The problem with asking a simple question about a complex subject is that the arguments on either side do not have a point of congruity.
First, let me say that I am 66 yrs old born in the deep south where total segregation was as common as heat on a summers day. I was raised such that profanity was simply not tolerated EXCEPT Damn Yankee or God Damn Sherman. The beard I sport today was begun in 1968 the day I graduated from high school and was free to do so was not as a hippy, free love, anti war, sex-drugs-and rock and roll but as an homage to Bobby Lee, Jeff Davis, JEB and of course Stonewall. I am and have been for many years an ordained deacon and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. In spite of this I state that it would have better had Jesus never been born, died or risen from the dead than the South to have won the War.
That said first Lincoln did not start a war to end slavery. Had the South been willing to put down their arms at any time before Antietam or even until Jan 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was officially announced, they could have reentered the Union slavery intact. Do you not find it strange that slavery did not become a war aim until 2 years after fighting began.
On to the crux of the matter. The moving force behind all of the Southern state legislatures enacting secession was the elite slaveowning class. That is indisputable. I assume most of you have seen the statistic about the high percentage of Southerners who owned slaves (at least one). That would seems to support the concept that the war was brought about and fought by Southerners to preserve their slaves.
Numbers lie. If you eliminate those slave holders who held only 5-10 slaves (that is a maid, butler, gardener, coachman--city dwellers) the number rises astronomically to 90-95%. This is significant because the former could afford to loose all their slaves and not face economic ruin. A Wade Hampton or one of his colleagues would go from being Princes of the Realm to paupers overnight.
But ignore the above and just assume that the war was DECLARED because of a perceived threat to slavery. Can you really try to tell me that the poor grunts (privates, corporals, sgts) who bore the brunt of the suffering. Men who had no slaves and knew they had no real chance of ever owning a slave, spent 4 years in the most horrific fighting this nation has ever known, facing disease, starvation, privation, wounds and poor medical attention that we cannot even conceive--for nothing.
One earlier poster tried to make the case that there were 2 incompatible economic systems. He is absolutely right. Except for one thing. They were not in COMPETITION. There was never the possibility of using slaves in factories to compete against free labor. There was never any question of luring free men to work in the cotton fields.
But here we find the beginning of a satisfactory answer to the original question, why did they fight. They fought because there was a pre-existing healthy hate between the two sections. You have to go back to 1810's and 20's and the First and Second Bank of the US. We have all been raised on the concept of the heartless, cruel, rapacious banker who would take the food out of his own mother's mouth.
We all know that the Depression of the 1930's left a mark on the American Soul. The Chinese fear foreigners because they have been invaded and their civilization devastated time and again. The failure of the First BAnk of the US irrevocably seared the soul of the young American culture. People all over the US lost their land, their homes and businesses in that first economic crash and the failure of the bank to compensate. The fear was so deeply ingrained that even when the Second Bank was functioning well, Southern and Western interests were determined to destroy it and did so.
Roughly the same time Northern interests moved to impose high tariffs which promoted growth of northern industry. It ruined Southern landowners and western farmers. The great irony of the Civil War was that lacking the slavery issue the divide could very easily have been South + Northwest vs Northeast.
My argument is that the war was actually prosecuted on the southern side by men who feared that a north which could legislate away slavery, could also legislate a new Bank and impose new high tariffs--that would have been intolerable. To prevent that they were willing to see their friends die or be wounded next to them, to have their bowels be wracked with dysentery, and dozens of other diseases. To eat food which we would vomit just to look at. To march barefooted in heat and humidity.
Edited by AnchoritSybarit - 27-Dec-2016 at 04:31