COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School

So the Confederate states lied in their very own legislation declaring secession to throw us off where they said it was indeed about slavery / white supremacy? Their opposition to States rights by demanding federal invention to stop Northern states from not sending back slaves escaped into their territory? They were lying about all of that in their own official legislation, speeches, etc. to throw us off in the future to think this was about slavery?

Its not that they were lying. Its that them citing the Northern states' refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution as proof that it was the Northern states which violated the compact between the states - and that they were therefore fully justified in leaving, was a PRETEXT. It was a (correct) legalistic argument. It was not the REASON why they left. We know this because the North offered strengthened fugitive slave laws and offered a constitutional amendment to expressly protect slavery which would be irrevocable - and even the original 7 seceding states turned that offer down.

Notice what was not offered. What was not offered was a promise not to raise tariff rates again or to stop lavishing the bulk of federal money raised by those tariffs on corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects overwhelmingly in the North.

It's time to get real. It was about slavery.

Its time to get real. It wasn't.

Just a few minutes of basic research confirms this.

Digging a little deeper confirms that it wasn't.

The Confederate state legislatures said so. Their own leaders at the time said so in their speeches. I believe them - why don't you?,/p>

Because I've already told you why - it was a pretext. Also, only 4 of the original 7 seceding states listed causes for secession and of these 4, only one listed just slavery. 3 of the 4 listed other causes (mostly economic) even though these grievances were not unconstitutional and even though refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution was unconstitutional.

Also, the 5 states of the Upper South which seceded did not do so until being ordered by Lincoln to provide troops to attack other states. They obviously seceded over the constitutional issue that the Union was voluntary and that states had the sovereign right to "resume the powers of government" which the Founding Fathers said at the time that the original 13 states ratified the US Constitution, and not over the issue of slavery.

Here's one of Rhett Butler's monologues, from Chapter 12: “All wars are sacred. To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators.”

I wouldn't go so far as to say ALL wars are about money. But I agree that the vast overwhelming majority of them are.

President Abraham Lincoln referenced this amendment himself in his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1861, and further pronounced “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Lincoln’s sole justification to prosecute a needless war was his uncompromising view that the Union must be preserved at all cost. He confirmed this understanding stating “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”

I was unaware of this proposed amendment (the "Corwin Amendment"), nor of Lincoln's support of it. Thank you for including your comment about it.

I too only learned of the Corwin Amendment AFTER graduating from a good university as a history major. It tells you a lot that this is so hidden.....middle school, high school college, movies, TV.....you'd think you would hear about it. Yet you don't. The North was willing to protect slavery, effectively forever (there aren't even enough states now to overturn it had it passed) by express constitutional amendment.

But Wait!

I thought it was "all about" slavery????? Here, the Southern states had the very thing they were supposedly seceding and fighting for simply handed to them on a silver platter without ever having to fight..........so, what were the two sides really fighting over? It obviously wasn't slavery.

Again, just think of all the propaganda you had to have been told to get this far in life without ever hearing such an important fact. If they could hide a great big true fact like this from you for all those years.....what else is the Establishment (Academia, TV, Hollywood, the Federal Government, etc) lying to you about?

Once you've had your eyes opened, it changes you. You can never fully trust the Establishment again. You will become skeptical of everything they say. You start to see just how much they are lying to you and how much they are trying to manipulate you.

Stop. A century of propaganda has done it's work, and now it is universally believed. You will find this message spread every where you look. The actions of the Northern congress and the economic numbers tell the real truth. The south was paying 72% of all the taxes in the Nation and the robber baron class in New York and their corrupt adjuncts in Washington DC were getting rich off of slavery in the south. They invaded the South to keep that money coming in.

Bingo.

You can trace a direct line from this to our modern politics. It has never really changed. The Acela Corridor still is at the center of it all today. These parasites are still feeding off of the host body even today. The rest of the country can go through the Great Recession. The middle class can see hardly any real wage growth in 30 - 40 years, but Imperial Washington just gets richer and richer no matter what.

Doesn’t it follow then, that the actions of the South, succession, risk of war, were also about money?

Yes! It does. Southerners saw themselves being taxed for others' benefit just as their fathers and grandfathers had been when they seceded from the British Empire. They also saw both the cost of goods they needed to import go up dramatically, as well as their sales to their key foreign markets shrink dramatically. They didn't need degrees in economics to see this either. They had already experienced it all a generation earlier during the Tariff of Abominations. That's what sparked the Nullification Crisis in 1832. They remembered it.

The wealthy planter class wanted to hold on to their money making property, the slaves, and foresaw the eventual end of slavery if they stayed in the union.

Why would they see the end of slavery if they stayed in the union? The union was offering to protect slavery effectively forever. If anything, slavery was more likely to come to an end much sooner if they left the union. The border from the Atlantic cost of South Carolina all the way to El Paso, Texas is about 1500 miles. The total White population of those 7 seceding states as of 1860 was only 2.1 million. There was no chance they could come even remotely close to securing that border. As soon as any slaves crossed that border, they were in a now foreign country which had no obligation to return their escaped slaves. Lincoln himself pointed this out. Nobody could really argue against it. Secession meant the rapid end of slavery, not its preservation.

States had the right to leave the union as an implicit principal of the nation’s founding.

Over and above that, 3 states including the two biggest and most important ones (Virginia and New York) expressly reserved the right to unilateral secession at the time that they ratified the US Constitution. Nobody at the time argued that a state did not have the right of unilateral secession.

It was not treason to leave the union. It was treason, against the founding principals, to force states to remain against the wishes of their citizens.

Exactly. Read the Declaration of Independence. Government derives its legitimacy from the Consent of the Governed. If people no longer consent to be ruled over by a far off government, they have the right to leave....to declare independence. That's exactly what the Founding Fathers did.

It was about money and power on both sides, the Southern planters’ wealth depending on slavery and the Northern industrialists’ wealth depending on Southern agricultural product.

Agree that it was about money and power on both sides. I disagree that it was about the Planter class being worried about losing their slaves. Remember, higher prices for manufactured goods was money out of the pocket of everyone in the South from Planter to town tradesman to yeoman farmer who owned no slaves. Reduces sales of their cash crops abroad as a result of a dramatic tariff increase and subsequent loss of sales for foreign trade partners was once again, money out of the pockets of family farmers (who usually devoted a share of their acreage to cash crops to generate the money to buy things they could not produce themselves) just as it touched the pockets of wealthy planters.

and of course people of all classes did not like the idea that they were being taxed to benefit others like Northern corporations. Just look at the bitter fights today over which states are net donors and net recipients to the federal budget/expenditures.

It was also about morality. The implicit principals of the constitution gave the slaves the right to rise in rebellion, and arguably, the abolitionists the right to fight on behalf of the slaves.

It might be comforting to think it was about morality, but sadly, very very few people of that era were abolitionists. They couldn't get more than single digit percentages of the vote anywhere....and usually low single digit percentages. Even some abolitionists were flaming racists who wanted Blacks deported or who at the very least, were horrified by the idea of Blacks (or Indians) having political or social equality and who were horrified by the idea that people would intermarry. Society had very different standards of morality in the mid 19th century than we have today......no women's rights, no child labor laws, no social safety net, etc etc etc.

Neither secession nor the war were about morality.

The only thing that could have morally justified the war was freeing the slaves. Not keeping the Union. Although Texas reserving the right to leave suggests that leaving the Union was not going to be easy for the other states, that many held it indissoluble without previous exemption.

Others have recognized this as well:

"It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war against states fighting for the independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery." Woodrow Wilson

I'm not fond of the guy either, but ole Woodrow hit on the truth here. Slavery and it being a "war against slavery" was the fig leaf....ie the propaganda....used by the federal government after the fact to explain to their own voters why so many of their loved ones had gotten maimed and killed fighting to subdue the Southern states and was used by the federal government to justify their massive power grab/destruction of the limits placed on federal power by the US Constitution.

It was really all about money and power - not morality.

Ping

That was just the vice president, Stephens. The CSA was a democracy and opinions varied within it just as opinions will vary in any democracy. If we're going to take Stephens' opinion as gospel, what else did he say?

"If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity." -Alexander Stephens

What did Stephens say about why the North was fighting?

“Their philanthropy yields to their interests. Notwithstanding their professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor…The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after – though they come from the labor of the slave.”

Of course others in the South such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee disagreed with Stephens that secession and the war were about slavery"

Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war "was for the defense of the institution of slavery" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim "demagogues." Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted "the Confederates were not battling for slavery" and that "slavery had never been the key issue" (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).

Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a "moral and political evil" years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232).

"The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control." Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861

Major General Patrick Cleburne was another who disagreed with Stephens.

The conqueror's policy is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them...It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties." -General Patrick Cleburne

The Newspapers of the largest ports in the original 7 seceding states also disagreed that it was "about" slavery.

"The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism." Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty to seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

the Klan was another matter. That arose during the Occupation in response to the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the voters in the Southern states, the massive corruption and theft of property by the occupation governments and by terrorism inflicted upon the citizens when they objected by the Union League.

The Ku Klux Klan was created to terrorize the ex-slaves out of participating in this political plundering racket operated by the Republican Party. The Republicans kept promising to share the property of White Southerners with the ex-slaves, which of course they never did and never intended to do. Had the Republicans not used their victory and their monopoly of political power to line the pockets of the thousands of political hacks and hangers on who were the backbone of the party (the "carpetbaggers") the Ku Klux Klan would never have existed. This in fact was the conclusion of the minority report of an 1870 congressional commission that investigated the Klan. "Had there been no wanton oppression in the South," the congressmen wrote, "there would have been no Ku Kluxism" (Congressman Fernando Wood, "Alleged Ku Klux Outrages" published by the Congressional Globe Printing Office, 1871, p. 5). The report continued that when Southern Whites saw that "what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation . . . many of them took the law into their own hands and did deeds of violence . . . . history shows that bad government will make bad citizens."

True. Madison wrote many years after the ratification of the Constitution that states do not have the right to unilaterally secede. That, however is not what he said prior to ratification of the constitution. Indeed he stressed again and again in the federalist papers that states were sovereign and were delegating only a small portion of their powers to the proposed federal government.

Of course, it is not the interpretation of one man - even if he wrote much of the constitution - that matters. What matters is what the legislatures of the states agreed to when they ratified the constitution. As with any contract, it is about what the parties to that contract agreed to. Here is what the state legislatures thought:

"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the general assembly, and now met in convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, Do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will...."

"We, the delegates of the people of New York... do declare and make known that the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the department of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said Constitution, which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions in certain specified powers or as inserted merely for greater caution."

"We, the delegates of the people of Rhode Island and Plantations, duly elected... do declare and make known... that the powers of government may be resumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the department of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same; that Congress shall guarantee to each State its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to the United States."

There’s quite a number of these ‘reaction’ videos. There’s others that react to the Prager University videos on slavery and the Democratic Party. It’s BRUTAL and are getting 100’s of thousands of views each. The D’s are getting exposed.

A very popular youtube reactor is a black man named Jamel AKA Jamal. He’s been reacting to Sowell and Prager U video’s. You can see that the honesty is really shaking his beliefs and he’s rethinking things.

This is great to see as these reaction video’s have huge audiences.

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Did any of you ever consider...

If southern democraters had been able to keep slavery legal (as a states rights issue) then what would be the plight of all the black professional athletes making millions but only for their ‘plantation’ owners?

If I may, adding to what you wrote in reply 21, I think that the information found in newspapers, will support a fact, that the news media stirred up much inflammation.

As they still do today, but nowadays I suspect a lot more government motivation behind the news liars misdirection and agitation of society.

I'm sure there was some of that in the 1860s, but I also believed media companies were more independent back then, at least before Lincoln started arresting them.

Good video...thanks.

I know people from the West Indies who are surprised that most Americans didn't know that blacks in America owned slaves.

They thought it was just common knowledge.

Wow. This kid is discovering truth and honesty (which may well place him firmly on “our side”)...and you’re badmouthing him, calling him names.

Your pitiful arrogance is on full display.

DiogenesLamp: "an amendment that would guarantee slavery in the United States indefinitely...
they voted to keep slavery forever...
Lincoln urged all the states to ratify this amendment in his first inaugural address."

dayglored: "I was unaware of this proposed amendment (the "Corwin Amendment"), nor of Lincoln's support of it.
Thank you for including your comment about it."

One reason you never heard of it is because the way DiogenesLamp tells it, it's all lies.
The truth is:

Corwin-type amendments were first proposed in December 1860 by, among others, Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis.
Davis promised that Republicans accepting his proposal would prevent Mississippi from declaring secession.
But Republicans rejected Davis's proposals, and others similar (i.e., Crittenden), because they expanded slavery beyond the existing limits on it.
The result was Mississippi and other slave-states declared secession, and formed their own Confederacy, which provided every protection of slavery they could ask for.
These Confederate constitutional protections included:
- No Confederate state or territory could abolish slavery.
- No Confederate state or territory could restrict slaveholders who "shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property".
- Confederate states could import slaves from the United States.
- Article I Section 9(4): "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.[13]"
So, not only was abolition impossible in the Confederacy, but so were any restrictions "impairing the right of property in negro slaves."
Given the Confederacy's total protection of slavey, there was no way the Union could offer the Deep South a "better deal".
Nor did they try to.
The Corwin amendment was not intended to lure Confederate states back into the Union, but rather to reassure Union Border Slave-States that existing laws would not be changed.
Corwin simply said there would be no national laws abolishing slavery in states where it was legal, just as there had been none since the Constitution was ratified in 1788.
Corwin did not prevent states from continuing to abolish or restrict slavery as they saw fit.
Corwin did not prevent Federal government from abolishing slavery in US territories or in Washington, DC.
Corwin did not prevent the US Supreme Court from defining the human rights of slaves.
As Lincoln said in his March 4, 1861 Inaugural Address, he did not oppose Corwin because it made no changes to the Constitution as Lincoln understood it.
Finally, the necessary support for Corwin in Congress came from 100% of Democrats joined by a minority of Republicans (RINOs).
The majority of Republicans in Congress opposed Corwin.

Kentucky, Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois ratified Corwin.
All but Kentucky later rescended their ratifications.

If slavery never existed would there have been a Confederacy and Civil War? No.

Of course back then "the Balkans" were behind the iron curtain, mostly inaccessible to Americans, just part of the USSR.

None of the Balkans were part of the USSR. Only Bulgaria, a member of the Warsaw Pact, was a Soviet ally. Albania and Yugoslavia were independent Communist states, and Greece was a NATO member.