Quite sad.

Sad but true.

I'm going to ignore the whole racism / holocaust angle and just add my two cents on this original question.

I don't agree with the black and white nature of the options presented (tee hee). I wouldn't say slavery was at the heart of the Civil War but it was definitely one of the major aspects that hung on the outcome of the war.

My own views, the war happened due to one side feeling a serious threat to the way of life they'd become comfortable with (like the guy from Alabama who wouldn't burn his neighbors property). I'm not denying the slavery was one of the big factors, I just don't think it was the only factor.

Consider the power of the idea of 'freedom' within the US. It's always been a HUGE thing, the States started out because of that desire for 'freedom'. At that point in history these 'free' states that had just recently established their independence from the UK were now on the verge of being forced to accept new forms of political control and apply new social concepts that, within the light of 'freedom', they had the right to refuse.

I don't think it was right for those States to keep slaves (or to fight for the right to continue) so much as I think old people were effing dumb.

Well that's the thing. Slavery was the South basically. Their entire economy was based on farming and cotton trade and stuff and they lacked the technical innovation and industrialization that the North had (and they really had no major cities). So it wasn't just about 'keeping the black man down' or anything (though that certainly was a part of it), they were also very dependent on it for their way of life.

That's exactly what I'm getting at - a 'threat' to the Southern way of life. It wasn't 'they want to take the slaves away' so much as 'they want us to change how we do things and not use slaves anymore'. Slavery was definitely a huge factor but not necessarily the root cause.

My family fought in the American Civil War, on both sides, depending on where they emigrated during the famine. Better than starving to death I guess, getting shot.

I think most fought on the yankee side, because I know a number of them lived in New York andConneticuit.

I think Tuna and Mr Dave are on to something. You can't separate the Southern way of life and Slavery during the time of the Civil War. The war might have been about any number of other factors, but because the south had naturally developed into an area dependent on slave labour, any one of those factors would have likely been deeply defined by slavery.

I mentioned something similiar to this on an earlier post, slavery was the southern way of life it built their economy which was strictly agricultural based and it was totally in contrast to the much richer industralized north. Was war inevitable when the North decreed slavery an abomination and needed to be eradicated? Or was it inevitable when the southern states seceded from the Union?