The certainty the President recently expressed that Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War confirms the suspicion that he lacks grounding in the history of the country over which he presides. Scholars have debated the war's causes since its onset, and Apu seems prepared to sum them up here before the immigration official cuts him off. "Just say slavery" may seem a simplistic answer for a question with such profound consequences, but behind every other explanation can be found the slavery issue. Neo-Confederates continue to insist that states' rights was the cause but, like their ancestors, they are in denial. Southern states' 1861 resolutions of secession explicitly acknowledged it was their states' right to hold slaves and maintain white supremacy that motivated them. It's true that most southern whites owned no slaves, but they proved willing to fight in defense of a system that gave them the status of white men in a white man's country and assured them tha...
Originally collected by
fetching...
(
less)