re: #200 GunstarGreen

If I’m remembering correctly, my particular school tried to justify it along the lines of the slave-dependant south being terribly outstripped in capacity by the industrialized north. Which was true, but absolutely no excuse for treating other humans as chattel.

That’s one I’ve often heard, usually in conjunction with “The North didn’t want n(clang!)s to be free anyhow!,” citing the worry amongst whites in the North that freemen would compete with them for factory jobs and be able to undercut them in terms of wages. About how Lincoln didn’t believe the war to be one over slavery, but simply adopted such with the Emancipation Proclamation to make the North’s aggression morally “justified.” And how the North had pushed the South into war by refusing to abide by the Fugitive Slave Laws.