Someone contributed: I am not real well versed on all of the factors leading up to the [Civil] War [between the States] but I do know that it was not just exclusively about slavery. >> This may be true, that there were issues - money, division of power, commerce, and politics between the wealthy of the North and the wealthy of the South (frankly) - other than the chattel enslavement of American-born persons, but in my book enslavement stands as the single most important one. Someone should dig out the Congressional Record (the official record of the proceedings of Congress, published every day) of the period and just review the angry debates over African Americans and their status as chattel, to remember this. Those congressional proceedings - the shouting matches, etc. - would be the basis for an excellent television documentary today, because we -- have -- forgotten. We're always talking about, reminiscing about the Civil War and the Old South, and re-enacting Civil War battles (when we're not watching "Gone With the Wind" on the late show or on video), but we tend to forget the underlying moral, spiritual, and human rights (as we call it these days) issue - Black slavery - that fueled the political split. I would also recommend the excellent autobiography, "Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl - Written By Herself", by Linda Brent (I think she also had another name). And (North Carolinian) Dr. Melton McLaurin's "Celia, A Slave", well written, short, in plain English, and not boring. He researched the court records of the arrest and trial of Celia (bought at age 14 or 15, executed at age 18 or 19), for the murder of her "owner" in Missouri, circa 1855-56. This and other cold facts of the "lives" of American-born persons existing under CHATTEL slavery (as opposed to other historical practices of human slavery) - that is what that war was about. Buying and selling people and everything else imaginable and unimaginable associated with this. In Linda Brent's book, I will never forget her description of the dread that Black mothers had on New Year's Eve, instead of celebration, because New Year's Day was "selling day" in the South. And people lost their families, their children, their babies, their parents, their life partners. Brent writes about a woman who had, I believe, six children. The woman sadly expected that some of her children would be taken from her and sold. All of them were sold, in different, untraceable, directions. Brent describes seeing that woman on the street later -- out of her mind and mumbling to herself about how her children were "gone, all gone". Thanks, Marian