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Keywords

Slavery, Civil War, Confederacy, East Tennessee

Abstract

Despite arguments that the South fought in the 'War Of Northern Aggression' to protect the rights of the states, or to defend their homes and their freedom from a foreign power, it is clear slavery was the central issue of the American Civil War. Even the Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens declared that the inferiority of the Negro was the "immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution" and the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy. The centrality of the slave issue becomes even clearer when noting that where slavery was not so engrained in the socioeconomic system, Confederate sympathy diminished.

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