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A few passages from Richard Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction";

Chapter I. Secession

The history of the United States, as yet unwritten, will show the causes of the "Civil War' to have been in existence during the Colonial era, and to have cropped out into full view in the debates of the several Sate Assemblies on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in which instrument Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, and others insisted that they were implanted, African slavery at the time was universal, and its extinction in the North, as well as its extension in the South, was due to economic reasons alone.

The first serious difficulty of the Federal Government arose from the attempt to lay an excise on distilled spirits. The second arose from the hostility of New England traders to the policy of the Government in the war of 1812, by which their special interests were menaced; and there is now evidence to prove that, but for the unexpected peace, an attempt to disrupt the Union would then have been made.

The "Missouri Compromise" of 1820 was in reality a truce between antagonistic revenue systems, each seeking to gain the balance of power. For many years subsequently, slaves--as domestic servants--were taken to the Territories without exciting remark, and the "Nullification" movement in South Carolina was entirely directed against the tariff.

Anti-slavery was agitated from an early period, but failed to attract public attention for many years. At length, by unwearied industry, by ingeniously attaching itself to exciting questions of the day, with which it had no natural connection, it succeeded in making a lodgment in public mind, which, like a subject exhausted by long effort, is exposed to the attack of some malignant fever, that in a normal condition of vigor would have been resisted. The common belief that slavery was the cause of civil war is incorrect, and Abolitionists are not justified in claiming the glory and spoils of the conflict and in pluming themselves as "choosers of the slain."

The vast immigration that poured into the country between the years 1840 and 1860 had a very important influence in directing the events of the latter year. The numbers were too great to be absorbed and assimilated by the native population. States in the West were controlled by German and Scandinavian voters, while the Irish took possession of the seaboard towns. Although the balance of party strength was not much affected by these naturalized voters, the modes of political thought were seriously disturbed, and a tendency was manifested to transfer exciting topics from the domain of argument to that of violence.

Chapter XIV. Criticisms and Reflections

Aggrieved by the action and tendencies of the Federal Government, and apprehending worse in the future, a majority of the people of the South approved secession as the only remedy suggested by their leaders. So travelers enter railway carriages, and are dragged up grades and through tunnels with utter loss of volition, the motive power, generated by fierce heat, being far in advance and beyond their control.

We set up a monarch, too, King Cotton, and hedged him with divinity surpassing that of earthly potentates. To doubt his royalty and power was confession of ignorance or cowardice. This potent spirit, at the nod of our Prosperos, the cotton-planters, would arrest every loom and spindle in New England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary.

Extinction of slavery was expected by all and regretted by none, although loss of slaves destroyed the value of land. Existing since the earliest colonization of the Southern States, the institution was interwoven with the thoughts, habits, and daily lives of both races and both suffered by the sudden disruption of the accustomed tie. Blockaded during the war, an without journals to guide opinion and correct error, we were unceasingly slandered by our enemies, who held possession of every avenue to the world's ear.

During all these years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fortitude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and malinger of his brethren. Accepting the harshest conditions and faithfully observing them, they have struggled in all honorable ways, and for what? For their slaves? Regret for their loss has neither been felt nor expressed. But they have striven for that which brought our forefathers to Runnymede, the privilege of exercising some influence in their own government. Yet we fought for nothing but slavery, says the world, and the late Vice-President of the Confederacy, M. Alexander Stephens, reechoes the cry, declaring that it was the corner-stone of his Government.

[WhiskeyPapa]

During all these years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fortitude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and malinger of his brethren.

Not everybody thought that.

"Had the south used her power prudently and acted wisely, she would have controlled the destinies of this Government for generations yet to come...But, flushed with victories so constant and thorough and maddened by every expression of opposition to their peculiar institution, they commenced a work of proscription and aggression upon the rights of the people of the North, which has finally forced them to rise in their might and drive them from power.

They commenced their aggressions upon the North in some of the southern states by the enactment of unconstitutional laws, imprisoning colored seamen, and refusing to allow those laws to be tested before the proper tribunals. They trampled upon the sacred right of petition; they rifled and burnt our mails, if they suspected they contained anything of condemnation of slavery. They proscribed every northern man from office who would not smother and deny his honest convictions upon slavery and barter his manhood for place. They annexed foreign territory avowedly to extend and strengthen their particular institution, and made war in defense and support of that policy. They refused admission into the Union of States with free constitutions, unless they could have, as an equivalent, new guarantees for slavery. They passed a fugitive slave bill, some of the provisions of which were so merciless, and unneccessary as they were inhuman, that they would have disgraced the worst despotisms of Europe. They repealed their 'Missouri compromise act,' which they had themselves forced upon the North, against their wishes and their votes; and after having attained all their share of the benefit, they struck it down, against the indignant and almost unanimous protest of the whole North, for the purpose of forcing slavery upon an unwilling people. They undertook to prevent, by violent means, the settlement of Kansas by free-state men. They invaded that territory and plundered and murdered its citizens by armed force...

Every new triumph of the South and every concession by the North has only whetted their appetite for still more, and encouraged them in making greater claims and more unreasaonable demands, until today they are threatening the overthrow of the Government if we do not give them additional guarantees for protection to their slave property in territory in which we do not now own."

--Speech of Representative John B. Alley of Massachusetts, January 26, 1861 (quoted from "The Causes of the Civil War", Kennneth Stampp, ed.)

Walt