Replies

redmen4ever: "Texas and the other states of the confederacy and the Indian nations seceded to defend slavery.
They said so in their Ordinances of secession:"

DiogenesLamp: "God!
I keep seeing this lie repeated over and over again.
About three or four states made secession statements claiming slavery as an issue, but the other 8 did not."

Says one of the greatest liars on Free Republic.

So... every state which declared reasons for secession before Fort Sumter said slavery was their number one issue, if not their only reason.
Five states said slavery:

Two states: Virginia & Arkansas seceded after Fort Sumter and claimed "injury", "oppression" or "coercion" their reasons.
Four states: Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee & North Carolina gave no official reasons for secession.

Even South Carolina's Robert Rhett, who spent three short paragraphs complaining about taxes spent four long paragraphs on slavery.
But Rhett's major complaint can be summarized in his own words:

"The one great evil from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.
The Government of the United States is no longer the government of a confederate republic, but of a consolidated democracy.
It is no longer a free government, but a despotism.
It is, in fact, such a government as Great Britain attempted to set over our fathers, and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years struggle for independence."

Remember, Rhett wrote in December 1860, when Democrats, especially Southern Democrats had ruled over Washington, DC, almost continuously since 1801.
So Rhett here is complaining about what his fellow Democrats did to our Founders' Constitution, things Southerners were happy to accept so long as they ruled in Washington, but found intolerable when such power was in the hands of anti-slavery Republicans.

Typical of Democrats then & now.

DiogenesLamp: "It suits the revisionism people have been taught to claim these 3 or 4 spoke for all 11 states of the Confederacy."

Five Deep South states said secession was in whole or part over slavery.
Two Deep South states gave no official "Reasons for Secession" -- Florida & Louisiana.
Four Upper South states refused to secede over slavery, but did secede (as they promised) after Jefferson Davis started Civil War at Fort Sumter -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas.

DiogenesLamp: "You can't make an immoral action "moral" after the fact, especially when it was clear they never had any intentions of doing this when they first invaded, and did in fact do so only for political and military benefit to themselves."

When Confederates formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, all issues of "morality" disappeared, just as they did in 1941.
Their declaration of war is what sealed the Confederates' fate.

DiogenesLamp: "They didn't free the slaves because they loved black people, they freed the slaves because they hated the people who owned them.
What's more, they didn't free any slaves in the Union, so it was just a lot of hypocritical posturing."

Complete nonsense -- Republican abolitionists believed slaves should be freed because they met the Declaration's definition in "all men are created equal", not out of hatred for white Southerners.
Of course, "contraband of war" was a separate matter -- a military necessity which reduced Confederate man-power and increased Union man-power in one act.
It was not a matter of "hatred" but of defeating the rebellion.

As for Union slaves, most were freed by Union states (Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia) by the time of Appomattox, the rest soon after and the balance of about 10% (in Kentucky & Delaware) by the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

Here is a nice analysis of Deep South "reasons for secession" documents.

If I might chime in about Kentucky and Delaware:

Kentucky provided for gradual emancipation prior to the 13th Amendment and Delaware was debating what to do with old slaves, which almost all their few remaining slaves were. Under the slave system, old slaves, like child slaves and sick slaves, were taken care of by their fellow slaves. Abolition (immediate emancipation) would throw them into the poorhouse, which would burden the taxpayer and also rob them of the dignity they had earned through their years of work. So, the exceptions to the Emancipation Proclamation weren’t really exceptions.

I would like to return to the topic of the difficulty of freeing the slaves in states like South Carolina, which would throw a mass of uneducated and poor persons into the body politick and upset the balance that is needed for democratic government to actually work.

At the Founding, most states had a moderate property qualification (the exceptions were Rhode Island which had universal adult male qualification; and, South Carolina which had a 1,000 acre qualification instead of either 100 acres or a city plot). With a property qualification, emancipation would have had no immediate impact on the body politick; but, over time, as freemen rose up the economic ladder, they would gain voting qualification. Of course, those freemen gaining the qualification to vote would no longer be poor and uneducated.

Things changed during the 1840s. To promote race solidarity, Southern states moved to universal white adult male qualification. Eventually, universal adult qualification became the expectation regardless of race. As a result, democracies need to be anxious that the majority of their citizens actually accumulate property such as equity in their home and their (private) pension. The composition of the electorate is not simply an historical problem of the reconstruction period, but is a perennial problem.