> I don't know too much about the American Civil War, but I understand that slavery was only a minor concern next to the South's declaration of independence. I do find it hard to believe that wealthy, white Northeners would be so strongly opposed to slavery in a foreign country that they would go to war over it; especially when if the slaves themselves thought that freedom was more valuable than life, one way or another they wouldn't be slaves. As the old saying goes, you cannot enslave a free man: you can only kill him.
>

Aaah. This is what I took American History for. They especially crammed all of our wars, even the little petty ones. Anyway, as far as I can tell from my extensive American education, the war was mostly about politics. Before the war, the North was mostly Free States. It was not that they particularly believed in equal rights or anything, they just didn't have as much openings for free labor, because the North was made up mostly of industry. The South was the main agricultural center of the world, and had many openings for free labor in cultivating fields and such, so most of their states were Slave States.

At the beginning of the U.S, the constitution was deliberately written so that there would be a balance of power between the Free and Slave states. This worked very well for a while. Then Manifest Destiny started leaking into peoples brains and there was expansion into new territory. So, you have a Congress which was deliberately set up to be completely equal between two powers. Now there are new states, each with their own representatives. Whether these states decided to be Slave or Free states was very important at the time just before the civil war.

There were several acts, laws and other things proposed to try and evenly distribute the vote between North and South. These didn't work. Fighting broke out in undecided states and caused early tension. Ultimately, the unbalance of power between Free and Slave states, or between the North and the South became a humongous issue.

The real cause of the split off of the Confederacy, which caused the war, was when a Free supporting president, Abraham Lincoln, was elected despite the strong support of the South for the other candidate. If you look at the votes for the year, it is appalling how little effect the votes of Southerners had in the election. Despite their population, they got ignored. Because the opinions of the Slave states did not have power, they broke away to form a country where they would. So, ultimately the war was not really about slavery but the balance of power in the country. Of course, the imbalance was caused by slavery, so it is much easier just to say slavery was the cause.

> I suppose what I tring to say is that, while wars can obviously have noble consequences, I can't think of any war fought entirely for noble purposes. I don't know whether the ends can outweigh the means, but my gut says maybe.
>
> winter"peace means never having to say you're sorry"mute


Wars are usually fought over power or money. At least that's my opinion. In my history class we were taught that although the U.S usually gave a nice excuse as to why they were entering a war, it was almost always for political, financial or territorial gains. Although I agree that the world cannot exist without war, unless you could do away with greed. As long as two countries both want something, there will be fighting to see who gets it. If the other side always backed off, then it would be really easy to take over the world. I hope this post is not too offensive. I don't want to get deleted again :) Just my opinion as a soon to be Senior in High School.

Mel"Likes history class, but not the history teacher she had this year."anie