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What Was The Civil War About?Now there's a question with a loooong answer. People get as het up over this question as they do about the Rebel flag.Seems like the popular thing to say these days is that the War Between The States was not fought over slavery. In a way, this is true. Like everything else, slavery took second billing to plain old economics. Unfortunately for the slaves, they were all tangled up in Dixieland economics. Therefore, it seems to me that anything that had to do with economics in the South had to do with slavery. People will tell you that the leaders of the U.S. Government were not interested in justice for a captive people. This is probably true. Like every other government they were interested in money. Part of that money came from the Southern states, so it was in its interest to keep the Southern states in the Union. The Southern states weren't sure they wanted to be in the Union any more. They thought the U.S. Government was partial to the industrial north and was penalizing the agrarian South in various ways. For example, there was a nasty little tax on European imports which were purchased mostly by the South. By raising the cost of European goods, the U.S. Government was forcing the South to buy from the North. This is only one of many insults flying back and forth, and most of them hit somebody in the pocketbook. People will also tell you that the Confederate army was not fighting for slavery any more than the Union army was fighting against it. They'll point out that the big plantations were owned by a minority just as mega-corporations are today. The everyday Reb didn't even have a slave. On the other hand, every white Reb had something to lose by freeing the slaves. The freedmen were competition to the white laborer. Again, a matter of money. The way it looks to me is that the War was not a holy war about freeing the slaves -- and yet it was still about slavery. --Bo Dixie
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Rebels
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