What the Civil War Was About

Slavery. There was no other cause worth the fight.

All of the other excuses and justifications for the war, offered by the Confederates and the neo-Confederates, ever since 1866, are little more than a tissue of lies to cover over that they, their fathers and their ancestors fought to preserve, and expand, slavery. For the planters in the deep South wanted nothing more than to reopen the Middle Passage. In a dispute between the slaveowners, the ones further to the north were happy with the importation ban, as they made money from breeding slaves.

Some folks maintain that the CSA was anti-slavery, as the CSA did not legalize the importation of slaves. That's pretty much a false claim, as the CSA ban on the slave trade was a fig leaf to entice the British into either recognizing the CSA or, at least, not hindering them. The Brits allowed arms to be exported to the CSA and CSA raiders to be constructed and refit in British ports. A legal slave trade was anathema to the British, who had spent decades and much treasure in trying to stop it. Adopting a pro-slave trade law would have brought the British into active support of the Union.

But I digress.

The Civil War was about slavery. Arguments to the contrary are nothing more than revisionism, and pernicious revisionism, at that.

(H/T)