Was the civil war about slavery?

Oh yeah . . . the South was having a bad hair day.

A friend once told me that if Lincoln had not been shot they would not have fought the Civil War. He was not joking.

Seriously either way?!

The North were dumb enough to provoke the South into starting the war by manning Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor with Northern troops, so the South said "We ain't standing fer that!"..
Later Lincoln cleverly got world opinion on his side by claiming the North was fighting against slavery.

So which side where you on..just to be clear?!

A friend once told me that if Lincoln had not been shot they would not have fought the Civil War. He was not joking. >>

Not surprising. There are weirdos out there with weird ideas. Leno's TV Jay walk let's us know just how disconnected people are.

We've been down this road so many f*cking times is pathetic. I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this. So-called state troops of Florida and Alabama seized Federal installations in Florida in the first week of January, 1861, even before Florida has passed a secession ordinance. On January 8, 1861, so-called state troops attempted to take Forts Barrancas and McRae. Lt. Slemmer, commanding an artillery company, ordered his men to fire over the heads of the mob from Pensacola, who promptly took to their heels. Slemmer then ordered the guns at Forts Barrancas and McRae to be spiked, and laid out trains to the powder magazines in both forts, which were lit, destroying the magazines. Slemmer then withdrew with his men to Fort Pickens, in the harbor, which Federal troops held throughout the war.

There's a lot more that can be brought in evidence to show that the South wanted a war, and that the political leaders wrote checks their military ass couldn't cash. Of course, Lincoln was not the president at the time that Star of West attempted to resupply and reinforce Fort Sumter. That was on January 9, 1861. Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861. When President Buchanan sent troops to Fort Sumter, he was acting well within his authority. No American President would have dared to let a mob of armed hotheads tell him that he couldn't send his troops where he wanted to send them.

Romeo shoots! Romeo misses! As usual . . .

The North were dumb enough to provoke the South into starting the war by manning Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor with Northern troops, so the South said "We ain't standing fer that!"..Smile
Later Lincoln cleverly got world opinion on his side by claiming the North was fighting against slavery.

Maybe, but I'm more inclined to believe that it was more about money and power, the cause and effect for all wars

I'm a neutral Brit so the civil war was none of my biz!
But if you twist my arm i'd have to say i'm on the north's side because although they were dumb enough to get the south's backs up, they never wanted an actual war.
It was the naughty aggressive south who started the whole 4-year bloodbath by firing the first shots at Fort Sumter and then marched on Washington, what cheek!

I see that mere history never gets in the way of your stories.

This horseshit has been done to death. I recommend the loons in this thread making claims they can't back up read this thread: The Confederacy was About Slavery

Anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence from the Union of the various confederate states has no problem with this question.

Each declaration talks about the desire to preserve the institution of slavery...and calls dangers to it posed by the Union as a primary reason for secession.

Some of the states do it during the first three paragraphs.

The war was fought because of the secession...and the secession was occasioned specifically by the slavery issue.

So...YEAH...the Civil War was about slavery.

For sure!

The white Northern males that were willing to join the Union army were fighting for a "white West," as each western territory became a state. Meaning, if the western territories became free states, then white males could find a job. The Southern plantations were autonomous with its slave labor. Many white families in the north midwest originally were Southerners, since ancestors could not find a job in the plantation South.

Without the willingness to fight for the Union, there would have been no war. Drafting men was not without its problems, as the NYC Draft Riots of 1863 proved.

What a brilliant observation! The draft doesn't enter into it, eh? We just declare we're unwilling to fight and then there's no war. Brilliant.

Foofie for Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense all rolled up into one!

The war could be fought, but not won, if the populace is anti-draft. Shades of Vietnam.

The War was not particularly popular in the North. You yourself mentioned the NYC draft riots. Draft dodging was not something invented in the 1970s. In the 1860s a lot of people bought their way out of the Army if they could. Back in those dear days, if you were drafted you could pay a substitute to "stand in" for you. All nice and legal.

Yes. And the poor Irish immigrants in NYC were angry at that inequality. My point is just that if there had only been a reliance on a "hated" draft, the war would have had an obstacle, besides the patriotic fervor of the Confederates. So, since men joined voluntarily, based on the desire to see the territories become free states, one can argue that the war was fought to have a white west, since Blacks only lived, at that time, where slavery had existed.

The war was not popular in the South, either. The Confederate States instituted conscription well before it was done in the North. From the Wikipedia article on the Confederate States Army:



The Enrollment Act was passed by the U.S. Congress a little less than a year later.