Opinion of Franklin Pierce

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

It's impossible to be even an average president if you actively support people who are rebelling against the government because they want to have the right to own other people. Do you disagree with this?

Their rebellion wasn't fought purely on the basis of owning people.

Neither was the Confederacy's.

Uh, yeah it was. And don't give me that states' rights crap. The "states' rights" in question were the rights of the states to legalize owning people.

It was; but you also forget tarriffs, the Northern state's attempt to completely take over the Southern cotton trade with other nations, and the fact that 99% of the farmers in the South did not own slaves. Please learn some history and stop attempting to tie the Libertarian movement into slavery, something Libertarians obviously oppose. The South is not completely synonymous with slavery, and it is only thanks to the upper 1% in the South that slavery even continued.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

That 99% figure is bullsh*t. It was more like 70% or so. Also, as should be obvious to anyone, even non-slaveowners had indirect interests (as well as emotional attachment, so to speak) in slavery.

Also yeah, sure, 11 States decided to secede because they were pissed off at tariffs.

30% of the populace had the money to own a slave? Maybe 99% is bullsh**t, but it can't be any lower then 95% at least. And yes, tarriffs happened to be a major political issue back then. Did John Calhoun almost break up the union in the 1830's over slavery? Or was it tarriffs? A 6th grade level history textbook will have the answer.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Please learn some history and stop attempting to tie the Libertarian movement into slavery, something Libertarians obviously oppose. The South is not completely synonymous with slavery, and it is only thanks to the upper 1% in the South that slavery even continued.

I suggest you need to take your advice.  Try reading the document South Carolina offered to justify secession.

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

If you bother to read it, you'll see that they offered only one reason.  Slavery.  Seven states thought the election of Lincoln alone was a sufficient threat to slavery that they seceded, tho I'll admit some of those states had sense enough to realize that proclaiming they were seeking the freedom to enslave was not good public relations, so they added additional reasons to their declarations. The Upper South was not certain that Lincoln's election was not a certain threat to slavery and they hoped that the trouble could be solved via negotiation.  But four more states were sufficiently devoted to slavery that once fighting began, they sided with the slaveholders.  Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland were more divided in their concerns. (Had it not been for the fact that the Federal City was on the Potomac, Maryland would likely have had competing Union and Confederate governments just as the other border states did. Around 25,000 Marylanders fought in defense of slavery.) Delaware is sometimes called a slave state, but it really wasn't as less than 10% of its Negroes were slaves.  It just happened to be a northern state that had a few slaves. Even without the Civil War, it's likely that Delaware would have passed some sort of emancipation act in the 1860s.

And who were the people who drafted that document? The 8% at the top (I think that sounds about right, and that is the liberal estimate) who, as noted by Antonio, controlled the politics of the day. I never said they were right, but to tie in every citizen of the South with the slave owning elite who started the war (and yes, it was about slavery, I never denied that) is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the notion that the concept of states’ rights should be abolished because of the civil war. Of course, the anti Southern bias (or borderline bigotry) on this forum has been noted in the off-topic section, so I expect my arguments to be ignored or attacked with basic strawman rebuttals.