re: #86 moderatelyradicalliberal

You’ve got to be kidding me? Southerners being unwilling to free there slaves made the Civil War a certainty. I guess you think they were going to until Brown and Turner turned to violence to end an institution that showed absolutely no sign of ending anytime soon or in a peaceful manner.

What I’m saying is twofold:

1. Nat Turner’s Rebellion stoked Southern paranoia about “servile insurrection” to such an (irrational) extent that they regarded any idea of abolition as an invitation to their murder.

2. While the Civil War was a strong eventual likelihood by the 1850’s, john Brown’s raid made it a certainty.

Those things having been said, it is still correct to say that the primary cause of the American Civil War was the South’s insistence on not only maintaining, but expanding slavery. Southern intransigence and butthurt played greater roles in causing war than any other factors.