Was it just fort Sumter that forced their hand

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38737804)

He feared that the secession would lead to an embargo threatening Honest Abe's only vice. Thus he was determined: the Union must be preserved at any cost.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38737839)

I've read a good deal of his writings. One theme that often comes through in his writings is this romanticized obsession with preserving the union. He scarcely explains why its preservation is so important to him. His omission of strong reasoning on the subject is conspicuous and unlike his typical habits of mind.

I haven't read any biographies on him, only what he said about his world in his own words.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38740857)

There is major scholarship on France and other euro countries profiting off the war iirc

Jackson tried to drive the Jew/Euro influence out that infiltrated in years prior

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38738098)

controlling territory/resources is the name of the game. you don't just let some people abscond with half your country over hard feelings.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38738557)

-Unionists were very proud of America as a free country and an experiment in self-government, and there was a belief that if the Union collapsed into pieces it would show that experiment had failed. That’s a theme you can hear in the Gettysburg Address: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

-Decades of the slavery debate had left US politics very embittered, and in the North, even among non-abolitionists, there was tremendous detestation of slaveholding interests as the so-called “Slave Power.” Think of it as the modern RW hatred of, day, George Soros but on steroids. Northerners feared that the Slave Power wanted to undermine liberty, expand slavery, and potentially even enslave white men. Fear of the slave power also made it easier for the North to regard secession itself as illegitimate. Their attitude was in essence that a radical faction had launched a violent takeover of the South. There was reason to believe this, since there reallyWERE attempts to violently overthrow the government in border states, and every state except SouthCaroliba produced a good number of white Unionists.

-Manifest Destiny more generally. America was seen as a providential country destined to spread its kick-ass way of life across an unsettled continent, and the backwards Southerners were violently trying to arrest that.

-And, of course, Fort Sumter did matter. Americans were deeply proud of America and the idea that the rebels had fired upon the flag of the United States created tremendous patriotic fervor.

The thread title references Lincoln, as if the Civil War was all his idea. That’s absurd. The Union didn’t even need a draft for the first two years of the war because volunteer enthusiasm was so high.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38738585)

Just started Ken burns and they didn't touch on this (not in episode 1 anyway)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38739267)

I'll have to dig up sources maybe later - but great points about Lincoln's strategy re: goading the first shot and Union enthusiasm.

Also why not mention the most obvious aspect - that the South was paying something like 60-80% share of total federal revenue, and something like 2/3 of that was from tariffs on Southern-produced goods? Hardly a coincidence that South Carolina was state to have major confrontation in 1832 that could've exploded into violence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38740662)

I don't think the South's share of federal revenue was a critical reason for the North fighting the Civil War, simply because the federal government was so tiny prior to the war itself. A tiny federal government wouldn't be able to drag the far-more-powerful states (not to mention the actual citizenry) into a devastating war for the sake of the 1% of GDP that was going into import tariffs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38741724)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38740862)

"In 1844, 23-year-old Henry Lehman,[13] the son of a Jewish cattle merchant, emigrated to the United States from Rimpar, Bavaria.[14] He settled in Montgomery, Alabama,[13] where he opened a dry-goods store, "H. Lehman".[15] In 1847, following the arrival of his brother Emanuel Lehman, the firm became "H. Lehman and Bro."[16] With the arrival of their youngest brother, Mayer Lehman, in 1850, the firm changed its name again and "Lehman Brothers" was founded.[15][17]

During the 1850s, cotton was one of the most important crops in the United States, and nearly all cotton was produced by enslaved people. Alabama, including the Montgomery area, had one of the highest reliance on slave labor in the United States.[18] Capitalizing on cotton's high market value, the three brothers began to routinely accept raw cotton from customers as payment for merchandise, eventually beginning a second business trading in cotton. Within a few years this business grew to become the most significant part of their operation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38740982)

The South was the North's cash machine for New England's textile manufacturing competition with European textile production. Andrew Jackson quelled the situation when South Carolina in 1832 (I believe not sure on year) refused to pay a tariff and a conflict nearly broke out then.

These were simmering tensions that were at least decades old, if not more. But it's no mystery why Lincoln would need to preserve the Union - I'm surprised one would even ask the question - from a political philosophy aspect it would hurt their cause, from a personal aspect it would be embarrassing to do nothing, and from a financial aspect it was essentially impossible not to act to preserve the Union.

This was the occasion, the underlying cause is probably something like deep identity differences between the two sides. There was some great book I can't remember the name - I heard a good amount on audible, about how the regional / local politics of America today largely stem from what regions of Britain the settlers of the area came from.

For example - New England was filled with puritan banking elites, whereas the deep south was settled by Scottish / Irish from herding economies. And these societies that the Scotch-Irish came from were kinship honor societies that handled matters locally, and very closely guarded against outside threats to the community, because in herding families if a single outside threat came in and say wiped out the flock, it would RUIN your family.

So there were deep differences in political identities and the whole "states rights" had deep foundations in the kinship honor societies that ran ranching / herding economies, versus puritanical New England banking elites.

But the answer to the question is pretty simple in my humble view.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38740599)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4330166&forum_id=2#38741362)