By Harvey Bottoms - Oct 25, 1999

The Civil War is a misnomer for the four years of fighting between the Union and the Confederates. Let's take a look at why this is true. In a civil war the two factions are both striving to take control of the same government. In this war, the Confederacy formed its own government and the Union took up arms to prevent this from happening. Jefferson Davis was no more trying to live in the White House than George Washington was trying to live in the Windsor Castle in the Revolutionary War. The Confederates, in an effort to defend its territory, asked that all Union soldiers leave its province. When the Union armies refused, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter thus becoming the first skirmish of the war. Similar to the Civil War, The War Between the States is not correct. The two warring parties were organized governments of their respective states and not the states as individual units. Since we have looked at why the two most popular names given to the war are improper, let move beyond that to why the war was fought in the first place and why it was not fought. The war was fought to force the Confederacy to live under the mandates of the Federal Government. Most of these were meant to demean the Southern States. The Southern States were in favor of State's Rights and not a centralized Union dictates. Most laws that came from a Northern dominated Congress were meant to protect their shipping interests and did little to benefit the South in the export of their agricultural products and import of manufactured goods from Europe. This division was very evident as far back as 1832 when South Carolina nearly seceded because of the high tariffs. A compromise of lowering the tariff was achieved to avert the secession at this time. Shortly after Lincoln's election, Congress passed highly protectionist Morrill tariffs. This was when the South seceded. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for all spending measures. The war was not fought to free the slaves. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so." During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." It is fact that the South never sent a ship to Africa to bring back slaves. This was all done by the Northern shipping. Slavery in the South was just about to be a thing of the past. With the exception of a few large plantations, slaves were not an economic method of farming the land. Most people in the South did not own slaves. In fact there were more slaveholders in the North than there was in the South. The United States Congress passed the following after most of the Southern States had seceded. Thirty-Sixth Congress. Session II. Res 9,11, 12, 13. 1861 page 251 (no. 13) Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States. March 9, 1861 RESOLVED BY THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED. That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which when ratified by three-fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of said Constitution, viz: Article 13 "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." The Constitution of the United States, that instrument as originally adopted by the thirteen colonies contained three sections which recognized slavery, Article I, Sections 2 and 9, and Article 4, Section 9. And Whereas the Constitution of the Southern Confederacy prohibited the slave trade, the Constitution of the United States prohibited the abolition of the slave trade for twenty years. Most Southerners who owned slaves would be working in the fields with their slaves and treated them like family. The few that were abusive to their slaves were frowned upon by the majority of the Southerners. In fact, General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest who was a slave trader for a time before the war, refused to sell slaves to anyone who he suspected of beating slaves. He quit several years before the war because it was no longer that profitable. General Forrest, when war broke out, promised freedom to any of his slaves who would fight with him during the war. Every last one of them took up arms and fought side by side with him and all but one lived to receive his freedom. His was not an isolated incident. All over the South, this scene was replicated many times. There were a number of black slaveholders in the South as well. Slavery was not a black and white issue. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he only "freed" slaves that were located in the Confederacy. He refused to free the northern or border slaves as he feared that many of these states might secede if he made an attempt to free their slaves. Many of the slaves that were suppose to be freed by Union soldiers in the South were actually taken North and sold there into slavery. U. S. Grant and William T. Sherman were both slaveholders. The next time someone tries to intimate that our ancestors who fought for the South did so because of bigotry or were in favor of slavery, remember that these are untruths. Many people have bought this bill of goods and there is no way that you can change their mind. However, do not let their bigotry affect how you feel for your ancestors. They fought for their homes and the way of life that they believed in; they did not fight for slavery.