Judge rules Va. must allow confederate license plates
Pro-Confederacy Group Seeks Reparations for Civil War Losses
I'll freely admit that I don't like the centralization of federal authority that resulted from the Civil War.
But that the Civil War was not primarily fought over the issue of slavery is rampant revisionism.
The sole cause of the Civil War was the insistence, by a radical group of Southerners, that they be allowed to extend slavery as they saw fit, and that slavery be accepted as a just and moral practice by the entire United States.
The Republican Party didn't form with the goal of ending slavery, it was formed with the goal of preventing the Southern-dominated federal government from forcing acceptance of slavery on the Northern states that deplored it.
Fanatic southerners planned invasions of Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, etc., in order to extend their abominable practice into new territories.
In Dred Scott, the Southern-dominated Supreme Court overturned every law in the Northern states against slavery - forcing slavery to be accepted. A Southern-dominated Congress and a Southern President repealed the Compromise of 1850, and opened all new territories to slavery, if their citizens so chose.
And with that a fanatic Southern governor assembled a gang of thugs and bandits to terrorize the free citizens of Kansas, and to force a pro-slavery Constitution upon the new state.
Like I said, it was all about slavery - and the South's insistence that it had the right to force slavery upon people who found it abhorrent, that led to the formation of the Republican Party, to Lincoln's decision to re-enter politics, to his election as President, and to the decision by the South that they would secede. And not only secede, but that they would enter into open warfare with the North, rather than to be forbidden to extend slavery by force.
Yes, slavery was dying. It couldn't compete in the market with free labor. This was why the pro-slavery forces were so radical - they knew that slavery was a dead instituton, unless they could force the system of slavery on competing regions.
But all of this is too simple, for modern-day historians. They insist upon bringing up all these "real" reasons for the war. The tariffs being the most popular.
But all of these have one major drawback, when considered as reasons for the war. The secessionists never mentioned them. Not in their declarations of secession, not in their debates.
What they argued about, what they shouted about, all they were openly concerned about, was slavery. And how unjust it was that a "sectional party" would try to prevent them from spreading it where they willed.
Slavery was the issue, according to those who actually led the secession. I'll take their words over modern-day revisionists.
Geez, just read the articles of secession -- they positively rant over their right to slavery and how the north is trying to interfere with its spread. The Republican Party grew out of anti-slavery groups forming around the country. There is so much evidence leading up to the civil war with the battle over slavery as its core.
Lincoln wasn't even sworn into office yet and the southern states were already revolting and attacking federal fortifications in their aggression against the north.
If some hippie freaks attacked federal fortifications today you'd rightly call them treasonous. Same thing with those slave holding southreners who sought to violate the US Constitution (which prohibits the formation of confederations).
The seceeding states violated the US Constitution and Lincoln rightly put them down for it. Good on him.
I suggest you read the resolutions of secession from the southern states. And some of the speeches made in southern states in support of secession. Try this on for size:
Lincoln stands before the country the representative of the anti-slavery ideas and agitators of the times-- that his election or defeat must rest alone upon the people of the free States to carry out those ideas and to execute the purposes of the agitators, or to repudiate those ideas and arrest that agitation. The one idea of opposition to negro slavery brought the republican party into existence, and holds it together....
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/jfepperson/reagan.html
Or how about "A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union." The sentiment was hardly unique to Texas, but gives you a flavor of what those "misunderstood" secessionists were really thinking. How's this:
....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 an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of 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 Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
http://www.texassovereignty.org/texsec.html
It goes on and on like that for awhile. Seems like the southernors who were boting for secession had a much clearer idea of what they wanted than you do. Go ahead -- look up the other 10 confederate states, and read their debates. Then tell me that slavery was just a "cover" and not the real issue.