Akuperma and CT, both of you have bought into the Southern mythology of the Lost Cause.
The Civil War was fought for one reason only : SLAVERY. The Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were failed attempts to avoid war by having an equal number of slave and free states; they didn’t address the desire or opposition of extending slavery into the western territories.
Southern men did enlist to defend their states, but their states went to war to defend slavery.
States rights as a war issue first appeared AFTER the war when Confederate president Jefferson Davis and other leaders tried to sanitize their war aims. In all of his pre war speeches and writing, Davis never mentioned states rights.
AmCT, you’re a lawyer. How can you say that the Jim Crow laws were the law of the land? They violated the 14th and 15th amendments and the Federalgovernment simply looked the other way
Lastly, Akuperma the South wasn’t crushed by its debt. It was crushed by two major reasons. First, it overestimated the importance of King Cotton. It’s biggest cash crop and Britain it’s biggest customer. Second , the Federal blockade of Southern ports. It slowly strangled the South as it’s effectiveness grew. Cotton had no value if you couldn’t export and England found other sources ( India). The South had vvirtually no industry requiring almost everything to be imported. But with the blockade goods became scarce, prices soared , with rampant inflation making Southern currency, and its debt, worthless.
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