It was sunny today, and the air outside was hot and humid. To pass the time this afternoon, I spent hours flipping through a thick American history book, trying to learn some names and dates – though I'm terrible at remembering such things. The book went into great detail about the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy, analyzing the advantages and weaknesses of both sides. What really stood out, though, were their motivations. The South's desire to preserve slavery is crystal clear, but what drove Northerners to wage war, even to the point of splitting the country to end slavery, seems more complicated and cloudy. Did they truly find it so morally reprehensible that they were willing to fight their own countrymen? For the sake of African Americans? Perhaps the fact that slavery posed a threat to wage labor was just as important as their moral convictions, or even more. After all, it came down to economic sustainability; slavery simply wasn't suited to an industrializing nation. Anyway, people interpret history through different lenses, and that's what makes learning about it so interesting.