It’ll be like the “States’ Rights” people, but infinitely worse. Being raised in the south, you’re taught that the civil war was over states’ rights, not slavery. That slavery was just the one that historians tended to latch onto, because it’s the most inflammatory topic and makes the south look bad.
And if you’re a good student and don’t bother to question that, you’ll enter the adult world believing that the south wasn’t fighting for slavery.
I mean, the war didn’t start because the North wanted to end slavery in the South…
It started because the federal government wouldn’t force northern states who had abolished slavery to return escaped slaves to Southern states.
The part about abolishing slavery nationwide didn’t come up until the war was going on, and that was more an economic sanction than anything else.
So it really did start because of state rights, it’s just it was the northern states fighting for that and the Southern States wanting a federal government that was willing to force states to do stuff.
… States rights to do what?
You have to admit the language used in your last paragraph is pretty telling
I’m not sure about that. I think it was more started on the fact that it was clear the Republicans at the time were aiming not to abolish slavery but to stop its expansion. Which in political terms means slave states were basically fucked as more states were introduced. Many people see Bleeding Kansas as a prelude to the civil war because it was about seeing if a new territory will be pro or anti slavery. Like yes the southern states were hypocrites about states rights but from their perspective* however skewed that was. The threat of anti slavery was expanding while those who were sympathetic to it were losing power in house and senate. So secession/war over slavery was inevitable, it was merely a can the founding fathers sort of kicked down the road for others to figure out.
Like, I get the idea that they thought ending slavery outright would shortly follow, but that was easily 50+ years away. By seceding and then initiating an attack on the US, all they did was bring about the end of it more decisively and quickly. If they hadn’t overreacted, things would’ve stayed the same for an unfortunately long time.
