secularsquare...

I appreciate your reading my comment. Unfortunately you illustrate a lack of factual knowledge from the period and failed to recognize or mention the real cause of the so called Civil War. The excuse that The War morphed into a slavery issue is disingenuous at best and has nothing what so ever to do with THE CAUSE OF THE WAR. What might have come later has nothing to do with the start of The War. My Great Grandfather Morgan was 14 years old during The War and his father was off fighting, as were countless other relatives of mine, many whose ancestors had originally fought in the American Revolutionary war that allowed our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence to be written and adopted by the people. As a small boy I would sit by his rocking chair on our farmhouse front porch and listen to him talk about The War. What he told me did not synchronize with what I was taught in school and read in books later. That started me on my own research of The War period documents, etc. It was he who first told me The War was fought over double-taxation, when the northern states charged southern growers a tax to deliver their cotton to northern textile factories and then charged another tax for the textiles when they again crossed into southern states; states rights, which is self explanatory, if you will read Declaration of Independence, USA Constitution and Bill of Rights. All states had the option of Seceding from the Union for violations of states rights wording. Grandpa also said that because of the invention of the cotton gen slavery was on its way out in the South anyway and would have been severely depleted within 20 years. Most slaves were used only for a few weeks a year to remove the seed from the cotton, not grow and harvest it like many have been taught. The cotton gen removed that need for surplus slaves or free workers. The cost of slaves and keeping them all year did not justify their continued use when the cotton gen was invented. I guess we can agree to disagree, but voluntary slavery as well as involuntary slavery is still slavery, cloak it in whatever cloak you want. Facts are facts, but not hearsay of self serving revisionist historians. Remember it is always the victor who gets to write the history of wars and they are universally wrong since they write it in favor of the side they supported...  

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