From representatives at the Virginia secession convention.
“Sir, the great question which is now uprooting this Government to its foundation - the great question which underlies all our deliberations here, is the question of African slavery...”
-—Thomas F. Goode, delegate from Mecklenburg County to Virginia’s Secession Convention, 1861
...But, sir, the great cause of complaint now is the slavery question, and the questions growing out of it. If there is any other cause of complaint which has been influential in any quarter, to bring about the crisis which is now upon us; if any State or any people have made the troubles growing out of this question, a pretext for agitation instead of a cause of honest complaint, Virginia can have no sympathy whatever, in any such feeling, in any such policy, in any such attempt. It is the slavery question. Is it not so?”
-—John B. Baldwin, delegate from Augusta County to the Virginia Secession Convention, 1861
From Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession-
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.
Yet you, and the rest of the lost causers on these threads, refuse to accept the secessionists own words about why they seceded. Why? Because you know in your heart that a rebellion to defend slavery is immoral and wrong.
Virginia issued a secession statement, and it clearly articulates that their reason for leaving is the tyrannical nature of raising an army to compel states to obey the central government.
And i'm ignoring your attempts to twist a reference to "Slave Holding States" into an articulation of secession over slavery. Again, Slavery was legal in the Union, and would have remained so with or without secession.
Attempts to drag the issue back to slavery are post hoc justifications for invading states and killing people who only wanted to be free of what they came to regard as an oppressive government which no longer served their interests.
Also, the Secessionists do not have to justify wanting out. The people who have to justify what they did are the ones who started the killing in order to force people to remain under their control.
The North invaded the South. The North did not do this because of slavery. The North did this to impose economic *CONTROL* on the South.
The North invaded to protect the pockets of wealthy and powerful businessmen that backed Lincoln and colluded with every corruptocrat in Washington DC.
Then they made up a bunch of bullsh*t about doing it because of "slavery."
They did it over money, not slavery. They didn't give a f*** about slavery, but they cared deeply about losing money as a result of Southern independence.
>>OIFVeteran wrote: “The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.”
Still cherry-picking?
The oppression of the Slaveholding States by the Northern States is not news. That oppression was the chief cause of the secession, and that oppression was economic. Once you understand that a slave was a form of capital equipment to the slave-holder, everything begins to makes more sense.
It doesn’t hurt to understand that Lincoln, like Clay, despised and denigrated abolitionists.
Mr. Kalamata