I’ve heard Barbara Marthal speak in person a couple of times. Lovely lady who counts American slaves among her ancestors.
Not this (redacted) again ?!?
Bkmk
bkmk
If you say it’s wasn’t ALL about slavery.
You are considered a racist.
This needs to make it’s way into the national psyche.
Thank you for posting this.
You know what? I think it would be good if the glib name-callers here would actually READ the treatise posted.
It often addresses their “facts”.
Someone should have told the Southerners who started the war.
"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860
"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." - Lawrence Keitt "The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.
"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard
"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865
"I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in ... The South was my country." - John Singleton Mosby
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." - John S. Mosby
'We have dissolved the Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel. Now, is there any man who wished to reproduce that strife among ourselves? And yet does not he, who wished the slave trade left for the action of Congress, see that he proposed to open a Pandora's box among us and to cause our political arena again to resound with this discussion. Had we left the question unsettled, we should, in my opinion, have sown broadcast the seeds of discord and death in our Constitution. I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution; we have sought by no euphony to hide its name - we have called our negroes "slaves," and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property.' - Alabama Congressman Robert H. Smith
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. 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. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession
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 Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
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
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
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
History of war is normally written by the winning side. The guy that loses doesn’t have many left to write it and no one believes then anyway.
I predict Yankeefa will be out in force over this one. They simply cannot abide any challenge to the Leftist PC Revisionist dogma they so love.
Oh wait! 200+ responses in less than 12 hours? Shocker!
Bullshot The south was sweating bullets for 30 years about the addition of more free states than slave in the western territories. They were happy with adding one and one at the same time. But lincoln don’t promise to continue it.
All very well and good, but when they come for our 401ks as “reparations”, we can demand our own from them for our losses. Just read about a 10 year coal miner in my family tree from the 1870s. Slavery ended in 1865. Yeah right.
Spare me, Clyde. You never was that complex. It was fun finding the mistakes in your earlier article a few years back. And this one is just making a straw man argument and torturing and publicly burning the straw man ("an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument") of his own making .
Of course, there are different reasons why wars break out - grievances always travel in flocks or herds - but if you're looking for one chief reason why North and South drew apart, a seven-letter word beginning with "s" is a good place to start (and finish)
That was the opinion of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York. In a public address he pointed to the enormity of making war on Southern fellow citizens who had always been exceptionally loyal Americans, but who had been driven to secession by New England fanaticism.
Seymour was pretty clear that the "fanaticism" he disapproved of was about the abolition of slavery. Seymour blamed the North for rejecting the Crittenden Compromise. In other words, the North had been offered a chance at saving the Union if it caved on slavery, and Northern Republicans rejected it. So by the logic familiar to us here, the war must have been about slavery after all.
A statement in which Lincoln is said to favour voting rights for black men who were educated or had been soldiers has been shown to be fraudulent.
By whom? What's your reference Clyde? Whether John Wilkes Booth was in the audience is questionable but so far as I know the statement was legitimate.
Within a few days of his death he was still speaking of colonization outside the U.S.
That is Ben Butler's version, recounted years after Lincoln's death. It has long been regarded as spurious. We'll never know for sure, but it shouldn't be cited as a proven fact.
The South, supposedly fighting for slavery, did not respond to any of these offers for the continuance of slavery. In fact, wise Southerners like Jefferson Davis realized that if war came it would likely disrupt slavery as it had during the first war of independence.
Where's the evidence? A quote from Davis would be nice here. Of course, war would "disrupt" many things, but Davis was willing to risk war and started one. He felt that continued union with the North would "disrupt" slavery more than secession and war would.
As the war began, the famous abolitionist Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.” Nothing said about benefit to the slaves.
That is the problem with cut-and-paste history. Weld was indeed a famous abolitionist who had written whole books about slavery. To know just what he was thinking in 1861, one would have to do more than cite one sentence that doesn't mention slavery and conclude that a man who'd been speaking out against slavery for decades didn't care about slavery.
Ditto with his other quotes. Clyde recirculates the fiery quotes somebody picked out of the letters of Northern officers and their wives without really thinking about what else there is in the letters or what Southern officers and their wives were writing at the same time.
How about these curiosities from the greatest of Northern intellectuals, Emerson. He records in his journals: “But the secret, the esoteric of abolition—a secret, too, from the abolitionist—is, that the negro and the negro-holder are really of one party.” And again, “The abolitionist wishes to abolish slavery, but because he wishes to abolish the black man.”
Emerson had a rich sense of irony and paradox. And he wasn't very much in favor of the abolitionist cause when he wrote that in his journals. I do notice that his attitude here points to deeper complexities in Northern attitudes. Emerson was not above examining his own motives and those of his peers. Clyde likes to repeat things like this but apparently thinks he is above (or below) questioning attitudes in his own region.
A historian quotes a Northern observer of U.S. Army activities in occupied coastal Carolina in 1864. Generals declared their intention to recruit “every able-bodied male in the department.” Writes the Northern observer: “The atrocious impressments of boys of fourteen and responsible men with large dependent families, and the shooting down of negroes who resisted, were common occurrences.”
A name and a title would help here. Otherwise this is just a wild rumor. Where are the other accounts of such incidents?
Howard White and I recently put out a book about the war. Careful, well-supported essays, by 16 serious people. Immediately it appeared on amazon, someone wrote in: “I’m so tired of the Lost Cause writing. Don’t believe the bullshit in this useless pamphlet.” He could not have had time to actually read the book. It can be dismissed unread because he has the righteous cause and we do not. This is not historical debate.
This is the strawman technique. Clyde picks a particularly unrevealing comment and tries to make it look like the typical response of those who disagree him to his useless pamphlet -- or like it's not a typical comment people make to everything on Amazon.com. There are more intelligent critiques that one could make of Clyde's dismal pamphlet. But it seems like nobody bothered to read it.
When it comes to secessionists, I prefer the Essex Junto.
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