One Inch Man said:
Or that the Confederacy was formed for reasons other than the threat of slavery being abolished.
States' rights is usually the justification. Whether you want to tie that in to slavery or not is up to you. I think the Southern States all favored the right of the State over the right of a centralized Federal government, while the Northern States did not. They favored the ability to govern themselves without major intereference from a central power far away. That point of view dates back to the formation of the Constitution and Anti-Federalists who supported the Articles of Confederation over creating a Constitution supporting a strong federal government. Thomas Jefferson was a leading Anti-Federalist and helped create the Bill of Rights that gave more rights to individuals and states. The States' Rights point of view focuses mainly on the idea that a State has better ability to govern its people than a centralized system.
Now, you can certainly say that the reason the Southerners would support a train of thought like this was so they could continue making a living with slavery as a part of that, or you could look back towards the time after the Revolution when slavery was not as much of an issue and it still garnered support. The Articles of Confederation was the first governing document of the United States and created a loose federation of states joined in a common cause. So, you could also argue that these people wanted to get back to what they considered a more adequate system of government. There are a lot of ways you could argue that the Confederacy was founded on a seperate government ideology and many ways you can argue it was founded on the need for slavery or that it was a combination of both. Did the southern people fear the industrial strength of the North and want to split from this differing way of life? The growth of two separate cultures can lead to a split, especially when they are divided by location. If we divided those who supported Kerry in the last election and those who supported Bush into two separate areas of the country, I don't think it would be far fetched that something like this could happen.
I think there are a lot of ways that you could explain the cause of the war or at least the seeds of discontent, but inevitably, slavery is going to be tied into many of them by many different people. In reality, most of the men who fought in the Civil War were fighting for their state, for their heritage. Men in the north fought for the area they lived in and many for the preservation of the Union, not to free slaves. In the South, men fought for their place of birth, including Robert E. Lee and others who cared not for slavery, but for where they lived and for him, that was Virginia. Had that state not seceded, Robert E. Lee would have been a Union General. Slavery is blown out of proportion because of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a strategic move to free Southern slaves to rebel against their white owners. I'm pretty sure he didn't initially free all of the slaves, only those owned by Southerners and he saw it as a way to suppress the rebellion. Slavery is an excuse for people in the U.S. to portray the Confederacy as the "bad guys" in the conflict, since good vs. evil is always necessary in such matters. It is true that slavery was an integral part of Southern life at the time, but it is pure idiocy to think it the sole cause of war or even one of the major ones.
I also don't see why it would be hypocritical for those who are anti-slavery to own and showcase a Confederate flag. Men fought and died for the Southern states, some of them ancestors to these people, and not because they wanted to protect slavery, but because they had an undying faith in and love for their home state. If someone agrees with that view and is proud of being a Texan or Virginian, then it's pretty dumb to label them something they aren't. The Confederate Flag represents a view these men fought for and has today morphed into a symbol of pride in those actions and pride in the states they were born in for being a part of it. Symbols are up for interpretation by anyone who views them and for someone to judge a person who holds high a Confederate Flag and tell them that it can't represent pride in home or anything outside the common view is a moron. The NAACP and other such organizations that seek the removal of the Confederate Flag from public view and government areas should be ashamed of themselves. Do they not know that slavery in America existed long before there was a flag outside of the traditional American flag flying over these shores and that usually they were brought into the North and then sold there?
Anyway, I don't know how much of this is even going to make sense, I'm trying to write a book report at the same time, but I'm trying to showcase some separate point of views, because the general public, even in this country, doesn't know a whole lot about The Civil War and where some people are coming from. I was born in Texas, I understand a lot about southern life, etc. that most people don't.
