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"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 slave-holding 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 the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the 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 the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."

https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html

Sure LOOKS like it was about keeping slaves! In fact, it looks like it was largely about the refusal to allow slaves everywhere else in the country.

Take the plaque down! And before folks start screaming I lick Abraham Lincoln's boots: I was named after Robert E. Lee. Just finished reading a biography about him. And I admire, on the whole, Nathan Bedford Forrest. But saying the war wasn't about slavery is silly. The states that left said WHY they left.

Hardly surprising. The economy of most of the South revolved around staple agriculture mostly performed by black chattels. Who is about to line up for the destruction of ones economy as well as letting loose very large numbers of blackamoors? The closest current analogy is the damage that the Paris Protocol would do to the US economy if it were enforced and that is a much milder effect than the end of slavery would have in the South. The GOP had fastened on the existence of slavery as a vote getting mechanism. Hence as soon as the party was organized they commenced yelling about slavery incessantly. The goal being to get a majority of white males in the mid-west who would become voters to support the new party which was really just the northern Whigs trying to build a constituency. The Whigs under John Quincy; Adams or Clay could never convince a majority of Americans to vote for the ‘American Plan’ of high tariffs, centralization of banking and mass subsidies to connected elites for railway construction. So yelling about slavery especially in the territories where it was never going to be a real issue, became the GOP default. Windbags like Seward positively relished agitating the rubes with such political crapola as ‘irrepressible conflict’.

Between the GOP tactical vote trolling campaign and the abolitionist venom and finally actually plotting and supporting an attempt to start a slave uprising under John Brown Southerners had very good reason to not trusting anything a northern politician might say about guaranteeing slavery and believing they had no place in the federal union.

Did it ever occur to you that people sometimes act on pretexts...ie they do what they wanted to do (for other reasons) anyway and then find a reason to justify what they wanted all along anyway?

Oh and of course only 4 states listed causes and 3 of those 4 listed several causes other than preservation of slavery and several states - including Virginia and the whole Upper South - obviously did not secede over slavery because they were happy to remain in so long as the federal government did not try to impose itself by force on states that no longer consented to be ruled by it.

Its silly to claim that secession or the war were “about” slavery.

Sure LOOKS like it was about keeping slaves! In fact, it looks like it was largely about the refusal to allow slaves everywhere else in the country.

Which they saw as an infringement upon their rights under the constitution that they hadn't agreed to. The constitution was clearly designed to protect slavery, and if you read the debates about slavery during the convention, it is clear that the non slave states (which were an extreme Minority in 1787) accepted that the nation would be a slave owning nation. The Slave owning states made it clear in the convention that if the institution of slavery was not accommodated, they would refuse to ratify the new Constitution.

Nobody at the time suggested that slaves would be banned from the territory. From the gist of the discussion it is clear that the Slave owning states would have never agreed to that.

But saying the war wasn't about slavery is silly. The states that left said WHY they left.

A few of them said they left because of slavery, but the vast bulk of them did not say that. Virginia was perhaps the most important of all the states of the Confederacy, go look in their secession statement and see if it says anything about leaving over slavery.

People keep repeating that the Confederate states left over slavery, even though it would have remained legal in the Union into the foreseeable future, but they repeat this because this is what they truly wish to believe, because in their minds it justifies all the bloodshed and the very bad thing they did to the people of the South.

It is the only way in their mind they can justify all the unnecessary murder of people who just wanted to be left alone by Washington DC.