Posted on 10/03/2015 1:28:14 PM PDT by Kaslin
Although the American Revolution resulted in independence for the United States and World War II made it an international power, the American Civil War was arguably the most important war in American history. It truly was an American watershed.
In order to appreciate that war’s significance, it must be understood what the Civil War was about. Contrary to all-too-popular opinion, the Civil War was not about states’ rights. Instead it was all about slavery and white supremacy. As shown in my just-released book, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won, there is compelling evidence that secession and the Confederacy were the result of Southerners’ desire to preserve slavery and white supremacy – not to promote states’ rights.
The evidence of the seceders’ motivations is clear-cut and convincing. Only slave states seceded, and the greater the percentage of slaves and the percentage of slave-owning families the more likely a slave state was to secede. Those states complained that the Federal Government was doing not too much but too little – Southerners wanted the central government to more aggressively enforce slavery, especially to return runaway slaves. They also were upset that other states were passing “liberty laws” to make it more difficult to retrieve runaways. The issue was not who had the power to do what but instead whether their powers were being used to promote slavery. Far from respecting individual states’ rights, they wanted to compel the Federal and other state governments to enforce slaveholders’ rights and preserve slavery.
The strongest evidence of seceders’ motivations is the language they used in their own secession documents. What could be more telling? Six of the seven early seceding states provided clear statements of their reasons for seceding. Their reasons included the election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed extension of slavery into territories; the runaway slave issue; the threat to slavery’s existence with the possible loss of four to six billion dollars in slave property (the largest component of Southern wealth); the perceived end of white supremacy and the resultant political and social equality of blacks and whites, and desperate warnings of the effect all this change would have on Southern Womanhood.
South Carolina’s declaration of the reasons for secession said, “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution [runaway slave return provision].”
As he called for a secession convention, Mississippi’s governor declared, “The existence or the abolition of African slavery in the Southern States is now up for a final settlement.” Citing only slavery-protection reasons, that state’s legislature convened a secession convention. The latter’s declaration of the causes of secession got right to the point in its opening line: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world.”
Not only did their own secession resolutions reveal slavery and white supremacy as their causation, but the seven states who seceded even before Lincoln’s inauguration immediately began an outreach campaign to other slave states. Their correspondence and speeches relied only on slavery-related issues to encourage other slave states’ secession. They only lobbied slave states.
Much other evidence demonstrates that slavery and white supremacy preservation were the causes of secession and even trumped possible Confederate victory in the war. All efforts to avoid war by compromise focused only on slavery issues. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said slavery was the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy and Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers had erred in stating that all men were created equal.
Even though it had a tremendous manpower shortage, the Confederacy officially rejected the use of slaves as soldiers (as inconsistent with its white supremacy views) and rejected one-on-one prisoner exchanges for captured black Union soldiers. Just as American colonists needed European intervention to win the Revolutionary War, the Confederates were desperate for British and French intervention; however, they declined to end slavery in order to achieve involvement by the slavery-hating Europeans.
Union victory ended slavery and kept America from being an international pariah. It also resulted in passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amendments; these provided the legal basis for ending legal segregation and providing blacks with voting and other civil rights.
Despite the compelling evidence of slavery’s and white supremacy’s roles in fomenting secession, the Confederacy, and the Civil War, too many contemporary Americans cling to the myth that somehow states’ rights were at the root of the Civil War. We need to accept the reality of the racial underpinnings of that critical war in order to contemplate, confront, and overcome the continuing racial tensions in America.
Reunited and it feels so good
Reunited 'cause we understood
We both are so excited 'cause we're reunited, hey, hey
The South seceded over slavery (and tariff policy).
The North caused a war over states rights: to deny states the right to secede.
Secession was about slavery.
The war was about states rights.
“The Founders obviously regarded the right of states to secede from England as valid.”
The Founders also provided a means by which the state governments could lawfully secede using the same authority and procedures that were used to accede to the United States. The Confederate conspirators refused to respect the sovereignty of the citizens, because they knew the citizens would not approve such a secession.
No, it was all about the tariffs. The north could not exist without the tariffs raised through trade in the South. (It is a mater of record that the any state had the right to leave - the constitution could not have been approved without that assurance.) So the North had to “insist” that the South not be permitted to leave.
And by the way, slavery would never been approved in the beginning but for the deciding vote of Massachusetts. Look it up.
Facts can be disturbing.
No...not the...Russians!
I am familiar with the information in your post, it’s correct.
Being as so many blacks were slave owners, how would we have ever ended slavery without the Civil War?
(I know it was economically unsustainable.)
Just thought I’d ask.
Thanks for that link, outstanding piece.
Damn the torpedoes.
Undeniable historical fact.
We want it to have been about States’ Rights for many reasons, but wishing does not make it so.
That’s a distinction without a difference, since the South initiated hostilities.
“If you say no, then the 22 Union states were not fighting over slavery, therefore the war was not being fought over slavery.”
The North was fighting because they didn’t want to let the Southern states go.
Individual men on both sides were fighting for many reasons all their own.
But the Southern states were undeniably fighting for slavery. They said so, loud and clear.
No easy answers for that - are there?
To some degree industrialization itself and the advent of mechanical agricultural machinery would have changed the economic dynamic in a very big way.
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More of the same old tired sh++ about the saintly north and the wicked, rayyyyycist south. This is nothing new.
Economically ignorant Northern leaders then passed the astronomical Morrill Tariff that threatened to destroy the Northern shipping industry by rerouting trade away from the high-tariff North and into the low-tariff South. The Morrill Tariff was like pumping gasoline into an already raging fire.
Abraham Lincoln was the first sectional president in American history. He was president of the North, and the North was clamoring for war. LINCOLN SAW AN OPPORTUNITY TO START THE WAR WITHOUT APPEARING TO BE THE AGGRESSOR, SO HE TOOK IT- THUS, HE STARTED A WAR THAT KILLED 800,000 AND WOUNDED A MILLION.
The idea that the good North was so outraged over slavery that they marched armies into the South to free the slaves is an absurdity of biblical proportions The the economic annihilation of the North was what drove Lincoln to start the war.
The invasion of the Southern States by Lincoln and his party (a minority of the American people) was due to an agenda of economic domination and not to some benevolent concern for slaves.
Then it fits right in with most of the rest of the stuff in your post.
, the Civil War was not about states’ rights......stopped read there.
___
Me too.
Me three.
It’s true and you know it.
Sure it is.
What happened yesterday doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow is going to make a lot of people wake up. The oppressive federal government needs to be quarantined and stamped out faster than the Ebola virus. Keep making it about something that occurred five generations ago keep making it about slavery keep making it about states rights. wake up everyone. We are the slaves now. Time to stand on our feet or our knees. Everyone will chose. Some will chose consciously.
***Sorry, but the South seceded because of slavery.***
But not all the slave states seceded. Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missourin Virginia broke apart, the western part stayed in the Union but still a slave state stayed in the Union. True, three were compelled to stay by Union troops there.
Slavery was still legal in these states till eight months after the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Maryland banned slavery in 1864.
Slavery would have ended with the invention of the Internal Combustion engine. Cheaper to park a tractor all winter while slaves still have to be fed, clothed and sheltered.
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