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raddocmed summarize it , the South called it “The War of Northern Aggression” because they felt that their rights where being trampled on by a “foreign” county. Slavery was a big part of it, but the South felt that the states had “constitutional rights ” to act as they saw fit, with-in the frame work of the constitution.
Lincoln was very careful in dealing with slavery, he was afraid that he would lose four more states to the rebellion, and even with the Emancipation Proclamation, he really didn’t free a single slave that he had any control over.
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That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
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Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware where all slave states, it did not free any slaves in these states. The area that would soon be the state of West Virginia was specifically exempted from the proclamation. Yes, all of these slaves where freed in time, but in some parts of the county, there where still blacks in slavery as late as the end of 1865, eight months after the end of the war.
Yes, in the end the war, in part, was about freeing the slaves, but Mr Lincolns main goal was to restore the Union.
Lincoln did say that but the issue was never his to decide when South Carolina attacked Ft Sumter & announced its secession & brought along other slave states with it shortly after Lincoln’s election.
The issue that Lincoln ment was the issue of secession:
In your hands, my dissatistfied countymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. The goverment will not assail you. You can have not conflict, withour being yourselves the aggressors
The south believe it had “rights” and was willing to fight for them, lucky for us all that they lost, because we are what we are, in part, because of the war.
The down side is the war gave the federal government more power over peoples everyday lives, powers which, IMHO, they are now miss using to force things on the many for the few.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so long winded…………………….it is just I really don’t like the way that some people in the federal government are telling me what I “have” to do.
