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a US President was elected who vowed to end slavery.
How do we know this why SC seceded?
Because the people who were in charge of leaving the Union said so. Luckily, they wrote that down in very plain English for all to understand.
From the Declaration of Causes of Secession for the state of South Carolina (red is mine):
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
God this stuff bothers me. There has never been a more classic example of a "Thesis in search of history"
It's like millennials on the internet 'discovered' what the civil war about and can not stop reminding everyone with their revisionist history.
Secession was about slavery
The civil war was about secession
We know
The media acts like only the south was racist, they act like every confederate soldier only got out of bed in the morning to keep the black man enslaved, they act like the north invaded the south to stop slavery.
Suddenly because the people who write op-eds online can google jefferson davis it's like "ah-ha" here is the proof of what the war about. The south are evil like the nazis and the north are the saviors. Well if slavery = genocide guess the US is like the Nazi's too. History is as clear cut as a this or that issue and we can finally tell those stupid southerners they are actually racist or worse being duped by the dixiecrats from segregation era if they like the flag.
Historians have been debating the war since the last shot was fired but it was only after a tragedy last week internet warriors 'figured it out' and now must teach us about our bigotry.
I don't even fly the flag, Roof makes me sick, clearly we can do better, but this media and online editorializing is terrible.
It's like millennials on the internet 'discovered' what the civil war about and can not stop reminding everyone with their revisionist history.
Secession was about slavery
The civil war was about secession
We know
A lot of people on these forums vocally deny that the South seceded primarily because of slavery. They need to confront the evidence. However we already have 4 or 5 of these threads where this is being discussed.
A lot of people on these forums vocally deny that the South seceded primarily because of slavery. They need to confront the evidence. However we already have 4 or 5 of these threads where this is being discussed.
Several of the victims have not even been laid to rest yet. "Internet" scholars must have a need to keep fanning the flames it seems.
Most South Carolinians are looking to move forward.
God this stuff bothers me. There has never been a more classic example of a "Thesis in search of history"
It's like millennials on the internet 'discovered' what the civil war about and can not stop reminding everyone with their revisionist history.
Secession was about slavery
The civil war was about secession
We know
The media acts like only the south was racist, they act like every confederate soldier only got out of bed in the morning to keep the black man enslaved, they act like the north invaded the south to stop slavery.
Suddenly because the people who write op-eds online can google jefferson davis it's like "ah-ha" here is the proof of what the war about. The south are evil like the nazis and the north are the saviors. Well if slavery = genocide guess the US is like the Nazi's too. History is as clear cut as a this or that issue and we can finally tell those stupid southerners they are actually racist or worse being duped by the dixiecrats from segregation era if they like the flag.
Historians have been debating the war since the last shot was fired but it was only after a tragedy last week internet warriors 'figured it out' and now must teach us about our bigotry.
I don't even fly the flag, Roof makes me sick, clearly we can do better, but this media and online editorializing is terrible.
That's a lot of words that have almost nothing to do with the document I quoted (and linked to).*
Have anything to say about that? **
Cause... I never mentioned all the other stuff you rambled on about there. It's almost like you are trying to change the subject. ***
* Have a degree in History.
**Not a millennial.
*** Making a statement, then backing up that statement with cold, hard documentation is not "editorializing." It's not my opinion that SC seceded over slavery; it was the written, stated reason given at the time by the people who did the seceding.
Oh I very much suspect and have seen evidence that North didn't necessarily have the purest heart when it came to the slavery issue. But I'm a practical guy at heart. Regardless of how much the North truly cared about slavery or the plight of the black person above and beyond the political, the fact of the matter is that if the South had won and successfully stayed seceded long-term, then slavery almost most definitely would have gone on longer. Regardless of the North's heart and true reasons for fighting to keep the South, the South winning would have been awful especially for black minorities and truly the country as a whole. It wasn't shangrila either way but thankfully the North and South have come a long way since those days.
And if the free states who elected that president had left well enough alone and allowed the confederates to continue to be self-governed, then there would have been no war and reclamation of their "land" and "people". So ended the power of the state to decide its own fate but the nation had the right to reclaim states that decided to secede and leave the union. Many states all joined the union in 1776 on the precondition that slavery would continue and when that reality was becoming true that the free states would force their will on the slave states who needed slaves working to make a living, then they slave states felt no alternative but to leave the union.
I would like to add that I learned recently that Massachusetts and other states in the New England area were considering seceding from the union, which may have been provided for in the Constitution, not for slavery but in order to further a pro-English and pro-monarchy Federalist agenda. This was not long after the Revolutionary War of 1776. South Carolina and the slave holding states were not the first states to consider such actions.
Hey guys, Dave from Maryland here. Just wondering why the Civil War is often referred to in the south as the "War of Northern Aggression" when it was the south who attacked the union soldiers at Fort Sumter and it was the south who was clearly trying to split our nation in half largely over the issue of slavery.
Hey guys, Dave from Maryland here. Just wondering why the Civil War is often referred to in the south as the "War of Northern Aggression" when it was the south who attacked the union soldiers at Fort Sumter and it was the south who was clearly trying to split our nation in half largely over the issue of slavery.
Thanks
It's not. If done so, it's done so tongue in cheek.
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