Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
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This war was federal vs state rights.
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Slavery was why states' rights were a shooting matter.
Slavery sparked the war of Northern aggression, not because they cared about slaves, but because the Southern system was incompatible with industrial growth and empire. Industrialists wanted consumers, not slaves. Northern Free Soil activists saw slavery as a threat to workers' wages. They and vast interests wanted to keep slavery out of new territories, and their victory in the 1860 election prompted secession.
To think slavery was just another dispute stemming from the "real" issue of states rights is backwards. Slavery was a fundamentally different economic system, and the myriad regional and states rights disputes grew out of it, not vice versa. They'd been disputing tariffs and such forever without fighting. The sabers came out because Lincoln's election blocked expansion, which was considered the death knell of all slavery, and the society it supported.
Take slavery out of the equation, and there would be no war.
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