GMALL Lectures – The Civil War: Its Causes and Their Legacy

While slavery was clearly a part of why the Civil War was fought, the vast majority of Confederate soldiers were not slave owners. They fought and were willing to die for other reasons. Many of those reasons have not gone away and that is why a cold version of the Civil War persists to this day. This talk, by Steven Sodergren, Professor of History and Political Science at Norwich University, examines the various causes of the war, focusing on what those who participated in it saw as their motives.