Sawhorse
3 months ago
Sorry, but the Civil War DID NOT START OVER SLAVERY. Lincoln used Gettysburg to appeal to the abolitionists to motivate the North. This is a fact. States rights was the issue as the North and West cut the South out of the Transcontinental Railroad and it got worse from there.

Blue State Deplorable Sawhorse
3 months ago
You beat me to the punch. In point of fact, states’ rights was the root cause. Slavery was a tangential if irreconcilable issue that fueled it - each new slave-holding state meant a new state without slavery was needed to offset it - but more fundamentally it was about opposing views of how the states would be governed. The Southern states had voluntarily entered the union, and felt they also had a right to secede. They opposed a strong federal government and contended that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government belonged to the individual states.

I see this notion that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves all the time, but that’s simply not so. It’s revisionism. Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union. When the states began to secede, they forced his hand leading to the Civil War.

Pepsi_Freak Blue State Deplorable
3 months ago
" Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union."

Correct. In fact, he so stated in public. He felt preservation of the Union was more imperative than abolishing slavery (i.e., abolition could wait, restoring the Union couldn't). //

AFVet262
3 months ago
Sounds like DeSantis used a very balanced approach in teaching. When I was working on my masters in military history, I had a professor who used a very similar approach, and who also made the statement that the Civil War was not about slavery.

And the fact is, to many of the players at the time, it wasn't. Of the 11 states that eventually seceded, only 5 explicitly mentioned slavery in their declarations. The majority focused on the concept of states' rights - which included import and export controls, foreign policy, and several other components.

Lincoln stated that his sole goal was to preserve the Union - and if he could do that by freeing all the slaves, he would; if he could do it without freeing any slaves, he'd do that.

The causes of the Civil War were much more complicated than the issue of slavery. It was clearly a part of it, but not the sole reason. DeSantis, by taking the "devil's advocate" approach, opened his students' eyes to the wider historical picture. Good on him. //

CarolineL
3 months ago
To distill the many, many reasons for the Civil War down to “just slavery” is ridiculous.

It’s like saying WWI happened just because Arch Duke Ferdinand was shot. Yes, it was a flash point but it’s laughable to discount the decades of built up of hostility, previous European history, the treaties among allies and countless other integral people, facts and events. //

davenj1
3 months ago

1. Sharyl Attkisson is a hero among investigative reporters in my book. She's been vilified for her story on Queen Hillary and Bosnia, Fast and Furious, and the TSA. She was targeted by the Obama DOJ. She stood strong!
2. There is some strong evidence that the Civil War was fought because of competing economic systems- the industrial North versus the agrarian South. There is nothing for DeSantis to apologize here. I was taught the War of 1812 was not about the impressment of US naval sailors, but because the US had it eyes on Canada, or that it was about products protectionism and tariffs. It's what a real teacher does. Kudos to DeSantis for being that type of teacher. He gets my vote.

medieval davenj1
3 months ago
Item 2 is quite correct -- the Civil War was about re-uniting the US which was split over economic issues. Slavery was a side-issue which was brought forward for purely military reasons. The actual causes of the Civil War are quite complex and covered extensively (and quite read-ably) in first volume of Bruce Catton's "Centennial History of the Civil War."