[AnotherUnixGeek]

At that point in time it was all about tariffs and state rights. Slavery never entered the War of Northern Aggression until Lincoln started to run out of bodies and needed to bring in Black people to fight for the north.

I took a look at the official declarations of secession composed by several state governments and they sure seem to think slavery entered into it:

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

Declaration of Causes of Secession(Georgia, Mississippi, Texas)

Some excerpts:

South Carolina: "Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection."

Georgia: "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."

Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."

Texas: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

[APFel]

A ping for ya, junior. Keep striving to learn.

APf

[cowboyway]

Florida Declaration

Last and not least it has been proclaimed that the election of a President is an authoritative approval of all the principles avowed by the person elected and by the party convention which nominated him. Although that election is made by little more than one third of the votes given. But however large the majority may have been to recognize such a principle is to announce a revolution in the government and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written constitution without which no single state would have voted its adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.

[lentulusgracchus]

Some excerpts:

Excerpting is a good way to lie -- you can't trust excerpts.

For example, if you read the entire Texas Declaration, you'll see there were three or four major issues leading Texans to secede, of which the preservation of slavery was only one.

Mind you, the expansion of slavery was a non-issue in Texas: New Mexico and Arizona were below the 36^o 30' Missouri Compromise line of 1820, and so slavery was presumably legal to establish there under the Compromises of both 1820 and 1850. And so the extension of slavery to those Territories was a non-issue for Texans, but the preservation of slavery as the basis of their economy was a huge concern (the slaves alone, in 1860, were worth something like $160,000,000 in gold, or more than ALL the improved real estate in the State), because an uncompensated emancipation -- which was what eventually happened -- would ruin the State. Which it did.

Lincoln's platform was not an issue. Lincoln's elections was, because of what it meant to the South going forward. And all of that -- the implications of the installation of a monolithic anti-Southern political machine as the U.S. Government for as far as the eye could see -- WAS the cause of secession, and the Northern response to secession was the cause of the Civil War.

[Lee'sGhost]

Interesting, in re to the SC secession document that you provided a link to, you have to go through 14 paragraphs of reasons as to why they felt compelled to secede before there is ANYTHING mentioned connected to slavery. The concept of state sovereignty, however, appears as early as paragraph six and is sprinkled throughout the document.

So, thanks for confirming the southern perspective. It is, as I have maintained for some time, that you can find writings that support “slavery was the cause” and can find writings that slavery was only one of the reasons. And yet, people in your camp focus on, and point to, slavery as THE cause despite the overwhelming documentation that demonstrates it was not. (The example that YOU YOURSELF provided being just one.) You can point to the “slavery” writings forever, but until you acknowledge that other writings exist you are not being intellectually honest. Of course, once you acknowledge that they do exist, you can never again make the “it was only about slavery” argument.

Which explains a lot.