[Bryanw92]

OMG, politicians need to stop talking about the Civil War. The idea of These United States ended and the name of our country became a meaningless phrase. It was about slavery. The South owned theirs and the North rented theirs as they came off the boats from Ireland and Eastern Europe. The former is morally indefensible, but the latter can be defended with an Economics textbook. Renting slaves and working them to death in your factories and mines is every market fundamentalist’s dream.

[jeffersondem]

“It was about slavery.”

If the South was fighting for slavery, who was fighting against slavery?

[jonrick46]

Good analysis.

I believe that the North was envious of the advantage the South had with slave labor. The cotton industry was making the South very wealthy after advances in cotton production increased profits. The Cotton Gin was just one of those advances. Soon there would be automation in picking and the South could move their slave labor force into textile production and out-compete the North’s textile industry. The North wanted the slave advantage gone and used moral arguments to get public support.

[DiogenesLamp]

The north had the "owned" kind of slaves too. Not only that, they were going to pass the Corwin amendment which virtually guaranteed slavery would last so long as any state wanted it.

If the war was about slavery, the Union would have conquered Maryland. Their supply lines would have been really short.