YSK - The Civil War was solely about Slavery and Lincoln was against slavery throughout his entire career.

I think this is a thing you should know because I've noticed many people have VERY misleading ideas about what caused the civil war and what Lincoln's positions were. And I believe if we deny/mislead or flat out lie about our history then we are doomed to repeat it.

First off the civil war was about slavery.

Pretty much nothing but slavery. We know this because many of the states that seceded wrote letters of secession that explained their reasonings.

You can read those letters here: http://ift.tt/2ta9Ems

And this map gives a summary of what those reasons were: http://ift.tt/2u9rzdO

Other reasons you'll hear are States Rights. Lincoln's Tyranny. Taxes.

But States Rights means States Rights to own slaves.

And Lincoln's Tyranny means they felt Lincoln was making strides to end slavery in Tyrannical ways. And Taxes were never really brought up.

Another thing you'll hear a lot is that Lincoln was not antislavery.

While it's true Lincoln was not willing to fight a war to end slavery (he fought to preserve the Union) he does have a long history of being anti-slavery.

His most famous anti-slavery quotes come from the Lincoln Douglas debate. Where he argued against slavery's expansion both into new territories and in the North.

And the earliest recorded opposition to slavery from Lincoln was 23 years before the war. http://ift.tt/2fTtAsD

While you can definitely find quotes from Lincoln that were racist you can attribute that to the time period he was from. He was definitely opposed to slavery. And that was the reason his election to the presidency triggered a chain of events that directly led to the civil war igniting.

This YSK is not meant to shame the south. Or shame white folks in general. It's simply meant to dispel some very common myths that sugarcoat a very ugly time in our history.