I respect your opinion, KylieFan. And you should respect mine. I am from the South as well, but I must contradict you. First, people of the North and the South held slaves until this time, with several states dropping out of slaveholding over the preceding years. This meme is not about slavery. It is about what Lincoln did to perpetuate the war between the states. Secession was equivalent to, say, your joining a club and deciding that you didn't want to be a member of that club anymore. So you opted out. But then the club members needed your annual dues (taxes on goods sold, cotton, corn, etc.), so they weren't getting enough of that payment (in taxes) that you had been paying. By then, the North's economy wasn't bringing in the boatload of taxes that the South was paying (70 percent). Those Southern states decidedly seceded from the Union.They felt the crunch, so they decided to bait you by attacking your seaside port in North Carolina to make you shoot first in defense, thereby firing the first shot to instigate a war. This war was never fought about slavery. It was fought about taxes from the South--money. Less than two percent of southerners owned slaves. Only the rich plantation owners and a few other wealthy landowners held slaves because most southern farmers were poor. Lincoln used this as an excuse (although probably suggested by his advisors) to wage war against the South. The cause of the Civil War was never about slavery. It was about money. Isn't everything?
