Slavery and the Civil War

Did Slavery Cause the Civil War? [student`s name] [course number] [university] Did Slavery Cause the Civil War? Slavery was the cause of the Civil War, but not in the way that people today think. My take on the issue is slavery was used to garner political and moral support. My belief is that while slavery is a moral issue today, in the early nineteenth century, it was an economic issue first, a moral issue second. The Confederate states were based on the cotton industry that used slaves as labor force. Without the slaves, the South`s entire socio-economic system would collapse. The unpaid labor rendered by the slaves allowed slave owners to profit, without it, they will have to pay for workers and other factors of production. In Letters from a Confederate Officer ADDIN Mendeley Citation{25de1d0d-a6f1-4870-9450-da4ed3762376} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch17_05.htm", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "12", "4" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Griffin", "given" : "James B." } ], "container-title" : "WW Norton", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "1862" ] ] }, "title" : "Letters from a Confederate Officer", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=25de1d0d-a6f1-4870-9450-da4ed3762376" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "manualFormatting" : "(1862)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Griffin, 1862)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (1862), the writer James Griffin owned 61 slaves, and 1,500 acres. He was a producer of cotton. Though he did not expressly say that he wanted to preserve slavery in the South, his main reason for fighting was so he could continue his way of life. He was one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. The Northern stance against slavery threatened his economic power, and just like the other gentlemen of the South (also known as the "Fire Eaters"), it ...