Subject: You missed my point. The reason for the war was the Souther

Comment:

See Original Content on OpEd News in article titled "Paul Craig Roberts is being facile in his defense of Robert E Lee"

You missed my point. The reason for the war was the Southern states seceding, but the reason the Southern states seceded was because the US was refusing to allow more slave states, and the southern states knew it was curtains for their retrograde economy based upon slave-labor plantations if they Congress were run by a majority of representatives from non-slave states where the emphasis was on industry or family farmers and hired labor.

The Emancipation Proclamation, which surely would have been passed for the entire country the moment the war ended, was passed when it was, and in the geographically limited way it was passed, for purely tactical reasons: to induce slaves in the South to rebel and demand their freedom, causing the South to devote needed troops to putting down rebellion, and to encourage union soldiers to fight and black residents of the north to enlist to fight.

If there had been no slavery, there would have been no secession, and if there was no secession there would have been no Civil War. The argument you are making Leslie, is specious, with all due respect. The civil war was not about tax policy, and it was not about states' rights. It was about a plantation-based mono-culture cotton and tobacco economic system based upon slave labor that was doomed but whose wealthy practioners decided to stretch out its lifespan and their profits by leaving the United States.

Dave Lindorff

founding editor of ThisCantBeHappening.net