Paul Craig Roberts is a writer for the Institute for Political Economy and has written a piece that goes into detail about how the American Civil War was not actually fought over the issue of slavery, but over other economic and political woes that forced the hand of the Northern Union government, the feds, to offer an olive branch of sorts to the South to stop them from seceding from the Union.
Roberts writes that the North was not at all concerned about slavery as an issue at that time, even stating that they would end the ability of the Congress to alter the course of individual states’ rights when it came to slavery, which was ultimately rejected. He further notes that the South rejected the olive branch outright because this, to the South, was never about slavery and that the Civil War to come was only said to be fought over this hotly-contested issue because the North won the war and, therefore, were able to write the history.
The “court historians” as he refers to them were able to bend and shape the history in order to make the South look like a bunch of bigoted and racist slave-owners and the North to look like a bunch of saintly abolitionists.
Read on the following page, however, as Roberts’ argument, although technically correct, doesn’t really hold water when you apply the events leading up to the Civil War. It’s an interesting take on the war’s reasoning, though not original, and proves that sometimes even the “court historians” get things right!
Ummm… both Delaware and Maryland were huge slave states.
There’s an awful lot of assumption in this article, especially considering what could have and may have happened. The fact is the Abolition Tax was inflicted on the Southern States around 1824ish if memory serves. And that hvy tax was imposed from non slave states lobbyist in Comgress, to attempt to control slave states and their profits from gaining too much power. The Northern states were older and felt threatened by the newer south and their coming of age. When that tax alone is put into context of the time… these were sons of the founding fathers that had just went to war with England over unfair taxation. Hell, Robert E Lee was married to George Washingtons grand daughter. You really think the southern leaders, sons of the American Revolution, were happy about unfair taxation? Further, if the Civil War was about slavery… and the North was soooo against it… why did the Emancipation Proclamation come a full two years AFTER the war started? Why did Lincoln have to use an executive order to even declare war on the south? Lincoln imprisoned news paper writers, imprisoned over 30 politicians that disagreed with him publicly… Hell, he imprisoned Francis Scott Keys grandson Frank Howard Key and BURNED HIS NEWSPAPER TO THE GROUND.
And you want to push an article full of maybes and what ifs? Maryland and Delaware… both prominent northern states… were huge slave states. The Civil War was about taxes, political power and big business. Just like the exact same problems we have today in our modern government.
People always talk of the black slaves in th south but not the black slaves owned by the Cherokee Nation of which my maternal grandmothers people are decended
When schools teach slavery its always about the black slaves. Lord Cromwell sold Irish men women and children here and to the Carribean long before the African came here.
Not quite 100 % Lincoln stated that if it meant keeping the Union together, he could except slavery.
Jerry Kauffman Lincoln said slavery was the only way to keep whites and blacks separated he feared they would intermarry.He also said he never wanted to see negroes become lawyers and judges or gain social equality to whites
Since my family has people who were killed in the Civil War to end slavery do blacks owe me money? Asking for a friend…
Oh bull$#%&!@*thats a damn lie , the Alamo didnt have a thing todo with salivary !
Santa Anna didnt want the American s to settle on his land , plain and simple , you lying pos
Well thats true but , it was a yr after the civil war that the north let the slaves go after freeing the southern slaves ! Again the war was not about slavery but tariffs on cotton
The blkacks want to use slavery as a tool for a Guilt trip so they can draw social security, food stamps and government assistance and sit on their lazy ignorant asses ! Fact , only 1% of all the blks back then , were ever slaves and they were fed , clothed and some even educated !