Cause Versus Effect

Of late, Confederates who fought the Civil War in the United States have been demonized. Some facts: 1.)The vast majority of whites living in the Southern states at the start of the Civil War owned no slaves. 2.)Most Confederate soldiers never owned a single slave although Union General Ulysses S. Grant did at one time own a slave. 3.)Lincoln himself in his letter to Horace Greeley in 1862 declared, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." Preservation of the Union, not ending the peculiar (and odious) practice of slavery was not Lincoln's primary objective. 4.)The Emancipation Proclamation was not issued until 1863, almost two full years into the war and cynically only freed slaves in states under Confederate control (that is where Union forces had no power to enforce it). 5.)Slavery was still practiced in other parts of the Americas with Brazil not abolishing it until 1888, but no other nation endured a civil war to end slavery except the United States. In all likelihood, slavery would have ultimately ended in America without the conflict ever taking place. Were the Confederates as bad or worse than Nazis? No, for most Confederate soldiers, the fight was to defend home and family and had nothing to do with slaves that most Southerners never owned. These men were not wealthy, not oppressors, and not the ones who started the fight, and they should not have their reputations sullied so many generations after the American Civil War. Federal forces did not embark on the war to free the slaves, but thankfully, the effect of winning was to secure their manumission.