Erasing history

[Jim Page]

Liz, I'm not lobbing produce at you in any way, but I always felt that a key element leading up to the Civil War was over whether individual states had the right to secede from the union. Unless I'm mistaken, at the time of the Civil War senators were appointed, not elected, and so they could perhaps view things differently than those officials elected by voters.

Also, and again I may be mistaken, I believe voters prior to 1850 were only white males who owned land (then about 15% of the population, if I remember correctly from 10th grade). After the land-owning restrictions on voting were eased after 1850, literacy tests were brought in as a qualification for voters in some states.

So it was a different time and I've never been convinced that slavery, per se, was the prime reason the Civil War was fought.

--Jim