Nobody's purely good.

[Rolan7]

Too true, too true!
And it really did work out well that the CSA lost.  Amazingly, unbelievably well.  I still think the USA handled that examplarily.  If only other peoples could do the same, instead of forming permanent feuds.

[Sensei]

I think the vindictive reaction from Southern states at the end of the reconstruction era all the way up through the civil rights movement suggests that, no, it was not just mainly about economy or states rights.

[Amuys]

All that is why I favor Universal Employment. If you're willing to work, you work for UE, and you get a guaranteed living wage (based off the cost of a given basket of goods), and a laborous public-works job. Maybe it's painting road stripes, maybe it's planting trees, or fixing bridges, or picking trash. The point is it's public works stuff and it's probably the first job you ever have. Unemployment drops to zero and all wages go up, with no inflation. Yeah the government is spending more, but money is imaginary anyway. The government can no more run out of money than Reddit can run out of upvotes.

If you really want to fund it, then get rid of fossil fuel subsidies and put a hefty carbon tax on them instead.

You can't make people work jobs that they don't want.

[Frumple]

I think the vindictive reaction from Southern states at the end of the reconstruction era all the way up through the civil rights movement suggests that, no, it was not just mainly about economy or states rights.

Eh, I think the point trying to be made is that it wasn't entirely about slavery, and that there were other (arguably substantial, even!) contributing factors.

Which is, like. Okay, I guess? Still pretty safe to say, as you note, that slavery and racism were certainly (somewhat severely) disproportionate contributors. Family being what it is, I can pretty safely pass on word that even a lot of the folks down here that weren't "ferocious proponents of slavery" still had some pretty pointed things to say about the proper place of certain portions of the population, and a significantly cavalier attitude towards what happens to them. North wasn't exactly free of that shit, by any means, but... yeah.

[smjjames]

I didn't say it was mostly slavery, just that it was a common flashpoint, not neccesarily THE or the only flashpoint.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Too true, too true!
And it really did work out well that the CSA lost.  Amazingly, unbelievably well.  I still think the USA handled that examplarily.  If only other peoples could do the same, instead of forming permanent feuds.

All this belays is ignorance. The USA did not handle reconstruction well, at all. Did you know that the economic gulf created between the South and the rest of the nation never healed? It's still present today.

Not only that, but when the government was momentarily not fucking up reconstruction, where things were at a point where there were actually black elected officials not but a few years after the war and the 13th and 14th Amendments were being enforced to a level that wouldn't be seen again for a century, then abruptly changed course with the loss of the Radical Republicans and did more or less nothing to prevent that void from being filled by...the KKK. And without any economic reconstruction to deal with essentially the whole South being burned to the ground, groups like the KKK offered something people wanted, a target to blame for everything wrong.

[mainiac]

The Union, dominated by the Northern industrial states, was demanding that the South abandon slavery yet continue to produce just as much raw material, and not ship it overseas for a better price (prevented by excessive tariffs, I think). 

Be specific.  In what ways did the northern industrial states make this demand.  What consequences were implied if this demand was not made?

For my part, I'll mention what they did after the war when they had a free hand.  They put a tax on cotton in order to reduce how much the south grew.  Kinda a weird policy if you have such a desire for cotton, no?

It just wasn't a bunch of paladins stomping down south and burning cities for "JUSTICE!!".

Have you never actually read the words to their marching tune?

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

It goes on like that... "I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel", "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."  The abolitionist cause was VERY much steeped in religious movements.

[redwallzyl]

i believe the demand for cotton had been going down due to ramping up production in Egypt by the British at the time. this also being one of the reasons no one was vary eager to help the south as they didn't really need their cotton any more. stop trying to justify the civil war as anything besides a war over slavery that's what it was and no excuses and accusations of the north forcing the Souths had are going to fly.

[Tawa]

Let's turn down the salt a notch here.

[Willfor]

Also, we can't forget that in letters to the Confederacy's diplomats, they were told to play up the state's rights angles because people at the top were worried that saying "it's about slavery" to the world would leave a bad impression. When this was found out, there was quite a bit of fuss about it by southern landholders who were furious that the government wasn't vigorously defending slavery in their foreign correspondence instead.

"Sovereignty" and "state's rights" were propaganda from the very start intended to shore up badly needed foreign support.

[mainiac]

It's always worth reading the reasons they established at the start for why they were seceding:
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

And for the other side, abraham lincoln calls it like it is:
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

My favorite line:

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

Oh captain my captain. 


"It wasn't about slavery" was like the 9/11 trutherism of it's time.  It was patently false to any reasonably informed person but people who refused outside sources created echo chambers.  Except these truthers lived in an era before modern communication.  You could read one poorly researched tract which said it was about tarrifs and that would literally be the only source you would read for decades.  The writers who could have said "wtf?  tarrifs that's absurd" and written myth busting articles wouldn't even know there was a need.  You wouldn't read the evil northern press, you would read a proper democrat run newspaper which would never mention slavery.  So the lost causers were able to pull wool over a lot more people while the truthers just get laughed out of the room.  They pulled the wool over so many eyes that it became a respected position like any widely held belief will be.

[scriver]

To me it is obvious that it was about both slavery and states' rights. Prominently the state's right to institute slavery. There is nothing exclusitory about those two - they are just different says to angle the same issue.

Then, of course, once he south had seceded, it also became about the states' right to secede. But that doesn't change that it was slavery that caused them to want to secede in the first place.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Yeah, it's kinda like slavery was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and state's rights was the web of alliances in contiental Europe. Together they formed the perfect conditions for a war to start, while individually they perhaps would not have been enough. The South had a history of going against the US government after all. During the Presidency of Andrew Jackson the Southern states were talking about how they could ignore federal laws in their juristiction of they wanted to or something like that. I believe it was called nullification and involved state laws trumping the federal level. Long story short, Georgia tried to pull this nullification trick and was stared down by Andrew Jackson (and the US military) until they gave in.

I've probably grossly simplified things here but whatever. My point is that the South had a history of opposing the US government when they couldn't get things their way that existed before the Civil War, so they didn't just get the idea to secede out of the blue. But at the same time they seceded over the reason of slavery, so you can't declare that the Civil War was only over state's rights either. I'm sure that some other reasons exist that I've missed too. Like a lot of wars, the underlying reasons are more complicated that the obvious ones.