Letter: Civil War not a ploy for South’s money

David Lauderdale was severely criticized in a recent letter for referring to persons who are concerned about the message given by the Confederate flag as “yahoos.”

The letter’s claim that the purpose of the Civil War was to obtain the Southern states’ money to finance the building of Northern infrastructure is entirely incorrect. When Abraham Lincoln took office, he had to deal with the issue of the Southern states, whose economy was based on slave labor, at a time when new states in the Midwest, Southwest and Northwest were forming to enter the union.

The political compromise that Lincoln made was to not allow slavery to exist in any of the new states and keep that practice limited to the existing Southern states.

I’m sure everyone knows that the war began in Charleston with the Confederates firing on a federal fort. Once started, Lincoln brought the North into the war with the South in an attempt to preserve the union and not to release the slaves. As time went on, his viewpoint on slavery changed and thereafter, the goal was to subdue the rebellious South and free the slaves.

The agrarian economy of the South was based entirely on slave labor and was threatened by such natural events as the boll weevil. There was virtually no heavy industry in the South and its economy was precarious, so the concept of starting a war to take the riches of the South is ludicrous.

This story was originally published April 14, 2017 at 11:37 AM with the headline "Letter: Civil War not a ploy for South’s money."