The US Civil War Was NOT Fought Over Slavery

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The popular political refrain stating that the US Civil War was fought primarily to end slavery is absurd and a dangerous example of historical revisionism made to promote a contemporary political agenda.

In this video, I've gone through some of the hard factors which motivated this largely economic war.

If there were a country, we'll call it country A, which made the majority of its income by selling oil, and another country, country B, began imposing sanctions on country A which hurt it economically, would a war declared on country B by country A be considered to be "about" oil? What if country A had no intention of disrupting the oil production of country A at all?

[lan]

Everyone knows that the good guys have won every war ever, they're just like the Avengers!

[ericferguson]

Sort of like the US Invasion of Iraq was about "Weapons of Mass Destruction."

[flintlockhomestead]

As a proud descendant from 15 Confederate soldiers I have to say that had there been no slavery there would have been no war.

[fender]

How do you explain the secession documents? I agree that the north fought to preserve the union, but the southern states were quite clear that their intent was to preserve slavery in those documents of secession.

[sammygoodnight]

I've always said that it's more correct to say that the Civil War was not fought over the moral question of slavery, though the institution of slavery was definitely in the mix if cultural and economic factors that led to the war.

[shanghaislim]

Wow, using the emancipation proclamation in a tactical manner to cripple the south while also aiding the north with troops and by increasing morale is an incredible insight. Thank you for making this video, I was ignorant of this fact before watching this.

[dogguy]

Slavery was always a reason for the war, while the North didn't fight to end slavery from day 1, but the Confederates fought to keep and expand the institution of slavery from the very beginning

[howardmenkes]

Nathan Bedford Forrest said, "If we ain't fighting for slavery, I'd like to know what we're fighting for!"

[CringePanda]

I had a boomer teacher once tell me "Secession was about slavery, the Civil War was about Secession."

[Kaspar]

So refreshing to see someone explain in a a calm manner that things are often more complicated than may seem at first

[owenkeller]

Wars are big in scope. Any government wanting a war will pepper its populous with a multitude of justifications. By the middle of the war it becomes clearer which arguments were the most effective and so the government can shift to emphasize these reasons while also claiming that they had been talking about them right from the start.

[kubwell]

The North may not have fought against slavery, that doesn't mean the South wasn't fighting to persevere slavery.

[scudinferno]

Reminds me of when apu on the Simpson’s got his citizenship and he was asked the cause of the civil war. He went into a diatribe and what cut off by the interviewer with ‘just say slavery’

[peterng]

Lincoln in his Inaugural address said of the Corwin amendment '...holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.' He did do a 180 a few years later

[spiderknight]

The problem with the states rights argument is that the right they wanted was to decide the issue of slavery…….

[thanevakarian]

I don’t have the numbers handy it’s not too hard to look up with a little time and effort for those interested, but slave owners in America were such a small percentage of the population, and of that population large percentage of the slave owners weren’t what most people would call “Americans.” It’s also interesting how it’s always left out now every group of Americans besides the few slave owners that existed were outright against it or despised it for various reasons… the point is people should take the time to learn about the subject in it’s entirety.

TLDR you’d be surprised who really owned the slaves, and how many people were against it.

[moz]

The problem with your argument is the Vice-president of the confederacy said the war was about slavery and a few of the state constitutions of confederacy also.

[DWA]

If the Southern soldier were told he was fighting to preserve slavery, and the Northern soldier were told he was fighting to end slavery, there were have been no Civil war. The Southern soldier, (96% of who did not own slaves), would have correctly viewed a war to preserve slavery as a "Rich man's war, poor man's fight", and he would not have joined in the first place, or would have deserted. The Northern soldier, told that he was fighting to free slaves, would have viewed it as a situation that did not involve him at all, and at worst it would have been a threat to his financial future as his very livelihood would have been threatened by millions of freed slaves he would have to compete with for work.

[TheFIoridaMan]

As my grandpa said "not a single confederate soldier i ever met (was a child in the early 1900s Texas) ever even saw a black man until after the war"

[benjaminmarshall]

I listened to the whole video.

So in reverse order:

He said the reason the civil war not being fought over slaver is important is because it means that the Republican defense “we are not racist, we fought to end slavery!” Is invalidated. He also said it is important because it means black people do not have to be grateful to whites who fought to free them.

Second, he said the south fought for economic reasons. While I have no doubt tariffs were a contributing factor, that was hardly means slavery wasn’t a factor at all. The south overtly said, many times, slavery was a major issue.

Third, the north fought to preserve the union. I don’t think that is in question. That said, only counting formal members of abolition groups is ridiculous. That is like saying all republicans today are part of militias and registered too, and that there are no supporters of the republican party who are not registered. Further, the republican platform listed preserving the union, and abolishing slavery in 1860, in fact it mentioned abolishing slavery twice.

Fourth, his opening statement is that we can just ignore any stated reason for why a war happened because of lying powers. His opening position is we can and should cherry pick historical sources!