Do you think that people in the north would fight in a war that killed over 600,000 people, where conditions for the troops were tough and primitive for 5 long years to free the slaves of the south?
The Civil War began as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 broke down. Under that agreement the country would gain states in pairs, one slave, one free divided by the Mason/Dixon line. The great territory of the southwest was owned by Mexico, while the great territory of the Northwest was owned by the United States. Inevitably there would be more states north of the line than south. The push to gain Texas a couple decades later was the south's last gasp to hold onto an equal number of states, but even after the Mexican War, California made it clear that they would join the union as a free state regardless of their lattitude. The slave states would again inevitably become a minority in the legislature. They chose a different tactic.
At the heart of each of these decisions was the issue of slavery.
TP
<font color=green>One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
</font> - Abraham Lincoln 1865 |
