US Colonel: slavery was the SINGLE reason for the Civil War (video)

Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, sets the record state on the question of what the reason was for the United States Civil War. In this interesting short video Col. Seidule makes the case that the single reason was slavery. Does a good job with it, too.

Here are some highlights:

The buzz term “States’ Rights” was coined by Southern state residents and referred to the right they believed they possessed, to continue slavery.

Southern states claimed they needed slaves because their society was more agrarian than the North, but this wasn’t true. Seidule points out that the North not only paid their agriculture workers, who were, “free to come and as they pleased,” but they also produced much greater yields than Southern states did.

I’d like to point out that this historical fact pretty much lays to rest the modern-day argument that paying workers a living wage will destroy the economy.

Seidule briefly touches on another important point, which may be the underlying reason that systemic racism became so deeply woven into the social fabric of American society. The ‘Peculiar Institution’ that justified slavery in Southern states, also became a bond of honor to which wealthy Southerners ascribed. It consisted of a social contract that a safety net for poor whites would always ensure sufficient social and financial support to prevent them from ever ending up at the same lowly rung of the socio-economic ladder as slaves (and by extension, any Southern people of color).

It seems entirely possible that white Americans’ sense of entitlement may have originated from precisely this social policy.

Graphics are from the video, which is a PragerUniversity production.