re: #59 Blind Frog Belly White

She actually has a point, which she put very poorly - “Self-determination”, indeed! The South seceded over slavery, specifically protecting and expanding it. They didn’t want anyone interfering with their ‘right’ to own black people. They went to war to split the Union.

The North went to war to preserve the Union. They didn’t go to war to free the slaves, by and large, and Lincoln, for all that he opposed slavery, expressed a willingness to allow it to continue if it kept the Union together.

So, the war wasn’t fought to free the slaves. It was fought to guarantee their enslavement, and that side lost.

This is the great dodge that the Lost Causers/States Rights/War of Northern Aggression Truthers love to use. For the Confederacy the war was always about slavery, but for the Union at it’s start the war was about preserving the Union, only later on did the Union make emancipation a goal. It’s through this wiggle room that the Confederacy apologists make all their cases about “The war not being about slavery” and then “States rights” or maybe even “tariffs” get thrown in.