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Lincoln's
election was the lighted match. Slavery was the fuse, and states rights was the powder in the keg. Many of the northern states had ended slavery because they saw it as unjust and immoral. The hypocrisy on their part was that they came to this conclusion the same time it {slavery) became unprofitable. Having read hundreds of writings of the most prominent men of the Confederacy, I have concluded (to my own satisfaction) that most knew slavery was wrong. But insisted on the same rights that other states had, to end slavery at their own choosing. That would have came about like the northern states. As it became unprofitable they would have seen it immoral and abolished it. Sad, but I believe true

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"Secession may have been wrong in the abstract, and has been tried and settled by the arbitrament of the sword and bayonet, but I am as firm in my convictions today of the right of secession as I was in 1861. The south is our country, the North is the country of those who live there. We are an agricultural people; they are a manufacturing people. They are the descendent's of the good Puritan Plymouth Rock stock, and we of the South from the proud and aristocratic stock of Cavaliers. We believe in the doctrine of States Rights and they in the doctrine of centralization.
----We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power.
Sam Watkins, Pvt. CSA 1882

Company Aytch
Or, A Sideshow of the Big Show
by Sam Watkins
Plumb Books