Civil War Being Re-branded, without the Slavery (documents, official, capital)
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Admit it, most of your Northerners paid to get OUT of military service, back in the day...
And even today, the majority of the the military comes out of the South.
And we've told you--the issue was STATES' RIGHTS, not slavery at all.
Do we really need the feds running everything? No, they should be weak, and the individual states strong.
The issue was a state's right to determine of slavery was legal within its boundaries.
There everybody is happy.
If Slavery wasn't an issue for the South it wouldn't have been an issue during the debates for the Coimpromise of 1834, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act or the Kansas-Nebraska Act. If slavery wasn't issue then it would have been part of the Articles of Secession for states like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.
The reality is that plantation slave labor formed the backbone of the of the wealth of the politiical, social and economic elite of Southern society. The creation of the Confederacy and their willingness to go to war just goes to show how vested they were to perserving their power and wealth.
In fact there is an example of a Confederate leader directly linking slavery to the secession of Southern states.
Speech of E.S. Dargan
Secession Convention of Alabama
January 11, 1861
I wish, Mr. President, to express the feelings with which I vote for the secession of Alabama from the Government of the United States; and to state, in a few words, the reasons that impel me to this act.
I feel impelled, Mr. President, to vote for this Ordinance by an overruling necessity. Years ago I was convinced that the Southern States would be compelled either to separate from the North, by dissolving the Federal Government, or they would be compelled to abolish the institution of African Slavery. This, in my judgment, was the only alternative; and I foresaw that the South would be compelled, at some day, to make her selection. The day is now come, and Alabama must make her selection, either to secede from the Union, and assume the position of a sovereign, independent State, or she must submit to a system of policy on the part of the Federal Government that, in a short time, will compel her to abolish African Slavery.
Mr. President, if pecuniary loss alone were involved in the abolition of slavery, I should hesitate long before I would give the vote I now intend to give. If the destruction of slavery entailed on us poverty alone, I could bear it, for I have seen poverty and felt its sting. But poverty, Mr. President, would be one of the least of the evils that would befall us from the abolition of African slavery. There are now in the slaveholding States over four millions of slaves; dissolve the relation of master and slave, and what, I ask, would become of that race? To remove them from amongst us is impossible. History gives us no account of the exodus of such a number of persons. We neither have a place to which to remove them, nor the means of such removal. They therefore must remain with us; and if the relation of master and slave be dissolved, and our slaves turned loose amongst us without restraint, they would either be destroyed by our own hands-- the hands to which they look, and look with confidence, for protection-- or we ourselves would become demoralized and degraded. The former result would take place, and we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin; and we must, therefore, this day elect between the Government formed by our fathers (the whole spirit of which has been perverted), and POVERTY AND CRIME! This being the alternative, I cannot hesitate for a moment what my duty is. I must separate from the Government of my fathers, the one under which I have lived, and under which I wished to die. But I must do my duty to my country and my fellow beings; and humanity, in my judgment, demands that Alabama should separate herself from the Government of the United States.
If I am wrong in this responsible act, I hope my God may forgive me; for I am not actuated, as I think, from any motive save that of justice and philanthropy!
The issue was a State's Right to determine of slavery was legal within its boundaries.
There everybody is happy.
If Slavery wasn't an issue for the South it wouldn't have been an issue during the debates for the Coimpromise of 1834, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act or the Kansas-Nebraska Act. If slavery wasn't issue then it would have been part of the Articles of Secession for states like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.
The reality is that plantation slave labor formed the backbone of the of the wealth of the politiical, social and economic elite of Southern society. In fact there is an example of a Confederate leader directly linking slavery to the secession of Southern states.
No one says slavery wasn't an issue. Some of us simply point out that slavery wasn't the ONLY issue. To which many of you take umbrage.
Here is the problem. When you use the article "an" you grammatically place slavery as just one of many issues all of which have equal standing and therein lies our objection. Because, no one, that I know, would argue that slavery was the only issue for any particular combatant. In point of fact, I have argued that when you have 500,000 individuals fighting on one side alone, you are likely to have 499,999 different reasons. But the individual opinions of combatants isn't what we base historical analysis on. We base history our analysis on the those who make and carry out policy and from that standpoint, slaver was THE issue. We reject the analysis that that slavery was simply just one of many reason, it was THE reason. Change the 'an' to a 'the' and we can have a different discussion.
People are trying to re-brand the bible about slavery so this does not surprise me. In fact, I am betting it is the same sect of "Christians" doing the re-branding overhaul.
"I feel impelled, Mr. President, to vote for this Ordinance by an overruling necessity. Years ago I was convinced that the Southern States would be compelled either to separate from the North, by dissolving the Federal Government, or they would be compelled to abolish the institution of African Slavery. This, in my judgment, was the only alternative; and I foresaw that the South would be compelled, at some day, to make her selection. The day is now come, and Alabama must make her selection, either to secede from the Union, and assume the position of a sovereign, independent State, or she must submit to a system of policy on the part of the Federal Government that, in a short time, will compel her to abolish African Slavery."
Speech of E. S. Dargan, in the Convention of Alabama, Jan. 11, 1861
"Their main purpose, as indicated by all their acts of hostility to slavery, is its final and total abolition. His party declare it; their acts prove it. He has declared it; I accept his declaration. The battle of the irrepressible conflict has hitherto been fought on his side alone. We demand service in this war. Surely no one will deny that the election of Lincoln is the indorsement of the policy of those who elected him, and an indorsement of his own opinions. The opinions of those who elected him are to be found in their solemn acts under oath - in their State governments, indorsed by their constituents. To them I have already referred. They are also to be found in the votes of his supporters in Congress - also indorsed by the party, by their return. Their opinions are to be found in the speeches of Seward, and Sumner, and Lovejoy, and their associates and confederates in the two Houses of Congress. Since the promotion of Mr. Lincoln's party, all of them speak with one voice, and speak trumpet-tongued their fixed purpose to outlaw four thousand millions of our property in the Territories, and to put it under the ban of the empire in the States where it exists. They declare their purpose to war against slavery until there shall not be a slave in America, and until the African is elevated to a social and political equality with the white man. Lincoln indorses them and their principles, and in his own speeches declares the conflict irrepressible and enduring, until slavery is everywhere abolished.
Robert Toombs's Speech to the Georgia Legislature, Nov. 13, 1860
"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
"Alexander H. Stephens' Cornerstone Speech, Savannah Georgia March 21, 1861.
"Resolved, That, with our republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that the primary object and ulterior designs of our Federal Government were, to secure these rights to all persons within its exclusive jurisdiction; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing slavery in any Territory of the United States, by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. - That we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present Constitution shall be maintained.
Letter from Howell Cobb to the People of Georgia, Dec. 6, 1860
"There were three candidates presented to the North by Southern men, all of whom represented the last degree of conservatism and concession, which their respective parties were willing to yield, to appease the fanaticism of the North. Some of them were scarcely deemed sound, in the South, on the slavery question, and none of them suited our ultra men. And yet the North rejected them all; and their united voice, both before and since the overwhelming triumph in this election, has been more defiant and more intolerant than ever before. They have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in the right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony. The cry has been, and now is, "that slavery must cease, or American liberty must perish," that "the success of Black Republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery," "a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out."
To-day our government stands totally revolutionized in its main features, and our Constitution broken and overturned. The new administration, which has effected this revolution, only awaits the 4th of March for the inauguration of the new government, the new principles, and the new policy, upon the success of which they have proclaimed freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and for us."
Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi to the Georgia General Assembly
"I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions."
Address of John McQueen of South Carolina to the Texas Secession Convention
That being the case, I will leave you stuck in your ahistorical fantasy land.
The truth of the matter is that it was all about states' rights, and after the Civil War ended, the federal government usurped them from everyone--regardless of what the Constitution had to say about it--and it hasn't stopped yet. The feds still exert a great deal of control over the states, even though the fed was supposed to be weak.
The truth of the matter is that it was all about states' rights, and after the Civil War ended, the federal government usurped them from everyone--regardless of what the Constitution had to say about it--and it hasn't stopped yet. The feds still exert a great deal of control over the states, even though the fed was supposed to be weak.
It's a historical fact.
You are correct!
However, there will always be the 'all about slavery' bandwagon people that will never admit this. Ironically, most of those people are from the North.
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