What were the reasons for the American Civil War?
The War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery. Northern mill owners and manufacturers wanted the South to sell their raw materials, like cotton, to them and not to Europe where they could get better prices. For years the U.S. Congress had passed laws that were commericially beneficial to the North at the expense of the South. It was a matter of profit and power, not ethics. Of course there were abolitionists who made slavery a hot topic, but in fact slavery would have ended in the South eventually without the war. The “Great Emacipator” cared so little for slaves that he didn’t even issue the proclamation until the war had been going on for two years and that was only to keep countries like France and England from aiding the South. The proclamation only ended slavery in “states in rebellion”, not slaves in Union states. Surely if slavery was an issue for the North one of the first steps would have been to free slaves in land under their control for whom it might have do
