Of course it does. Both factions were one country before the war. If they fight, it clearly fits the definition of a civil war. A revolution involving martial conflict is inherently a civil war, my friend. That being established, I acknowledge that it is customary not to refer to The Wahr as The Civil War, so as to stand distinct from Yankeeness of any fashion.
Neither side wanted a war, but both knew that an act of secession would result in a war. Ft. Sumpter was a FEDERAL fort manned be FEDERAL troops. The South was not firing on itself. The strenght of South in Congress had not abaited. As a matter of fact the Dred Scott decision of 1857 had the affect of negating the Missouri Compromise of 1920 which had limited slavery south of the 36-30 parallel. So things were not looking bad for the south until the 1860 election. The South knew the election of Lincoln would eventually see its strength erode in Congress as more free states joined the Union and what that meant for the future of slavery. With the election of Lincoln, the South felt it had no choice but to secede. But that decision was not based on a current erosion of its congressional power, but on a future erosion of power. The issue is not whether on not slavery played a part in the war, but whether or not it was the deciding factor in the war. I have shown pretty conclusively that it was the deciding factor in the Civil War, and had there never been slavery, there would never have been a Civil War. Religion was not a factor since both the South and the North were Protestant. Economic differences (industrial vs. agrarian) was not a decisive factor except in regards to the role slavery contributed to the Southern economy. The South may have preferred an Agrarian economy, but they sure were not going to go to war with the North simply because it was industrialized. Cultural differences (conservative vs. progressive) certainly was not a factor. Slavery was the only issue that the South was willing to fight over because it 1) underpenned the Southern economy and 2) it was a form of racial control.
Give me a break. Yes, that is the definition of a civil war. When the South seceded, from what nation did it secede from? Bolivia? Canada? No. It seceded from the United States. Two groups from the same nation fighting each other. The United States never accepted the independent status of the Confederacy, and the United States won the war. Those two facts taken together pretty much define the nature of the war. If the South had won, you would have a valid point. But it lost, the Confederacy ceased to exist, and the South returned to the Union fold. It was a civil war in which families took up arms against each other.
And we had a huge boot firmly planted in our a$$es by the scumbag yankees that we're still trying to remove.
Southron is the term the Confederates frequently used in literature. It is the term Highland Scots used to refer to the English andsouthern Scots.
I've heard Ron Paul argue that Lincoln should have simply purchased the slaves instead of going to war with the south. Would the south have accepted that? Would that have been better for the nation? Was that a realistic possibility? I really don't think the US would be as great as it is had the south won their independence.
Not really. The southern plantation economy was based on slave labor and there was really nothing to replace it with. If the slaves were freed and replaced with a government check, the planters would still have no one to tend and harvest the crops. The entire US economy would have suffered badly. A phase-out of slavery based on new industrial revolution technologies like steam tractors and fertilizers would have worked the best, but it just didn't happen soon enough. If the crisis had come 25 years later or the new technologies had come 25 years sooner, it might have been a opportunity for a bloodless change.
If that's true, 25 years is a long time and would probably have been pretty costly. Not that the south (or the north) would have accepted subsidies (or dishing them out) anyway.
