"You own a small farm in ALABAMA and you raise enough money to support yourself and your family but you didn't have enough money to own a slave. IF you had money you would buy at least one and you would love to own a large plantation. You believe that whites are superior to blacks. You also dislike northerners because theydintt seem to understand you or other people from south. You have small amount of land, and you worry about loosing it to other people like planters or other poor farmers"
How does your person feel about the result of 1860s elections, what does he hope will go on between North and South?***CIVILL WAR!!!!!!!?
If you look at Alabama history, you will find support for the South's position very low among small farmers. This is particularly true in the Tennessee Valley area where the Civil War was thought of as a rich man's war -- rich industrialists from the North battling rich planters from the South getting factory workers and small farmers killed in the process. Winston County, for instance, attempted to secede from Alabama when Alabama seceded from the Union, and a small scale civil war broke out in the hills around Winston County. After the threat of a long jail sentence persuaded the representative from Franklin County, Alabama, to change his vote to favor secession, he was hung by the voters that sent him to the convention in Montgomery, ending any chances that he would vote for secession again. Over 1,000 Alabama soldiers served in the Union Army, forming the 1st Alabama Calvary, a unit that provided protection for Abraham Lincoln during the early part of the war.
Secondly, the belief that whites were politically and socially superior to blacks was common in both the North and South. While Abraham Lincoln, for instance, believed that slavery was immoral, he did not believe that whites and blacks should be equals. In fact only the most radical abolitionists advocated for full equality between blacks and whites.
Your question, then, misses the reality on the ground in Alabama, particularly the Tennessee Valley region. The feelings in this area was that they didn't want to die for rich planters, nor did they want to die for rich industrialists. They merely wanted to be left alone and farm their small farms. Moreover, they had no desire to own slaves, even though they would have opposed equality among whites and blacks.
In the areas where plantations ruled, there were very few small farms. Small farms are not conducive to growing cotton, the cash crop of the South. However, regular citizens in the plantation areas supported secession. They were terrified by events such as Nat Turner's rebellion and John Brown's raid, and thought that blacks would rampage if freed from slavery. They also understood the economic impact of the plantation system and king cotton. The fear of the South is if slavery was illegal, the plantation system would fail. If the plantation system failed, the economy would fail, blacks would run wild in the streets and the minority white population would be ruled by blacks. Because cotton is a labor-intensive crop, the small- and medium-sized farmers had slaves if they could afford them.
What regular people and planters both hoped is that Lincoln would not be elected. While they did not believe that he would immediately end slavery, they feared that his promise to limit slavery to areas where it was currently legal would, in short time, lead to ending slavery since anti-slavery forces would slowly gain advantage in Congress.
And, of course, there was anger that attempts to outlaw slavery was nothing more than Northern attempts to interfere with Southern life. A number of Southerners didn't see that much difference between Northern factory workers and Southern slaves. Northern factory workers frequently worked very long hours for very low pay. Factory owners also devised a number of plans to cheat their workers out of their pay, such as signing them to one-year contracts and then finding reason to fire them only days before the contract was up. The factory owners would then refuse to pay the year's wages arguing that the workers violated their contracts. Strikes were illegal and movement between jobs was often very difficult, if not impossible. Many Southerners alleged that these working conditions created a form of legalized slavery in the North and accused the North of being hypocrites in the situation.
First off, your concept of the south then is very off.
Majority of southerners, regardless of what ever state they were from, did not own slaves. It was simply to costly to 1) buy them 2) feed them and 3) house and clothe them. At the start of the Civil War, the use of slaves was actually on the downswing as it was simply not a cost effective way to run a business. Plantation owners had found it far cheaper to pay them sub standard wages and let them rent from them then it was to pay all their room and board and get little back in return.
Those that did own slaves either were born into fortune or earned it through trade or other mercantile actions. Prior to the Civil War (and for near 100 years after wards) agriculture was the biggest producer of income for the south. While the plantations surely contributed to this, it was the smaller farmers that outnumbered the larger plantations that greatly contributed to that income.
The Civil War, was not fought over slavery. It was originally fought over states rights and taxation. The North at the time was far more industrialized than the South but was taxed at a lower rate than the South. This wasn't something that happened overnight, this had been going on for several decades but little had changed. (Check the old records from Congress, back to the debates from Andrew Jackson's presidency). The battle cry of slavery was a Northern device used to stir the sagging recruitment efforts after the war had started.
Keep in mind that majority of people, on both sides, could not read, or if they could, not very well. Information was passed verbally and in some back areas of the South, news hardly traveled at all. There was a distrust of Northerners in the larger areas for sure, but in many smaller towns and areas, most people simply wanted to do what we do today, raise your family, take care of their needs and be left alone.***CIVILL WAR!!!!!!!?
anyone with the mentality to think about owning a slave is not only stupid but a low life. and i am from the south. Here is a quote from an alabama boy from a movie and i find it most important . Quote " STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES " FOR YOU PEOPLE THAT THINK OWNING A PERSON IS OK.
last i checked robert e lee didnt believe in slavery, while lincolns wife owned a few slaves.
the war was not about slavery, it was about import taxes. the emancipation proclimation was military strategic move to help the norths' war efforts
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