Thing is, they didn't; what they fought to defend was the south's autonomy. Ironically, slavery in the south would have died out as a practice eventually anyways, do to technological advancements that would have rendered using slaves obsolete even in producing raw goods. The war was totally unnecessary in ending slavery.
Given the South's social outlook and attitude toward slavery, it would have survived into the 20th Century in all likelihood, if perhaps in modified form. It was
not going to go out quietly. Hell, it didn't even go out quietly in
New York in the early 19th Century. The only thing I can think of that might seen it crumble more rapidly is the mass wearing out of soil across the then-Southwestern cotton-growing section (Mississippi, Alabama, southeastern Arkansas, Louisiana, bits of Tennessee) causing an economic collapse and leading to millions of slaves being made surplus to labor requirements. And even that's not a guarantee of willing abolition from a people who insisted slavery was "the Domestic Institution" and a necessity for free republicanism.
What caused the war, was the intense cultural and economic divide between the north and south. The north didn't just suddenly figure out that slavery was wrong; there was simply no money in it for them anymore, so it was an easy position for them to take. If there had been, they would by and large have tossed their sense of right and wrong in the gutter as most do, and shared similar opinions on the practice to those of the south. Slavery was just one point of contention though; and until the Civil War, there was always the understanding that the states were equal partners, each of them ultimately sovereign in their own right. When the south felt this was no longer the case, it made sense for them to withdraw from an alliance they gained nothing from.
The Southerners themselves said they seceded to preserve slavery and the racial order it maintained. They said it in their journals. In their speeches. In their secession decrees. They saw Lincoln's election as a threat to that order even though Lincoln himself avowed he would never use federal power against the institution where it stood, only to prevent it from expanding its territory and power at the expense of the rights of the North (see: Bleeding Kansas, and widespread electoral fraud and political violence by Missouri slave-owners therein. Also see: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the greatest imposition of federal power over state power in the antebellum era, allowing federally-supported slave hunters to force Northern citizens into Southern-style slave-hunting posses on threat of harsh fines while overruling the rights of Northern citizens to
habeas corpus and a fair hearing in court).
In short, the war was over whether or not the federal government (which the north at the time had total control over) had the authority to tell the states what they were and were not allowed to do, not slavery specifically.
.....
Do.... do you really believe that bolded part?
Are you trying to sound ridiculous or trying to make me laugh to death?
The
South had the disproportionate influence over the federal government up to this very point! Most of the Presidents were Southerners! (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor.) And of the Northern Presidents, of which there were six, over half were elected with strong Southerner backing (Clay helped Adams, the only Northern candidate in 1824, win in the House; Martin Van Buren was the hand-picked successor of Southerner Andrew Jackson; Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were selected with the support of Southern politicians, since the Democratic Party at the time had instituted a pro-South requirement of two-thirds voting in the convention to win the nomination, ensuring any candidate had to have Southern backing).
How about the SCOTUS? Washington's initial six were balanced - three from each section (and honestly at this time the sections were more nebulous, and arguably made up of three, not two) - while the 28 justices nominated afterward up to Lincoln's nominations (as in counting Buchanan's as the last) saw a split of 12 North, 16 South. Yup. The North certainly dominated the Federal Government there.
The history of American politics up until the 1850s is one of the South wielding disproportionate influence, particularly through the Democratic Party after Jackson since it was usually the majority party in the country and the South had a wide base of support for it. IOW, they could persuade and even eventually coerce Northern Democrats to give them pro-slavery votes in exchange for continued party unity and support on other measures. Hence the years of the infamous gag rules that forbade slavery (mostly anti-slavery) petitions to the House (a violation of a cherished civil right), the shenanigans over the annexation of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as part of the "Compromise of 1850", and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The latter helped put a final end to it since a large majority of the Northern Democrats who voted for the act were thrown out of Congress in the following election, meaning that as a group they became hardened to Southern demands and would eventually refuse to the point that Southern Democrats split the party in 1860 over Stephen Douglas' refusal to support a federal territorial slave code (and thus turn against his own Popular Sovereignty position). Northern Democrats rightly feared that if they submitted to putting even a
possible territorial slave code on the plank, the Republicans would demolish them, but William L. Yancey of Alabama maneuvered the Southern delegations into making it a requirement for them to remain at the convention. We all know how that went...
Were the south traitors? Not necessarily. They had good reason to believe they had the right to secede. Were the north the "good guys"? Again, not necessarily. They were not fighting to end slavery, they fought to keep the Union together; Lincoln himself even admitted as such: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." - Abraham Lincoln
Yes. They fought to save the Union, and ultimately freed the slaves to fulfill that goal. They were not shining paladins on white horses. This doesn't change the Southern motivations or the truth of what happened.
I realize this will likely get me dismissed as a racist, even by many on the right, but I honestly do not care; this is how I see it.
It would be silly to declare you a racist over this. Ignorant, sure. It doesn't make you racist. Nice attempt to play yourself as the noble martyr standing for the truth against unkind words, though.
First of all, unless you intend to argue that the north was full of saints, and the south full of sinners, the simple fact that the south rejected wholesale the idea of abolishing slavery, puts lie to the idea that the north came to the conclusion that slavery should be banned primarily because of moral issues with the practice. Because in the end, they were not all that different from each other.
There were plenty of reasons Northerners became more abolitionist over time. Most of them had to do with the "aggressive defensiveness" that Southern politicians started pushing (due to the purity spiral of their own internal politics, in part), which made slavery (and the "Slave Power") look more and more like a threat to the civil rights of Northerners as well as a possible moral ill.
Secondly, slavery is not what made the south poor; their economy being reliant on the exportation of raw goods was.
Except slavery helped to distort their priorities on economic development. There were nascent efforts to begin industry in the South, but Southerner planters distrusted banks and other accoutrements of capitalism-fueled development. The cotton boom of the 1850s fueled even more focus on exportation of those raw goods, as cotton literally became "white gold", causing even more Southern capital to be tied down in land and slaves in the effort to export even more cotton.
It's not unlike petro-states today, in fact, just that the South overestimated their ability to wield the economic weapon. As their attempted self-imposed cotton embargo on Britain and France in 1861 proved, to their detriment. They thought "Even Queen Victoria must bow to King Cotton", but as it turned out, no, she didn't.
Thirdly, I am well aware that Lincoln was an abolitionist; I was not arguing that he wasn't, merely that even he saw the Civil War was to preserve the Union first and foremost, not to end slavery.
Given that a successful secession of the slave-owning states would've pushed back effective abolition until the 20th Century, most likely, one can't blame him for the pragmatism (and yet the more radical abolitionists did). Or as Lincoln himself put it, "I would like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky."
Fourthly, both you and 7 Gold Eye can blame the Democrat Party for everything and call it a day if you want, but I see that as a rather simplistic assessment of history that falls short of explaining why what happened, happened.
Yeah, honestly, it's kinda silly to act like the Democratic Party of today has anything but the name in connection to the Democrats of 1860.
An open abolitionist got elected president without the support of a single southern state; ten of them didn't even have Lincoln on the ballot. Yes, slavery was a key issue for many in the south; but why do you think they felt it was being threatened in the first place? It was because they had reason to believe that the entire federal government was under the control of the north, and they had no say in any decision it made.
Again, that's ridiculous, and we even have actual quotes of their immediate reactions, and that included an initial majority of "wait and see". But then South Carolina actually dared to rush to the matter, and they pushed an aggressive secession agenda that created a snowball effect through the South. I highly recommend Professor William Freehling's "
The Road to Disunion", as he spends several chapters covering the way the South rushed to secession after South Carolina created the impetus.
What they feared wasn't the entire Federal government under Northern control, it was the
patronage Lincoln would control. Under the Jacksonian spoils system he was expected to fill federal posts across the Union with Republicans, or individuals willing to support Republican policies. Secessionists fueled fears that, despite his statements on appointing non-Republicans in areas where his party had yet to gain traction, he would use said patronage to build a Southern branch of the party that would bring anti-slavery debates into Southern political life.
This was what they feared more than anything: not Lincoln abusing power to break slavery, but Lincoln's patronage powers promoting *gasp*
democratic discourse in Southern society.
