Can anyone tell me what the civil war was fought over?

Question

...and PLEASE don't tell me "slavery".. those whose say it was all about slavery care not for history.

Answer 1

limted goverment lincoln was a racist.read some of his debates.

Answer 2

I think you've got some good points, but in the end, the Civil War was fought over state's rights to self-determination. Slavery was the hot-button issue of the day, and used as a rallying point. The North couldn't have cared less about the slaves -- as evidenced by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when the Supreme Court of the United States declared that blacks were inferior and had no rights that should be respected. Economically, having the South secede from Union would weaken the Union, and eliminate the tarrifs and taxes that were collected in the South with the sale of agricultural products to England and Europe. Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions had outlined the concept that any powers not specifically assigned to the federal government were therefore the jurisdiction of the states, and that the Constitution was merely an agreement between states, not an overriding ruling authority. The Southern states felt that the issue of slavery was the jurisdiction of the states, and if those "rights" were abolished, it made the Federal government far stronger than it was meant to be. Slavery was also an issue in the expansion of the United States in the West. California, when it applied to join the union, was a non-slavery area because of previous treaties with Mexico -- up to that point, the policy of the U.S. was to only admit states equally balanced between slavery and non-slavery. California was a big non-slave state -- which pushed the admittance of several states that WERE slave states, much to the dismay of Northern abolitionists.

Answer 3

Money pure and simple. Importation of slaves (considered as property i.e. a bankable asset) was outlawed in the late 1700's so after 80 years slaves were becoming worth more as an asset. Meanwhile industrialization was cranking up on the north end of the Mississippi river offering paying jobs to those that could escape and make it to Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland. Thus the southern farmers "property" was being taken away from them. Add to this legislation written in Washington designed to cause a conflict over states rights and regulating which new states would be "free" states and you have the inevitable outcome of a war.

The whole thing was manipulated by the very same international banking institutions who instigate wars for profit to this day. The Bank of England financed and supplied the South...until they ran out of GOLD that is. They also "loaned" the North enormous sums in exchange for most of their GOLD.

When Lincoln decided to print his own money (the Greenback) after the war rather than go further into debt with the New York (English) banks that was his fatal mistake.

100 years later JFK made the exact same fatal mistake...he started printing Silver Certificates rather than borrow for the Vietnam war from the very same New York (English) banks that murdered Lincoln...but that's another story.

Answer 4

Yes, Kurt, many already have, and I can too can tell you what the American Civil War was fought over. I am going to tell you, as I care very much for History, and I care enough to answer this quesition too - If it were not for slavery the people of the Southern states may have voted for Lincoln in 1860. As it happened, they called him a "Black Repulican" and did not. If it were not for the election of Lincoln and his position of not permitting slavery in the new territories in 1860, the people of the Southern states may not have chosen to secede from the Union in 1860 -1861. If it were not for the Southern states dissolving their union with the Northern states (and immediatley adopting a constituition that maintained slavery) and forcibly taking possession of Federal arsenals, forts, mints, post offices, etc, the Northern states may not have gone to war.

As it happened the Southern states chose to fight for the right to keep slaves (they called slaves "property"), returned fugitive slaves to their masters during the war, shot black prisoners of war (Fort Pillow and Petersburg) and refused to even let their slaves serve in the military, until Gen. Robert E, Lee requested this in 1865. Truly, the Confederate States of America died of two theories: the first was "States Rights", and the second was the subordination of the black race in the Southern states which was called "Slavery.".

Answer 5

It's was more over economics than slavery, but the North knew targeting slavery would directly hinder the South's economical growth... the North had grown more industrious, and the South was still mostly an agricultural state. Lincoln himself said (and I'm paraphrasing here, not direct quotes) "If I could end the war, and not free a single slave, I would"...

Answer 6

The Civil war started as a result of Lincoln's Election, the South feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery and that would destroy their economics leaving the government's power to the north.

The south and North was already on edge about who would get what state for freedom or slave state and the congress was pretty much at war ( a democrat beat a congressman with a cane after he humiliated his uncle.)

Later in the war Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation to try to boost the moral of soldiers who where uncertain of why the war was going on so long(they thought it would last barley 9 months)

Answer 7

It was fought over states rights, that is the laws of the individual states to carry more weight than that of the federal government. If Conderacy had had their way, all the federal government could do was control interstate commerce and protect the borders. There would be no federal taxes or regulations unless you moved merchandise across state or international lines. There would be no federal government swooping in to take control when they felt the state wasn't doing the right thing, i.e. the Florida 2000 re-count, the Maria Shivo case, Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidians etc etc
Something to think about

Answer 8

The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places, from Valverde, New Mexico, and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont, and Fernandina on the Florida coast. More than 3 million Americans fought in it, and over 600,000 men, 2 percent of the population, died in it.

American homes became headquarters, American churches and schoolhouses sheltered the dying, and huge foraging armies swept across American farms and burned American towns. Americans slaughtered one another wholesale, right here in America in their own cornfields and peach orchards, along familiar roads and by waters with old American names.

In two days at Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more American men fell than in all the previous American wars combined. At Cold Harbor, some 7,000 Americans fell in twenty minutes. Men who had never strayed twenty miles from their own front doors now found themselves soldiers in great armies, fighting epic battles hundreds of miles from home. They knew they were making history, and it was the greatest adventure of their lives.

The Civil War has been given many names: the War Between the States, the War Against Northern Aggression, the Second American Revolution, the Lost Cause, the War of the Rebellion, the Brothers’ War, the Late Unpleasantness. Walt Whitman called it the War of Attempted Secession. Confederate General Joseph Johnston called it the War Against the States. By whatever name, it was unquestionably the most important event in the life of the nation. It saw the end of slavery and the downfall of a southern planter aristocracy. It was the watershed of a new political and economic order, and the beginning of big industry, big business, big government. It was the first modern war and, for Americans, the costliest, yielding the most American causalities and the greatest domestic suffering, spiritually and physically. It was the most horrible, necessary, intimate, acrimonious, mean-spirited, and heroic conflict the nation has ever known.

Inevitably, we grasp the war through such hyperbole. In so doing, we tend to blur the fact that real people lived through it and were changed by the event. One hundred eighty-five thousand black Americans fought to free their people. Fishermen and storekeepers from Deer Isle, Maine, served bravely and died miserably in strange places like Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Fredericksburg, Virginia. There was scarcely a family in the South that did not lose a son or brother or father.

As with any civil strife, the war was marked by excruciating ironies. Robert E. Lee became a legend in the Confederate army only after turning down an offer to command the entire Union force. Four of Lincoln’s own brothers-in-law fought on the Confederate side, and one was killed. The little town of Winchester, Virginia, changed hands seventy-two times during the war, and the state of Missouri sent thirty-nine regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: seventeen to the Confederacy and twenty-two to the Union.

Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers — if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible. What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew.
The war was about a "new birth of freedom".

Answer 9

well the north wanted to preserve the union, since the south had seceeded.


wow i don't feel like typing out the whole mess....

you know...nullification, compact theory, slaves suing for freedom, transcontinental railroad, panic of 1857, election of lincoln.


slavery mattered toward the end...it does have quite a bit to do with the civil war.

Answer 10

okay, since u don't want to hear slavery, here's another answer. the south didn't want the north to tell them what to do. now if we could only figure out what they were doing that was so vastly different . . .

Answer 11

it was mainly fought over land but then it grew into a wr about slavery