Confederate Effort Was Not About Slavery

It appears a March 30 letter-writer who condemned the Confederate flag has learned no more from his history courses than did Editor Beth Padgett. However to Ms. Padgett's credit, she has a better understanding of the word compromise.

Compromise is and always has been the lifeblood of survival. Both the letter-writer and the NAACP need to take a refresher course in human psychology to grasp that fact.

Neither President Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis could have gotten enough men together to have formed a single Boy Scout unit, let alone two opposing armies, had the issue been slavery. Slavery was a national institution, not a Southern preferential privilege, as was implied.

Lincoln should have first freed the slaves in the North. This would have removed the hypocrisy that so blatantly stands out. U.S. Grant's slave had to be freed by an act of Congress nine months after the war. The unstable Tecumseh Sherman was arrested on several occasions for physical abuse of his slaves. General Robert E. Lee, as a matter of conviction, freed his slaves prior to the war. Obviously his support of the Confederate war effort was not based on a pro-slavery cause.

Southerners fought for noble causes, not slavery. States' rights, the consent of the governed, was the primary issue. Thomas Jefferson stated "without the consent of the governed, a people have not only a right but an obligation to expel such a government."

You also won't see DiLorenzo posting Lincoln's brave statement to the Illinois House in 1837, when he and one other member objected to the Illinois House's statement of opposition to abolitionism. The editors of the Collected Lincoln say that it was, they think, the first state legislative statement against slavery on record. It was several months after the murder of Lovejoy, and the author of "Lincoln's Virtue" points out that it was issued in the teeth of intense anti-abolitionist sentiment in Illinois.

This is a remarkable fact. Lincoln and his fellow single legislator were the ONLY two Illinois state representatives to stand against the justice of slavery in the Illinois House in 1837. As Miller, author of "Lincoln's Virtue" points out, there was NO political incentive to do this for a young, ambitious Whig, in a Democratic, anti-abolitionist state, to do something like this. It's a remarkable document. Here's the text:

March 3, 1837

The following protest was presented to the House, which was read and ordered to be spread on the journals, to wit:

``Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that that power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District.

The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions, is their reason for entering this protest.''

DAN STONE,

A. LINCOLN,

Representatives from the county of Sangamon.

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