Civil War: States' Rights or Slavery?

I was asked the other day if I thought the Civil War was about Slavery, and if it was inevitable.

My gut response, and my pat response for years is that it was of course NOT about slavery, it was really about States' Rights.

But in writing a reply to this person (someone from outside the US), I've come to the more reasoned conclusion that you really can't separate the two issues:

The cause was states' rights. 
The issue was slavery.

It *was* inevitable, because the Founders had never really resolved the tension between the power of the states and the fed; I think that they'd felt a certain amount of tension was both inevitable and necessary, but probably irresolvable UNTIL at least several generations had passed and a working proforma system was in-place.  


In fact, I'd guess that by the end of the constitutional conventions, there were some of the more far-sighted ones that maybe even predicted that this would eventually be the rock on which the union might founder.

In any case, they punted on trying to solve it, in favor of cobbling together what union they COULD at the time. It was one of their greatest failures, both politically and it must be said, morally - when you make a statement such as "all men are created equal" and then fail to recognize the dichotomy between that and the 18th century attitudes towards women and people of color, that's pretty egregious even granting them a pass on the morals of the time.  


In a sense, it was the logical extension of the Federalist arguments from the Constitutional conventions: as the Union grew, more and more states were added who weren't party to, nor convinced by, the necessity of a strong Fed. Without the pressures of revolution, and subsequently the War of 1812, the Jeffersonian ideal of a collection of freely-associated but independent states seemed, on the surface, to be a viable idea.  


On the other hand, realities of taxes and administration of a continent-wide country seemed to make the need for a firmer hand in Washington even more apparent to others. Couple this chronologically to a growing recognition that the US was fast becoming the only remaining country with a commerce in slaves, and the human rights issues of slavery, the two issues became inevitably coupled.  


The split between the two opposing views of how the country should go on was brewing and intensifying, there was a weak effort at mitigation called the Missouri Compromise in 1820 - it solved nothing, and heightened the political balance implications between slave and free states in Congress. So the two issues were intertwined for more than 60 years before the Civil War.  


It's naive to say that the Civil War was purely about slavery or about states' rights - it was about both. I'd say it was mainly states rights, as executed and displayed over the issue of slavery, which quickly dominated the public consciousness.


Continuing Discussion:
As a philosophical debate, it touches on critical issues of states' right and centralization that to this day remain if not unresolved, then not-comfortably resolved. Witness the main objection to the Obama administration's effort to nationalize healthcare: there are dozens of arguments, but the core one is "Is this an issue that the Federal Government is ENTITLED to control?"

Personally - and my view should be clear from the beginning - I actually sympathize with the South in the terms of states' rights. As mentioned by someone else, I think the seceding states WERE entitled (by the articles of confederation and the Founders' principles of discussion during the Constitutional Conventions) to depart the union. Absolutely. I also agree with Lincoln's assessment that the Union would not survive secession - we would have quickly fragmented into regional 'countries' with more homogenized values: New England, MidAtlantic, Great Lakes, Great Plains, Texas, etc. As mentioned above, I believe slavery as an institution would probably have died off economically, but probably would have remained as an abhorrent "cultural" practice and a burr to later relations forever until resolved.



I can appreciate Lincoln's actions as nakedly illegal, but necessary, if that makes sense.




So to answer your questions from that POV and my seat as a die-hard Northerner:
Is there still a conflict between state/country that expresses itself in Civil War terms? From this far north? Not really. It's over and done, although there pervades a view around here that the south is generally more racist (I doubt that's true, actually, not because the South is less racist than believed, but because I well know that once you get outside of the liberal, metro core of my own state, people are really, really quite racist - less in younger generations, but still quite so). I think the South, having suffered more intimately the brutality of the end of the war, still holds a grudge in many places, understandably. I'd also say that the South tends to dismiss the Northern communities' sacrifices during the war, too; witness the 1st MN regiment at Gettysburg...all volunteers, suffering 83% casualties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Min...nteer_Infantry. I will say that their actions still choke me up reading about it, and point out that the MN Historical society to this day holds (but doesn't display) the battle flag of the 28th Virginia Regiment captured that afternoon...Virginia even threated a lawsuit about it recently, and the MN Attorney general basically said "Go ahead and try it."


I know there is always talk of secession by Texas, who lets face it would rank pretty highly compared to a lot of european countries (by GDP) as a stand alone country. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the lies.  I don't really see TX as a 'typical' Southern state in the context of the Civil War - to me that would be the core Southern states of Georgia, S.Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and possibly Virginia. Texas joined the south (IMO) almost as a 'friend of the cause' - not that they were particularly pro-Slave, but really on the states' rights issue, and have always wanted to choose their own path. As far as a 'prototypical' Southern state, I'd have to say Georgia - sedate, agricultural, very flat growth. For the north, probably New York - industrial, immigrant, growing rapidly, wealthy, populous.