what did the south fight for in the civil war?

Answer 1

They were fighting for the institution of slavery and states rights. They wanted to have a weak central government.

Answer 2

Only the richest 5% to 10% of the Southern homes had slaves, while the rest of the white population of the south lived in a lower, middle class style or were just plain dirt poor.
Most of the soldiers of the south were not from rich homes. So to these poor soldiers, the war was not about slavery, the war was about state rights. Having their local government run their lives and not letting people who live a thousand miles away make laws that they have to live by.
This to them was worth fighting for. It is the same idea that the colonist had 80 years before.

Answer 3

Individual states rights. Basically, the principle of the supremacy of federal powers over those powers held by the states is based on the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution and was explained in the early 1800s by John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its Constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After McCulloch, the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of the powers Congress possesses under the Constitution, and whether the states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the States.

Slavery (and I'm not condoning the institution by any means) was a secondary issue and was only used later as a way to whip up a frenzy of support for the war in the North. However, history has chosen to dwell on that aspect of the conflict and so people believe that slavery was the whole reason for the war.

Answer 4

The main issue was Federal Government versus States' Rights. One of these States' Rights was the right whether a newly formed State or territory would be able to have slavery, and Abraham Lincoln, in the 1858 "House Divided" speech, quoted the Bible in Matthew when he stated:
..."A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South...."

The southern states believed that a state had the right to determine whether it would be a slave or free state, yet the northern states believed the Federal Government should determine the fate of a state, including which laws it will have. In a way, slavery could have been argued as the issue, since the Federal Government was attempting to confine slavery to only the states which until that point allowed slavery, and was attempting to cease the spread into the newly created states in the westward expansion, but in the end, the issue was about much more than slavery, it was about the level of Federal oversight in States' rights.

Answer 5

The Civil war was mainly about state's rights. Slavery wasn't really a major reason in the beginning of the war, because several Northern states had slavery as well.

The South was protesting on how the Northern government in Washington was taking too much control over the southern states. So they seceded

Answer 6

One of the things they fought was for slavery. Since the South was mainly dependent on agriculture, they needed the slaves to do the work. Another reason was states rights.

Answer 7

Secession or, if you prefer, Independence. They wanted to be able to run their affairs independently of the federal government. More specifically, the issue of the day was slavery. The south's economy was mostly based on agriculture which, at the time, was operated using vast amounts of slave labor. When the federal government attempted to force abolition (The freeing of slaves), southern states voted to Secede.

Answer 8

Individual states rights.

Answer 9

They fought for the right to keep their way of life and not have to listen to Washington DC, especially Lincoln.

Answer 10

just the right not to have other people tell them what to do, in a nutshell.