I'd like to weigh in on this topic. The following is not gleaned from any website or book, but from information passed down from generation to generation. I do live (born and raised) in Alabama, after all, the heart of the Confederation. This is a subject near and dear to my heart.

The Civil War was not about slavery as much as it was about ideology and money. At that point in American history, there were vast changes happening. We as a nation had become prosperous and strong, already a world leader of sorts, and it was due to the combined contributions of the Northern and Southern states. Being so large geographically, and being well-populated across the geography (for the time), we had benefits that other countries did not have.

The northern states were moving heavily into industry. Slavery was becoming more of a luxury than an economic necessity, since machinery was replacing the need for human labor. Factories were being constructed at a rapid rate to produce goods for the populous. What slaves were left in the North prior to the abolition of slavery were for the most part little more than lower-paid factory labor. The result of abolishing slavery, in economic terms, was a little more investment in labor.

The southern states were still largely agricultural, since the South had more open land and a much longer growing season. Farms had expanded into massive plantations, which required vast amounts of human labor to operate. There were no tractors or other present-day machinery to till the soil; the plowing, cultivating, and harvesting were all done by hand, every one of these being an extremely labor-intensive operation.

Small farms did still exist, without slavery to help operate them, but these were little more than what we today would think of as mini-farms or huge gardens. They allowed some farmers to eke out a sparse living. The real power and wealth was concentrated in the plantation owners.

At the time, slavery was indeed a major issue confronting the United States. The northern states were in favor of abolishing slavery, while the southern states were not. Obviously, this would be the case since the action would not harm the northern industries much, but would be devastating to the southern plantations. I really and truly believe that the vast majority of people in both regions were coming to realize that slavery was wrong and should be abolished; the difference was that for the South, it would destroy their entire economy.

Overshadowing this one issue, however, were many issues that placed the South in even more economic peril. About that time, the Federal government tried to pass a land tax based only on acreage. Obviously, this did not sit well with the plantation owners since their thousands of acres were producing roughly what ten acres of northern factory would, and their taxes would be hundreds of times higher. Mention has already been made about tariffs placed on farm products. Slavery was this looming threat of even further financial devastation, backing up economic stresses that had been building for some time.

The decision to secede was based on all of these factors. It was indeed similar to the Revolutionary secession from England, except that at first it seemed that it would be far less bloody. The southern states seceded, declaring themselves independent of the United States, and reformed into the Confederacy. Once this happened, the land that had been used by the United States within the boundaries of the Confederacy became the property of the Confederacy. Fort Sumter, in the minds of the southerners, belonged to the Confederacy and the troops in it were an occupying army. The United States did not recognize the secession and therefore saw the troops as Federal soldiers doing their duty and the Confederate troops as a rogue militia.

Recipe for war. Just add bullets.

There was at the time a good deal of sympathy for the South in some areas of the North. Lincoln recognized this and turned every speech into a slavery issue, refusing to let anything overshadow slavery. This had the desired effect of solidifying support for the 'police action' taken against the South. So yes, the North was fighting for abolition of slavery, but at the same time, the South was fighting for their right to live free of the tyranny of the North. Many southern regiments were composed of slaves, not slaves forced into service, but those who had volunteered to fight.

Two groups, at odds with each other, both under false impressions of why they were fighting, and each fighting for a different cause. Many died in that war, enough to literally make creeks run red with blood. But that's what war is. The following is what war is not:

Thanks in no small part to the settlers in some of the more mountainous and remote areas, who were actually just continuing their fighting with authority in all forms, the South began achieving victories. This is what caused England and France to sit up and take notice; the English because there was still a cultural aversion to those upstart colonists who had seceded from them (and they saw this as some sort of poetic irony), and the French because of some political tensions that had come about from the country they helped seceded from England. Lincoln saw this, and together with the real war criminal, General William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as the commander of the Union army General Ulysses Simpson Grant, approved the plan proposed by General Sherman: cut the snake in half.

Leading a regiment of the worst scofflaws and cutthroats the Union could muster, many released from prison in exchange for their service, Sherman cut a swath of carnage through the South. He did not attack armies or militia; he attacked the civilian population. His band of thugs looted, pillaged, and burned everything they came across. Children from the age of infants to those just below the age where they could fight were killed in front of their mothers' eyes. Mother were raped while their children watched. Old men and women were butchered. Homes were burned, sometimes with the inhabitants boarded up inside while the 'soldiers' who torched them laughed. This carnage went across Tennessee, through Georgia, wiped clean the major city of Atlanta, leaving nothing but a scene worthy of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Ashes, charred human remains, dead and wounded livestock, and dying civilians were all they left in their wake.

Sherman's plan worked; he made it to the Atlantic and cut in half the 'snake' that was the Confederacy. Supply lines were ruptured, and the battles began falling to the Union. It wasn't long before General Lee had no choice but to surrender to General Grant.

So in the eyes of my family, as in the eyes of many Southern families, General Sherman was the worst war criminal to have ever walked the planet. By association and conspiracy of and in his actions, President Lincoln and General Grant were also war criminals. In the eyes of others, mainly those form the Northern states, the three did what had to be done, and are even hailed as heroes. In one Ohio town, there is a huge sign as one enters it: Welcome to [...], proud home of General William Tecumseh Sherman. I know; I drove past it one time, mouth agape at the idea that anyone could be so proud to be the birthplace of such a man.

Before anyone asks, I have no links; I don't need any. The story posted is the result of tales of the old times passed down to me from my father, from his father to him, from his father to him, and so on. They are corroborated by personal research covering a span of decades into my family history, pages after pages of letters and official reports from a myriad of sources. They take into accounts reminders left from history such as the old plantation house not far from me which still shows musket scars in the aged brick surrounding it, and the records found left inside it generations after the siege it managed to endure.

No, not everything is online, just a mouse click away.

Some of it is real history, tales of what really happened and why those involved in it allowed it or made it happen. How they felt, and why they did what they did. That is real history, and it contains the lessons we must hear and learn from today, lest we (as the saying goes) be doomed to repeat their errors. These lessons are apt in today's world, so apt that I will not spell them out here. Simply look around you with your eyes open and you will see the same things happening.

Or feel free to not believe me. Neither decision will affect what really happened. We can re-write history, but we cannot change it.

TheRedneck