Before you start yelling about how the CSA was fighting for slavery, you should probably read this: (
http://www.nps.gov/ncro/anti/emancipation.html).
An excerpt:
Quote:
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...
...and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
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You will notice that the states of Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, Tennesee, and the "slave-eligible" territories of New Mexico, Utah, Nebraska, and Kansas were not mentioned, and the emancipation proclimation did not apply to them.
You must now ask yourself, 1) Why would lincoln not "free" the slaves in those states? and 2) If Lincoln was willing to allow slavery in order to maintain the Union, and the CSA was rebelling to maintain slavery, why would the rebelling nation not simply return right then and there under the stipulation that slavery was allowed?
Lincoln knew that once Britain entered the war, the US Naval blockades of the South would be useless, allowing the Confederacy to easily resuply themselves. He also knew that the British people would never fight for slavery, as they did not beleive in it. He also knew that after his "proclimation" the federal army would be seen as fighting to free the slaves, and the Confederacy would therefor be seen as fighting to maintain slavery (this did happen, and there were mass race riots in New York City because of it, during which hundreds of black men were hung from street lamps. Of course, in the North, people of all colors were "treated equally").
Couple all this with the fact that most textbooks are published in New York, and you get this widespread misconception that not only was the Confederacy founded on the idea of slavery, but also that the confederate battle flag is a symbol for the oppression of anyone.
In reality, the Confederacy was founded to fight the tyrannical oppression of the Northern states on the Southern, less developed states.
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