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“What a crock! One of my Confederate Ancestors from Texas, didn’t own a slave, he was a RANCHER! He could have given a d*mn less about slavery, one way or the other. He fought to stop Yankees from invading!”

I’m a Texan too and if it were not cloudy and raining at the moment, I could go up on my deck and see the rotunda of our beautiful capitol building.

However, as a Texan, who received two degrees from that University here in Austin, I understand that succeeded from the Union because of slavery. I know this from reading documents that were written at the time of the Civil War.

I find it quite interesting that your screen name is TexConfederate1861, so interesting that I’m going to post text from “A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union” which was written and adopted in 1861.

“She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.”

Texans wanted slavery to exist for all future time.

“Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.”

Here Texas acknowledges that slavery was the primary connection the state had with the confederacy.

“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.”

The Texans seemed very concerned not only that their institution of slavery was threatened, but also that they would not be able to expand slavery to the Pacific.

“Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.”

The Texans were not happy that there were states that would not return people who had escaped slavery to Texas so that the Texans could again hold them in slavery.

“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color— a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. “

In one long rambling sentence, the Texans use the Bible to justify their enslavement of human beings and their succeeding from the Union.

“They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.”

And again, the Texans express their belief that the races are not equal and object to the abolition of slavery.

“For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.”

Apparently the Abolitionists are spreading hatred while the confederacy is spreading love and friendship. Well, love and friendship as long as you happen to be white.

“They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture...”

In citing yet another reason for leaving the Union, the Texans are upset that people are encouraging slaves to escape into freedom.

“They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.”

Apparently, the Texans were not advocates of the First Amendment.

“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.”

In 1861 Texans believed that Texas was by white people and for white people and others had no rights. Furthermore, and if ever blacks were to become equal to whites, Life Would Become Intolerable!

“That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator..”

Here again, the Texans use God to justify slavery!

And even today, there are people today that maintain that Succession for the Union and the Civil War was not about slavery!

If it was not about slavery, why is it that the Declarations of Succession primarily mentions slavery and the superiority of the white man as the reason for leaving the Union?

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas