| | Jonathan:
Dave Barry wrote a column once about the causes of the civil war. In elementary school you learn that the civil war was about slavery. But then in middle school you learn that it was really about states rights. Finally in high school you learn that it was really cause by economic tensions between the two parties.
Jonathan I'd say all of the three issues were true for the causes of the Civil war, but the latter two were ancillary. States' rights (which was an issue of whether a state had the right to perpetuate slavery) or economic tensions (the addition of new territories as slave states) all revolved around the issue of slavery.
Perhaps you can justify the suspension of habeus corpus, the conscription of (hundreds of?) thousands of men, the raping, pillaging, plundering, burning etc. by believing that North was full of equality-minded abolitionists, and every Southerner owned a couple of slaves, but it's not the case.
Number one I can't justify suspending habeus corpus or the other violations of liberty by the North, but it doesn't presume one can't pass a judgment on the good deed of ending slavery, which was what the North did. Just as taxation may be involuntary, it doesn't mean when those taxes are paid to lock up a murderer, one should not favor we lock up murderers because the injustice of forcible taxation, otherwise we are saying all bad acts are equally bad, and no value comparisons can be made between bad acts. The South wanted to continue its existence perpetuating slavery, it never had any legitimate right to its existence as an independent nation because of this. We can make a comparison between the two governments, and pass a judgment on that comparison on which one was worse. I'd say the continued existence of institutionalized slave labor camps was far worse than the temporary suspension of habeas corpus, but I'm also saying suspending habeas corpus was bad and suspending liberty is not necessary to winning a war.
In truth the object was nationalistic obsession with preserving "The Union".
Not so. The truth was the South felt threatened the Northern controlled federal government would outlaw slavery in the South and stop any newly formed territories from becoming slave states. Had the North let the South secede, the competition for newly acquired territories as admission to the Confederacy or the Union would undoubtedly lead to an eventual war anyways.
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