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To: My2Cents
Had the confederates taken a stand for the defense of states' rights on some other issue besides slavery, they may have had a defensible point.

Show me a historical factual quote of a Southern diplomat stating that the only reason their state was voting for succession was because of slavery....please...

166 posted on 01/06/2006 1:32:28 PM PST by Getsmart64
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To: Getsmart64
Show me a historical factual quote of a Southern diplomat stating that the only reason their state was voting for succession was because of slavery....please...

Show me a historical factual quote in which Lincoln states that he wants to outlaw slavery in the states. The most he wanted to do in 1860 was to limit its spread to the territories. He made a very fine legal case for his position in the 1860 speech at Cooper Union. But territories are not states and thus why should say, South Carolina, care whether or not there are slaveholders in the western territories if they were only concerned about state's rights?

178 posted on 01/06/2006 1:38:15 PM PST by PMCarey
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To: Getsmart64
Show me a historical factual quote of a Southern diplomat stating that the only reason their state was voting for succession was because of slavery....please...

How about these?

"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Secession Convention, 1861

"This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable." -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

"History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity." -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- 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. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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 normal condition." -- Alexander Stephens, March 1861

289 posted on 01/06/2006 6:26:10 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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