12-28-2023, 01:17 PM
(12-28-2023, 12:20 PM)hollodero Wrote: Oh just to clarify, of course slavery and all the issues around it was a quite important reason. I do not put that in question. It's just, when you say that question requires a one word answer, I can not really feel on board with that. Imho, that feels like oversimplifying the issue for moral conveniency. I'd argue a historian would not be quite satified with said one word answer.
You shouldn't feel odd asking this question, because the main cause has shifted over the years. Oddly enough the "needs" of left leaning academia is, IMO, the cause. For most of my life the war was about slavery, either ending it or fighting to keep it. Then around my college years (mid early to mid 90's) it changed to states rights, i.e. a federation or a confederation. The US is an institutionally flawed, and most importantly racist, nation and would never go to war to liberate nonwhites. Then around 2016 (I wonder why?) the issue of slavery became the laser focus of the Civil War, because absolutely everything in this country must be viewed through the lens of race. So your confusion is founded in reality.
Truthfully, I think it was largely (80%) about slavery, with the states rights issue hinging on, but limited to, that issue. The interesting thing about that though, is that around 600,000 Union soldiers (almost exclusively white men) died fighting the Civil War to end slavery. Which kind of complicates the whole white people are evil and the US is irredeemably racist argument.
