No. of Recommendations: 8
guess of what Jefferson Davis might say: The War Between the States, as we often term it, was fundamentally about states' rights and the principles of self-governance. Yes, slavery was an important part of our economy and society, but it was a matter of states' rights—the right to govern ourselves as we saw fit within the framework of the Constitution.
I think Jefferson Davis would have emphasized tariffs. For a year he had the Brits convinced that the war was being fought over unjust tariffs levied on the South by the North. Britain was very much into Free Markets and tariffs were anathema to them. Finally Lincoln sent over two men and they showed the Brits that all of the proposals to compromise before the war started said nothing about tariffs and were all about slavery.
