I went to school in the North as well, and in my opinion, they simply didn't dwell on the Civil War for as long as my Southern school did (a whole semester vs. a couple of weeks). It makes sense...the Civil War doesn't have much locality in Seattle while it has a lot of locality in Vicksburg.
Absolutely. Succession (being part of issue of "states' rights") was a huge part of the Civil War.
> The president couldn't free slaves within the USA by executive order
Indeed; I pointed that fact out myself. There's no question that the man Abraham Lincoln was anti-slavery but could not himself end it. There's also no question that the man Robert E. Lee opposed Virginia's succession but not himself stop it.
The fact remains that as a whole the Union still had slaves, and that didn't change for the entirety of the Civil War. In fact, assuming you believe the Union's authority was legitimate, slavery was outlaws in the South years before it was in the North.
My point is there's obviously things going on here other than just a war to end slavery, and it's important not to downplay that either.
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FWIW, I'd call Seattle "the West".
If you believe in rule of law, this makes complete sense. They had no way to outlaw slavery without an amendment.
> My point is there's obviously things going on here other than just a war to end slavery, and it's important not to downplay that either.
It is true that the USA would have held onto slavery a little longer without succession. But the South read the writing on the wall, it was going to be outlawed sooner or later, so they decided to rebel.
The South wouldn't have succeeded if slavery wasn't in danger of going away, the Union wouldn't have fought the South if the South hadn't succeeded. But yes, slavery was the cause of all of this, even if indirect.
> FWIW, I'd call Seattle "the West".
My white Vicksburg classmates called me a yankee even though I was born out west, it didn't matter if Washington wasn't even a state at the time. As long as I had that standard midwestern accent (the one that the west and midwest basically have), the west not being the north wasn't relevant. (Ironically enough, my friends from Boston were even more racist than my southern white friends, but that is a story for another time)
Not true. States could outlaw slavery. Regardless, neither state laws nor federal constitutional amendment happened.
> But the South read the writing on the wall, it was going to be outlawed sooner or later
Not only slavery, but agriculture-hostile tariffs, state sovereignty, Southern political representation in general.
Given the events following the Civil War, it does seem they were on target.
> My white Vicksburg classmates called me a yankee...As long as I had that standard midwestern accent
Okay...I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from this. I'm talking about biases in education according to Civil War geography.
Many people don't realize that both the Confederacy and Union had slavery, or the the Emancipation Proclamation specifically exempted the Union's slaves (as it had to).
This triggers a lack of balanced historical perspective and understanding. E.g. many of the naive arguments for razing Confederate history can be applied to US history, European colonist history, Native American history, etc. Without nuance, the conversation becomes a one-sided "we are good and our history is good vs they are bad and their history is bad".