Originally Posted by TwitchKitty

As I said above, I clipped the Lincoln list above from the web, it is not my list.

I am not taking a position on this from the North vs South perspective. My position is more like these were years of some of the most horrible things that could have possibly happened and everyone is to blame, if you want to blame someone. This wasn't a war about the interests of the people in the north and the people in the south, it is a war of centralized power over people everywhere.

I did grow up in the south part of my life but I also grew up in north too. I feel equally at home on the gulf coast and north of Boston. My lifestyle today involves migration north and south in a snowbird fashion but not based on the seasons. We also migrate east and west.

I find it amusing that people are so cynical about more recent wars and approach some of these older wars with such wide-eyed innocent belief and warm fuzzy feelings.

I don't for one second believe that the civil war was fought for humanitarian reasons. Freeing the slaves was a believable and heart felt rally cry so women and children could be proud of their men going off to fight the war.

I believe the end of slavery was inevitable due to industrialization, especially of agriculture. Automation and downsizing have been popular ever since. Ending slavery by force also allowed a total change of control of agriculture and ownership of farm land.

Engineering was coming of age and men were applying scientific principle to the solutions of problems in addition to time honored experience or common sense. New products were being developed at a phenominal rate. Check the news of the world's fairs of the time.

Self sufficiency and sustainable lifestyles were going out to make way for a new age of consumerism based on the new manufactured goods and factory farms. The wealth was needed in concentration to build factories and infrastructure. The population was needed concentrated in cities to man the factories to produce the goods.