[lentulusgracchus]

Some excerpts:

Excerpting is a good way to lie -- you can't trust excerpts.

For example, if you read the entire Texas Declaration, you'll see there were three or four major issues leading Texans to secede, of which the preservation of slavery was only one.

Mind you, the expansion of slavery was a non-issue in Texas: New Mexico and Arizona were below the 36^o 30' Missouri Compromise line of 1820, and so slavery was presumably legal to establish there under the Compromises of both 1820 and 1850. And so the extension of slavery to those Territories was a non-issue for Texans, but the preservation of slavery as the basis of their economy was a huge concern (the slaves alone, in 1860, were worth something like $160,000,000 in gold, or more than ALL the improved real estate in the State), because an uncompensated emancipation -- which was what eventually happened -- would ruin the State. Which it did.

Lincoln's platform was not an issue. Lincoln's elections was, because of what it meant to the South going forward. And all of that -- the implications of the installation of a monolithic anti-Southern political machine as the U.S. Government for as far as the eye could see -- WAS the cause of secession, and the Northern response to secession was the cause of the Civil War.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Excerpting is a good way to lie -- you can't trust excerpts.

Nonsense - and don't accuse me of lying. I provided links to the full text of the declarations of secession (after reading them in full), and excerpted sections which indicate clearly that slavery was very much an issue for several of the states which seceded, contrary to the claim of the poster I replied to.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Excerpting is a good way to lie -- you can't trust excerpts.

For example, if you read the entire Texas Declaration, you'll see there were three or four major issues leading Texans to secede, of which the preservation of slavery was only one.

But when you read it,the Texans make it overwhelmingly about slavery, and even the issues that they mention that might not be directly related to the peculiar institution, THEY THEMSELVES relate to it.

When the issue of tariffs is mentioned (without using that word), it isn't as with "the agricultural product exporting states" that Texas identifies itself. No, it's

They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance

Even when they complain about the lack of military support against the Indians (ironically, by the way, seeming to demand a larger federal presence) what they say is:

They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.

The fact is that the word slave (or slavery, or slave-holding) appears 21 TIMES in the Texas declaration, and in fact is one of the most frequently appearing words in that document