Opposing slavery and Yankees in U.S. Civil War

The Toronto Star ^

[general_re]

Okay. That site has the same document in the "Documents" section, under the heading "Declarations of the Causes for Secession". Click on "Georgia" and you can read the same document I just linked to at your preferred site. And you can confirm for yourself that it does discuss slavery, quite extensively, as a reason for secession.

[general_re]

LOOKS LIKE AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY The Federalist Society

Ummm, no. It was a resolution adopted by the Georgia legislature ten days after the secession resolution was passed. Hence the date on it.

[x]

Nice post. It's amazing how current politics effects how we view history. Thus the Confederacy is recast as the precursor of present-day libertarianism. And Canadians convince themselves that they were always crunchy environmentally-concerned liberal multiculturalists. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Louis Riel, the leader of Canada's own secessionist/regionalist/autonomist/native rights movement, would have testified. I'd imagine today's young multicultural Canadians learn about Riel in school and are brought up to hate the old Tory Loyalist elite, but zinging the US trumps historical memory and local resentments. Canadian attitudes had a lot to do with whose national ox was getting gored, as the response of recent Prime Ministers to the Quebec independence movement suggest.

[general_re]

In a nutshell. Whether fair or unfair, Canada has always spent far more time worrying about what the Americans were up to than the United States has spent worrying about the Canadians. We should hardly be surprised to learn that, even back then, Canada was looking for ways to exploit the divisions of the United States to its own advantage, but to turn that into an argument that Canadians were somehow philosophically predisposed to sympathy for the South is something that's flatly contradicted by the historical record, for the most part - in fact, quite the opposite was true, and most Canadians were probably generally sympathetic to the North. But that sympathy was very much tempered by concerns that they'd wind up being Americans in the deal, and so what you got in the end was an example of pure realpolitik, not principles and philosophies. And I don't know that we can really blame them for that - at the time, annexation was more than just an academic issue in many quarters.

[general_re]

BTW, this year's official collectible White House Christmas ornament is intended to honor President Ulysses S. Grant. Maybe there are some grinches around here who would appreciate a gift like that - get everyone into the spirit of Christmas, so to speak ;)

[Non-Sequitur]

DON'T SEE A WORD ABOUT SLAVERY

Try reading the declarations of the causes of secession, located Here. They are the southern equivilent of the Declaration of Independence, and defense of slavery is the single most often reason given for the rebellion.

[IrishCatholic]

Sorry to be so late in getting back to you. I work very long hours with a commute. It's only a cold that laid me low that gave me the time to find the speeches I wanted to cite.
Revisionist history is not something new. By the end of the Civil War the South and it's leaders were already changing the causes that led to the war. Like the Germans after WW2 saying they were never Nazi, so the South said the war was not about slavery. It was.
I am not saying the North was clean in this. Freed slave labor would be a threat to jobs and many Northern institutions were financially involved in the Southern economy. But prior to Lincoln's election the slave power faction had sway in Congress and the courts. Lincoln's election was seen as a revolt from a more populated and more industrialized North against the Southern control of the FEDERAL Government. The South's reaction to that loss of control and potential threat to their slave system was the secession of the Southern states.
I would refer you to Alexander H Stephen's (V.P.of the Confederacy)speech in Savannah on March,21 1861 In this he stated about slavery:
"...the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right." What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with;but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of equality of the races. This was an error. It was the sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built uponit-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell"
"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth..."
On April 29th, 1861 In a message to the Confederate Congress, Jefferson Davis also gave slavery as the reason.
"As soon... as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves...With the interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States werre driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."
The revision began as soon as the war ended with both men turning to post war constitutional interpetations as the reason. Their motives are self evident. The Confederacy was as vile an institution as can be found. It was not compatible with the concept of freedom and had nothing to do with the centralization of the government. You can take them at their own words on this. It is also part of the American experience from the revolution to the liberation of Iraq. The Civil War was a watershed of the American experiment. Where a divided house was reunited and the terrible crime of slavery was purged because to moral Americans it could not be tolerated. It is so ingrained in the American psyche that even today we go half way around the world to fight wars and liberate the oppressed.
It has been a while since I read this. I hope this helps lay down the myth that the civil war was about anything else than slavery.

[Aurelius]

Opposing slavery and Yankees.

Just what we neo-Confederates are doing today!!