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.
Me too.
It's clear that the total military, economic, political, and human destruction caused by the War was many times higher than the cost of the slaves.
It's also clear that residents of Northern states would never agree to mass re-settlement of former slaves in their own states.
The War might have still been fought, but the North could never claim a Moral or Constitutional victory after rejecting that offer.
Right. Bonus points to anyone who can name the first states that called assemblies to secede from the Union and when?
The answer points to the reason why states attempted to secede in the first place.
Forget it , THIS IS MY COUNTRY
I am not decended from all the Germans and Irish that Lincoln brought in as mercenaries to defeat the real Americans .
Sort of reminds me of what Obama is up to today . Overwhelm the real Americans with more foreigners and then write the history that oppressive dictators can claim .
semper antebellum , deo vindice
“Forget it , THIS IS MY COUNTRY”
No, it isn’t, if you are going to support the treason and domestic bloodshed perpetrated by the Confederate Democrats. You can just emigrate yourself out of the United States and join the Confederate wannabes in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America and Europe.
From the Gone with the Wind movie script
ASHLEY: Most of the miseries of the world were caused by wars.
And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about.
Leslie Howard who played Ashley died in 1943 being shot down in a plane by the Nazis. His Gone with the Wind wife Olivia De Havilland is still alive today in 2015. She will turn 100 next year.
The black community celebrates this man’s life with fondness ignorant of his support for the status quo of black subjugation. Black parents dress their children up to play this man for school plays. We have bought the lies hook, line, and sinker. This was no friend of the black community. Abraham Lincoln was no abolitionist. Black people really need to do more to know our history instead of having it spoon fed to us by the dominant community.
What Lincoln said about blacks:
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ..
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.
Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.
“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.” – Abraham Lincoln in the fourth debate with Stephen Douglas.
. “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” – Abraham Lincoln in his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas in the campaign for the United States Senate on September 18th of 1858.
858. “I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.” – Abraham Lincoln in the fourth debate with Stephen Douglas.
Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” – Abraham Lincoln in notes for speeches in September of 1859.
Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his first instinct would be “to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia” (the African state founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821).
Lincoln STARTED A WAR THAT KILLED 800,000 AND WOUNDED A MILLION OF HIS FELLOW AMERICANS.
In what way was the Federal government tyrannical in 1860?
And yet Lincoln wasn’t nearly as racist as anyone from the antebellum south...
But he was extremely racist AND HE MURDERED 800,000 OF HIS FELLOW AMERICANS.
He was one of the worst war criminals of all time and should have been hung for crimes against humanity.
Boothe got him, though, although he paid dearly for it, I’m sure he and others felt it worth it.
His “racism” represented mainstream attitudes for the era. You are judging 19th century behavior through 21st century eyeballs.
You sound like someone who doesn’t like this country very much. You know that there are alternatives.
Great Post.
Nicely said.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and observations with us.
The tyranny of the abolitionist idiots were in charge in DC, just like the homosexualists are today.
I think the quotes below speak for themselves:
In 1860, Congressman Laurence M. Keitt of South Carolina said, “The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States.”[22]-WIKI
“To the Governor of South Carolina:—The undersigned citizens of Madison county. Virginia, believing that South Carolina will be the first to raise the standard for States-Rights and Southern liberty, against the encroachments of Northern fanaticism and Federal tyranny, do hereby tender their services to fight under her flag whenever she shall signify her wish to receive them, unless Virginia shall first require their aid.
‘”Nov. 8th, 1860.”’
The Union is gone already, virtually. [Applause] If five or six States seceded, as there was every reason to believe they would, the Union was not only gone, but its repair was perfectly hopeless. [Applause.] The question had been changed. The question in Virginia would not be Union or disunion, but it would be, will you go to the North, your enemies, or will you go to the South, your friends! My friends, I venture to affirm that Virginia will not hesitate then. I would pledge my life for it, although. I have already pledged what is perhaps almost as dear as life. And if Virginia remains in the Union, under the domination of this infamous, low, vulgar tyranny of Black Republicanism, and there is one other State in the Union that has bravely thrown off the yoke, I will seek my domicil in that State and abandon Virginia forever. [Loud applause] If Virginia will not act as South Carolina, I have no longer a home, and I am a banished man. [Applause.] I hope, gentlemen, that my friends will excuse me from talking any longer. But, I will say, there is not one of you, young and ardent as most of you are, that has his cause more at heart than I have, or would make greater sacrifices to secure its success. [Loud and long continued applause]-Richmond Post Dispatch
Jefferson Davis stated that a “disparaging discrimination” and a fight for “liberty” against “the tyranny of an unbridled majority” gave the Confederate states a right to secede.[21] -Wiki
Interesting.
Correlation is not causation.
Southern States were also supplying 70% of the revenue to the Federal government because the only tariffs that could get through a Senate heavily stacked with tiny northeastern States wanted it that way. The more a State depended upon agriculture, the more they depended upon slavery and the worse disparity was in taxation. It deprived the South of capital for industrial investment and protected northeastern industrial production.
Partial reason
Not the only reason
I love my country.
I just want the record set straight about the cause of the war and the adoration of the racist, mass murdering war criminal Abraham Lincoln rightly stopped.
Yeah, too bad the democrat slave masters didn’t win. That would have been awesome.
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