I believe Kevin Lanum needs to restudy his Civil War history books (“Controversial highway: Civil War was more about states’ rights,” Letters, Jan. 29). Slavery certainly was the major cause of the Civil War. The states’ rights issue leading up to the Civil War was the right of the southern states to keep their slaves, and to expand slavery into the territories of the United States. New states were being created out of these territories. The south wanted these new states to be slave states for economic reasons, and to gain pro slavery votes in the Senate. The president of the United States appointed governors and some other officials to the territories that could influence whether these areas became free or slave states.
After Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery candidate, won the 1860 election, all but three slave states seceded from the Union, and took over several properties of the federal government. Many people, both north and south, doubted that a democracy could survive if the side losing or fearing to lose a vote was free to pick up its marbles, and some of yours, and secede from the Union. The idea of saving democracy by preserving the Union and the Confederates’ attack on the federal Fort Sumpter caused Lincoln to raise a Union army. Only later, and somewhat reluctantly, did he move to free the slaves.
Other issues contributing to this terrible conflict included tariffs and cultural antagonisms between the agrarian south and the industrial north.
Unlike Mr. Lanum, I’m glad Union armies, Abe Lincoln and amendments to our constitution freed the slaves. Jefferson Davis was a traitor who supported slavery, and caused terrible losses to our country. I’m glad he failed, and I don’t want a Jefferson Davis Highway in Washington state.
Marysville
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