And that’s pretty much all it was. An excuse. The civil war had absolutely nothing to do with slavery or the slaves. If the South hadn’t threatened to secede there would have been no civil war.
of course it did. It had everything to do with slavery.
Slavery was the reason the south seceded.
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Not for the North it didn’t. Their reason for going to war was solely about the South wanting to secede. Even if the South had freed their slaves and still wanted to secede, the North still wouldn’t have allowed them to.
Why did the south secede?
What was happening in Kansas and Missouri 2 years before secession started?
What was the race to the west?
You are both right. For the south it was absolutely about slavery. But for the north, it was about secession. They didn’t start the war because the south had slaves, they started it because the south seceded.
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Which is not to say the north wasn’t bent on ending slavery, eventually.
They didn’t start it in the conventional sense. South Carolina did.
The depends entirely on whether or not you think it was constitutional for them to secede.
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Of course it was. Why?
Because it is irrational to suppose a newly sovereign south would allow the north to have or keep military bases within their state.
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Lincoln precipitated the war. The South offered a fair price to buy Ft Sumpter as well as all other US installations in the Confederacy. Lincoln refused and instead fortified and supplied them.
Not sure what you mean by challenging it.
Almost every liberal activist Court decision uses the 14th Amendment, and therefore interprets it. Roe v Wade found a right to privacy in the 14th. I can go on and on.
Even conservative justices aren’t above using it. In Bush v Gore, the 14th was used to stop the recount- giving Bush the presidency.
The 14th amendment has acted as a catch all for anything anyone wants to “find” in the constitutopn.
It is my understanding that there has never been a legal challenge that birth right citizenship applies to children born here by parents who came over our border illegally. The way this amendment has been applied has brought economic hardship on the US in the form of welfare to these children. Is there anyone who would argue that the intent of the 14th Amendment was to entice impoverished women to come to America illegally so as to put their babies into the US welfare system at the cost to the US taxpayer?
It certainly would be a different America today had all those people who died in the war lived full lives and were able to have off-spring. No other war in US history has had a profound impact as the Civil war did, something that scarred it forever and its effects still being felt today!
Jesse James as part of Quantrill’s Raiders was of one lost in the narrative of Bloody Kansas!