So the rallying cry of the racists these days is "The civil war was about economic freedom and State's Rights!" while the rallying cry of the leftists is "The civil war was about slavery!" And I mean, the civil war was about slavery. But it was also about the economic institution of slavery.

The North was all about industrialization, mercantilism and the aristocracy. You owned a factory, you got fucking rich. The South was all about agrarianism, feudalism and the aristocracy. You owned a plantation, you got fucking rich. The North argued that slavery was bad because all those poor black people didn't have any freedom. The South argued that mercantilism was just as bad, all those poor white people who didn't know where their next meal came from at least slaves have a roof over their head. THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF SLAVERY it is an argument that the social hierarchy of the South was not "do we/don't we do slavery... I dunno... it worked for my folx but Dred Scott makes me feel bad" situation. It was a top-down economy run by rich white plantation owners at the expense of black slaves kept in line by poor white folx who were the lowest of the low except for that soulless livestock that worked the fields.

This is how hard we kicked the can down the road. Because the British really wanted the union to fall apart, for the South to provide Britain all its agricultural goods, and for the North to fall apart so that it could be dragged back into the commonwealth. Keeping the United States together was an existential need lest the powers of Europe recolonize us so the north put up with an awful lot of shit from the south. There's a real tendency to presume that American differences over abortion or drag queen story hour or some shit are somehow akin to the American divide over slavery and it simply isn't so.

Texas and Florida were both spitting distance from Democratic governors. The whole South used to be Democratic. California used to be staunchly Republican. What's different now is that both teams are losing their fucking minds over how much they hate the other team? But we're all Americans.