Suburbazine
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Out of curiosity, what source material are you using to educate your kids about American history?
My university major was history (American history specifically, with a concentration on reconstruction era race relations). I find this notion that the Civil War wasn't about slavery to be disingenuous at best. Yes, there were other factors at play (as there are in any civil war), but slavery was indeed the overarching issue. One need only glance through newspapers, letters, journals, and a myriad of other primary sources from the antebellum era to see that the crux of the debate was slavery (and the spread of slavery as the Union expanded).
Mike
You argue that the crux of the war was over slavery, but you glibly ignore the fact that the Union "freed" all the slaves...
Except for the slaves on its side. Northern slave owners had zero issue keeping slaves after Lincoln's "emancipation" of the Southern slaves.
So no, slave ownership was not the crux of the war. It was a farce, at best.