So Pitts and this White Supremacist idiot are both racist dolts who don’t understand the political underpinnings that led to secession and the Civil War. Yes, slavery was AN issue, but ultimately it was an issue of the southern states attempting to exert their sovereignty as states against increasing federal encroachment.
“... it was an issue of the southern states attempting to exert their sovereignty as states against increasing federal encroachment.”
I am always amused by this argument.
This position attempts to sanitize and cloak this fact: that southern states maintained owning another human being was not a violation of the rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
A poster on the original site summed it up perfectly:
“The Civil War was about secession; secession was about slavery.”
As for the idiot referring to the CSA as a
“white, racist government;” So was the USA in 1861!!
Alexander Stephens, veep of the Confederacy, was there. In a position of authority in the Confederacy, so he would likely have a better perspective than those of us interpreting history 150 years on.
The best history courses have you read what the real players, the movers and the shakers, were reading/saying.
In what is known as the Cornerstone speech, Mr Stephens noted (emphasis mine): "The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
Later in the speech, he notes the following: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
Seems the players at the time thought that the institution of slavery was a bit more than just AN issue, rather it appears that it was the 'immediate cause', to quote Stephens.
What federal encroachment are we talking about?
The civil war was started because of states rights. Slavery was an after thought on the part of Lincoln. Somebody needs to read the correct history books and not the politically correct ones!!!
VERY well said.
If they had asserted their authority in an atmosphere when slavery had never been an issue, say for some very real economic shenanigans I read were being forced upon the south by the north, then I think the war would have taken a differet direction. The churches of the north got their moral dander up over slavery and the south would have never won that arguement. If the arguement had simply been about economics and deprivation of the south’s rights to conduct say cotton trade with the factory mills of Europe, the moral conscience of the Christians would never have gotten involved and the outcome would have been different. There might not have even been a national split but a final working out of a solution.
Longstreet was said to have stated” We should have freed the slaves first and then fired on Sumpter” He had grasped that the north would have had no moral imperative to continue the fight and that the powers of Europe would have been more disposed to render aid to the southern cause if slavery had not been the issue!
You left out the last part of that sentence:
"...against increasing federal encroachment with respect to the humans whom they held as property."
Exactly what Federal encroachments were there in 1860?