VP Beast Butler?

[STS Lincolnite]

(12-28-2014 11:13 AM)L Verge Wrote:  ... no matter what path I take, it always leads back to slavery being the cause of the Civil War. To me, it's that red-hot ember that kept hiding under all the rhetoric and finally burst into flames under the guise of states' rights, extraterritoriality, economics, or whatever.

Laurie, I share your conclusion. The more I examine the history of the Civil War, it seems to me to become more and more clear. When I have spoken with people on the topic I have tried a couple of different analogies to try to express my thoughts. The topic is of course complex (hence the reason we continue to discuss and debate it 150+ years later) but I try to boil it down to a somewhat simple image.

The one I come back to is this: I think of the "doorway to slavery" as one of those old stone archways. There are a number of stones that form the archway but the keystone carries the archway's weight and keeps it open. That is how I think of slavery. It was the keystone - working with and through all the other stones - that carried the weight and allowed the archway to Civil War to be walked through. Without the keystone, the other stones would not be enough to sustain the archway.

I would also say that the other "reasons" for the war (for example states rights, economics, etc.) when examined, seem themselves to be inextricably tied to slavery. If you were to try to pull out that pesky thread of slavery, the whole "sweater" of Civil War would unravel.

That is not to say that I think slavery was exclusively a Southern problem. It was an American problem. Forged in the crucible of the very foundation of the nation. I'm afraid that is what lead to war being unavoidable in 1860 (per Laurie's question), in my opinion.