(11-07-2018, 09:47 AM)Kane Wrote:

(11-06-2018, 10:01 AM)mikesez Wrote: Okay.  Say you're right, and it was about the Southern states' right to secede.  
Why were they seceding?

C'mon man...
Firstly, let me go ahead and get this out of the way. Slavery is and was obviously very wrong.

However... it was well within their rights, no matter what the reasoning for it at the time. Outside of slavery (which was ONE issue) It was much more about government kinda over reaching, as it often does.
Lincoln was not THEIR president (man that sounds familiar) and they (the democrats) did what was well within their rights. The Union then decided to wage war (kinda a Republican thing to do I guess) and force a certain way of life on people.

Now... in hindsight, the Union was right to want to abolish slavery. But at the time they essentially broke the law and started a war for what we now perceive as the right thing. Lincoln was no angel however as I said... it really was more about those with money and power wanting more of it. (and with a lot of bloodshed got it)

Just to be clear... just trying to clarify how history actually went down instead of the cookie cutter crap they feed you in grade school.
Not trying to say "The South should have won, we will rise again!"

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(11-06-2018, 05:46 PM)homebiscuit Wrote: Whether the argument was economic, religious, or ideological, slavery was the underlying element in all of them. The American Civil War was waged over slavery. Plain and simple. Had slavery never existed in the South, the Civil War would not have occurred.

You can not say that for fact.
The South could have tried to secede based simply on the election of a Republican POTUS that they hadn't even put on most of their ballots 

The government has been screwing up and waging war on itself for the entirety of its existence we just do it with less bloodshed.

You're talking yourself in circles.  You're trying to say that the election of Lincoln was not that different than any other election where one particular region didn't get its way.  But it was different, obviously.  Usually the one region that feels disappointed doesn't feel so disappointed that they want to secede.  So the South's disappointment was on a different level, and it was all to do with slavery.
You seem to want to apologize for the South in this case, perhaps because you feel a personal connection.  Comfort yourself in this: most white people in the South did not own slaves and did not benefit tangibly from the labor of slaves.  Most white people in the South could not vote.  They did not get any choice about whether their neighbors would own slaves, and did not get any choice about whether their state would secede. Their lives sucked.  The only benefit most Southern whites got from African slavery was an enhanced sense of self-worth that there were men down the road who had an even rougher life than them.

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