> No I have not.
A common problem among those who believe that secession and the following war of aggression on the Souths part were not about slavery. Note: I mis-typed... *declarations* of secession, not *ordinances.* Further note: There are those who have tried to claim that the declarations of secession are irrelevant. They are precisely as relevant for the various states secession as the Declaration of Independence was to the formation of the US.
Mississippi:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Georgia:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war.
South Carolina:
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
Texas:
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. 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. 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. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
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. ...
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. 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.
>I have noticed that you have not answered a single question that I brought up that challenges your view that slavery was the cause in the War for Southern Independence.
You mean the War To Enslave Black Americans?
> I have also noticed your viciousness in referring to the South (calling them "scumbags", "losers", etc.) in other posts.
Nice spin. As I asked before: What *do* you call a man who sees glory and honor in killing his fellow man in order to maintain his "right" to keep other men in permanent slavehood?
To the oft-repeated claim that the war was about the right of secession: that makes No Sense Whatsoever. Would a state secede just to prove that they could? Did the United States decalre independence from Britain not over taxes, but over the right to declare independence? Does the blame for 9-11 deaths in the WTC fall squarely on "A building fell on them," not on "someone who destroyed the building?" If an assassin gets in a subsequent gunfight with the cops, can he claim that he was all about just defending himself from the cops?
No. The southern states seceded over slavery. They then launched an aggressive war to *support* their secession. The leaders of the South 145 years ago would ahve been quite clear on the subject. But the history revisionists on this thread and elsewhere, knowing that slavery is *not* a noble cause, are trying to whitewash the motivations of their predecessors.
they were NOT in any way more than the beliefs of the FEW people, who wrote them, either. the "declarations" spoke for NOBODY except the private authors, who wrote the papers; furthermore the "declarations" cannot be said to even be typical of the thoughts of other slave-owners. they were read by almost NOBODY, either (with the exception of the authors, themselves).
had the "authors" of the "declarations" chosen to publish "Mary Had a Little Lamb" instead, that child's POEM would have been just as meaningful to the WBTS period as the rantings of the authors were.
the so-called "declarations" are MEANINGLESS as causes of the WBTS. almost no serious historian believes the documents to be of ANY VALUE whatever in determining ANYTHING about the antebellum period of US history. (frankly, even mentioning the "declarations" as IMPORTANT historical documents will get you RIDICULED and laughed AT as a nitwit/dunce/fool, by serious historians.)
free dixie,sw
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."
Thanks for posting the historical facts relating to the origins of the Civil War. America's domestic tragedy was triggered by the South's Slavery Inc's political and corporate interests, after those bums lost the election of 1860.
The bottom line is those few arch defenders of the 'lost cause' are really still sore they even lost Southern state enforced segregation, which allowed even the lowest of this backward element to somehow feel superior. These days neo-confederates are just plain losers.