[Burkeman1]

Are we still fighting this war? As an "Irish American" from the North I will say this. The South had better soldiers and better leaders. The South also had a gripe about tariffs. But the South fired first and in every CSA's declaration of secession they cite the protection of African slavery as the prime reason for secession. So don't tell me the war was about cotton tariffs or some other nonesense. Lincoln would have been content to merely limit the expansion of slavery into the terroritories. It was the hot head idiot aristocracy of the South that brought iupon itself war and ruin.

[GOPcapitalist]

But the South fired first

Holding that the battle of Fort Sumter was the starting point of the war, the first shot fired immediately in the proximity of that battle can be traced not to the south but to the north. It was fired off the northern ship USS Harriet Lane on the night before the bombardment as a warning shot against a civilian vessle that was trying to enter Charleston harbor. The dispatch Harriet Lane along with a fleet containing other warships to Charleston was in fact the event that sparked the confederates to fire on the fort. They sought to preempt the fleet's arrival by taking the fort before it could act militarily against them.

and in every CSA's declaration of secession they cite the protection of African slavery as the prime reason for secession.

That is a half truth of history. Of all the confederate states and territories that seceded, there were four states and one Indian tribe that put out documents entitled Declarations of Causes. The four state documents did indeed cite slavery, as did the Indian tribe, though the latter was only in passing and cannot be called a prime reason in that document. The remainder either did not state causes, or stated causes other than slavery in their secession documents. There are 20 such documents that I have been able to identify, and they break down as follows:

DOCUMENT	Slavery as a cause?	Other Causes?	Emphasis on Slavery?
South Carolina - SO	N	N	na
South Carolina - DofC	Y	Y	heavy
Mississippi - SO	N	N	na
Mississippi - DofC	Y	Y	heavy
Florida - SO	N	N	na
Alabama - SO	N	Y	none
Georgia - SO	N	N	na
Georgia - DofC	Y	Y	heavy
Louisiana - SO	N	N	na
Texas - SO	N	Y	none
Texas - DofC	Y	Y	heavy
Virginia - SO	N	Y	none
Arkansas - SO	N	Y	none
North Carolina - SO	N	N	na
Tennessee - SO	N	N	na
Missouri - SO	N	Y	none
Kentucky - SO [r]	N	Y	none
Arizona - SO [t]	N	Y	none
Cherokee - DofC	Y	Y	light
Choctaw et al - AofC	N	Y	none

KEY:

SO = Secession Ordinance
DofC = Declaration of Causes

AofC = Articles of Confederation with the CSA

[r] = adopted in a rump convention separate from the state legislature's

[t] = adopted by a territorial government

 

Total Documents: 20

Documents listing slavery as a cause: 5

Documents with heavy emphasis on slavery as a cause: 4

Documents listing causes other than slavery: 13

Documents only stating causes other than slavery: 8

Lincoln would have been content to merely limit the expansion of slavery into the terroritories.

That too is not so. Had Lincoln been fully contented by halting the expansion of slavery into the territories, he needed only to allow secession to procede. By leaving the union, the southern states gave up all affiliations with it including their common membership with and claim to the territories. If keeping slavery out of those territories was all that Lincoln wanted, he could have achieved it fully by not opposing secession and letting the south VOLUNTARILY end their claims to those same territories. But he did not and instead acted to halt secession, thereby indicating that his motive, whatever it may have been, was something other than the oft-stated desire to simply keep slavery out of the territories.