The subject of Slavery and the Civil War will be discussed forever and almost all participants will wind up with the same opinion as when they started the discussion. So why bother discussing it? After reading lots of stuff by folks on both sides of the issue I have reached a mental position which serves me well.

First, I decided years ago never to carry on a serious discussion with anyone who starts out by saying either: a) “The war was all about slavery”; or b) “It had nothing to do with slavery”. Neither argument can be sustained in a civil, logical or intelligent manner for more than a minute or two before ‘cherry picking’ of snippets from historical writing, the Constitution, the Bible, etc. takes the conversation off to some dark and closed corner of one’s closed mind.

Second, the subjects, a) “What was the cause of the War?” and “What were the soldiers fighting for?” are two separate and distinct matters and should not be confused. Same as today, there are not any GIs in Iraq who would tell you that they are looking for WMDs.

A recent event had a bearing on my thinking of cause and effect. I attended the funeral of an old friend. His widow said to me, “I kept telling Tom that if he didn’t stop smoking those damn cigarettes they would eventually kill him”. I could have (I didn’t) started an insane discussion saying to her something as “Cigarettes don’t kill people, you can have them around the house and even sleep with a carton or two and they will not kill you.” I could have also gone down that road of it is the smoking of the cigarettes that caused the cancer of the lungs, and it was the cancer that killed her beloved Tom. And then I could have told her it was not even cancer that killed him, cancer killed his immune system and he actually died of pneumonia. I could have told her that if smoking didn’t kill him, there was a lots of other things out there that could have gotten him, like a milk truck between crosswalks. Such talk from me would have served no useful purpose. He smoked cigarettes and he died and she will always believe that the cigarettes did it.

Anyone who have read the Congressional Record of the years preceding he Civil War would understand how slavery was like the cigarettes, not the direct or only cause, but a major thing which promulgated regional (a.k.a. political) ugliness that led us as a nation into war at that time. If slavery was not there in the forefront, there were other matters that may have led to war at some time in the near future but it didn’t happen that way. But slavery was there and was used by both sides to further the already present animosity between Southern and Northern politicians. To say that slavery was an issue in the cause of the war is not saying that the war was started to free the slaves. However, it was clearly expressed by the states which succeeded that the right to own slaves was a reason to fight.

So it is clear (to me that is) that there is no reason to discuss this issue with the few out there who will take the position of “it was purely about slavery” or “slavery had nothing to do with it”. I feel comfortable. Some of you will never be so. To you and others I say let the facts speak and the bitter thinking and feelings take the sideline. Get on with your lives, you have more important things think about, the War and life in general, than let a little argument tie you down.