Posted on 04/09/2002 9:35:02 AM PDT by GulliverSwift
You people are in denial. Without the issue of slavery, there would have been no Civil War. I know you try to justify their fight against the federal government, and I think it's good to fight against today's left-wing trash bureaucracy that runs the federal government. But back then slavery was the catalyst that started the whole thing.
In each of the states that seceded, their official document that announced secession referred to slavery as the number one issue.
Now, the average Southern soldier probably didn't think about owning slaves since he sure couldn't afford one. But the average Joe Southerner didn't finance the war. The war was financed by the wealthy class in the South, and they're the ones who had a stake in preserving slavery. The wealthy controlled all the newspapers, the town councils, and the economy, and they're the ones who controlled what people heard and thought.
Lincoln wanted to keep slavery out of future states that would expand in the West, which would create more Congressman from free states that would tip the scales on the Hill. So Southern governments threatened that if Lincoln won the election, they would secede. And sure enough, the seceded.
There's nothing wrong with hating the federal government, the nosy SOBs and DOBs in the bureaucracy feel it's their job to run everything. But that doesn't mean that we also have to agree with what the South did, even if it was against the federal government. I don't want two different United States--two weak countries--especially not one with slaves.
Yes, it was about slavery. Southern states stated that as their official reason, and the wealthy class in the South, the ones with money to pay for the guns and cannons, wanted slavery as well.
You and liberals have something in common. Both believe that it was about "states' rights." Liberal blacks think it was about that because they hate to think that so many white people would want to stop slavery. You Southerners think it was about "states' rights" because you hate to think that so many people fighting against the federal government could ever be a bad thing.
Usually, it's not.
By the way, jut a little historical note; most of the plantations and huge mansions in Natchez, Mississippi were owned by rich families in Chicago. They would move South for the winter social season where the weather was much milder. In the summer, they would go back north.
Start your research over, you seem to have gone off track.
More from South Carolina's (the first to seced) own words:
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
Only very very old ones. Why would you think I was referring to anyone living, Sherlock?
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/texsec.htm
I can't get this to make an actual link, but it does seem to be about slavery. You'll have to type in the link yourself to see what it says.
Example, many folks cite the fact that the war was over agarian policies versus industrial policies, with the Union states being pro-industry and the Confederate pro-agriculture. But at that time, Iowa, Wisconson, Illinois, and Minnesota, for example, were as argicultural, if not more so, than Virginia, Louisiana, or South Carolina. Seems to me if it was about tariffs on argricultural goods, the Confederacy should have included those (then) Northwest states.
Also, Southrens need to be reminded that the Abolitionists of those days could be a very vile creature. The cheered slave revolts and murder of innocent whites. They wanted the blacks freed, but didn't want them moving up to Philly and Boston (NIMBY). They hurled epitaths and abuse on Southrens, and many said (like Rosie O'Donnel about gun owners) that if they got into power they would throw slaveholders in jail or hang them. It was this type that forced many a southren man who was not pro-slavery to eventually take a defense of slaveholding stand.
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
Free-soilers wanted all blacks excluded from the new territories so that ALL jobs and land would be for the whites. Freeing the slaves in the South would have ADDED more Southern representatives - not less. The last thing they wanted was the south to have more representation and competition for jobs in the territories.
Actually, as a Libertarian, I believe in the individual right to seced from the government. That's irrelevent as to whether I believe any individual can ever acquire the right to "murder" or hold slaves, etc -- which they can't.
YOU F*^&ING IDIOT
Can't do much about the latter, try to do the former as much as possible, though. :-)
Of course I remember it, and will read it again in a few. That's for pointing it out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.