Most Conservatives Still Believe The Civil War Wasn't Over Slavery

[g5000]

Lincoln didnt give a shit about the slaves,

"If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." - Abraham Lincoln.

 

[Biff_Poindexter]

Why would anyone care about the Confederate cause? .

Ask most of the conservatives who get in their feels when this question is asked

I was born in the north in the 20th century and I have no romantic illusions about the Confederacy, but neither do I have any about Lincoln or the Union. You mocked me when I tried to narrow down your yes or no question so that I could answer it in an intelligent manner. Was the Civil War itself over slavery? No, and Lincoln admitted as much himself. Was southern secession primarily about slavery? Well, yes, for the states of the deep south it certainly was. Georgia, Mississippi, and so on. Virginia? No.

So as long as Lincoln allowed the states to have their states rights circle jerk -- with the absence of slavery -- then there wouldn't have been a war?

Because the Missouri Compromise didn't prevent it -- because states wanted their slaves.

I don't know what you're saying here. Are you asking me if Lincoln had let the southern states secede, but somehow forced them to give up slavery would there have been a war?

No, if Lincoln gave the states their states rights that they have been asking for -- except for their right to maintain slaves -- would those states stayed in the union or succeed -- if your answer is that they would have succeeded -- then that tells me that the Civil War was over slavery -- compromises were tried in the past and they failed -- because those states wanted slave labor -- not only did they want that - they made it clear that they felt blacks were meant by God to be subservient to whites -- they were wrong -- they lost -- they don't deserve passionate defenses from conservatives whose main default is to say "democrats want slavery"

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

Too simplistic: Secession of the deep south was over slavery, but was not the reason for states like Virginia to secede.

The war, as I have said, was over the sovereignty and independence of states. It was a power struggle which is separate and apart from the reasons behind secession.

Again, no secession = no war

no slavery, the question surround the authority to secede were still at issue.

 

[del]

Americans, and clearly that means white Americans, are simply dishonest about race.

At no time in this country's history did white American believe that blacks were "that bad off", including during the height of Jim Crow atrocities.

It continues that way today, in where white Americans don't think that blacks "have it that bad" and firmly believe that it's WORSE to be CALLED racist than to have ACTUAL racism occur.

Conservatives are largely white, so....that's the long and short of it.

So basically the War of Northern Aggression has pretty much just met with an extended and somewhat sketchy cease-fire.

.​

sure

come back and get your ass kicked any time you want

 

[g5000]

Man, I knew our education system was in the toilet. We have pseudocon tards who think Nazis are left wing, and that the civil war wasn't about slavery.

Let's take a look at those states who filed their reasons for secession, shall we? When we do, we find that in four declarations, slavery is mentioned no less than 82 times!!!

They literally could not write three sentences without mentioning slavery at least once.

Declaration of Causes of Secession

We'll start with Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.

This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States.

The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity.

We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end.

Slavery was forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787.

They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves).

In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution. After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her special object, but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri.

The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time.

That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.

Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property.

The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty.

Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union.

These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

On to Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

Now South Carolina:

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right.

The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

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.

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.

The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

The great state of Texas:

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

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.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

 

[DJT for Life]

Yea, the only thing an intelligent person has to do is read the fucking letters the southern states (confederacy) wrote explaining why they were seceding. Then read the speeches from the president and vice president of the confederacy to know why they were going to war.

Or read the remarks of Lincoln when he was running for President.

But better yet, you can take yourself back in time with the leading
National Paper of the time. "Harper's Weekly."

The link connects you to Harper's Weekly. On the right hand side, halfway
down, you will see a section entitled..."Civil War Era, Harper's Weekly."
They list the years individually..."1861...1862...1863...1864...1865"

Just click on 1861 and you will find the front page of every weekly edition
they printed that year. Then, go to 1862, and so forth.

You will discover that there is no slavery rallying point in 1861 and it's not
until October of 1862 that you will find any mention of it. Two years into the
war, when Lincoln changed from "Preserving the Union" to Slavery.

Enjoy the visit back in time.

Harper's Weekly Illustrated - RareNewspapers.com

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Civil War still divides Americans

So after 150 years, the majority of conservatives still believe the Civil War wasn't over slavery?

Why is this? Why do they believe the "States Rights" claim is sufficient enough to shield them from the fact that -- those states rights were those states preserving the right to maintain slavery -- so either way you slice it, the civil war was over slavery --


This is why whenever I see a conservative twisting themselves into pretzels to claim otherwise --- it makes their subsequent claims of not being racist look foolish.


Next time conservatives want to pretend that the Civil War wasn't over slavery -- they better travel back in time and tell all of those southern states to stop telling everyone it was over slavery

I just watched a lot of that Civil War series that was put out by the guy on Fox News. And it was Lincoln who made the war about slavery. Or to be more specific it was Lincoln who made the war about emancipation. He was losing the war until he gave Whites in Blue a reason to fight the Confederates. Northerners didn't care about successionists or worry about them separating destroying America. They fought it because Men were created Equal, even men who didn't look like them. Blacks are free because 300,000 whites died to free them.

However, there are those who fought on the Confederate side who did so because they were loyal to their state governments and not their Federal government. They didn't want the Federal government telling their state what to do.

This is nonsense. If anything, the Emancipation Proclamation caused northern soldiers to abandon their post more than it inspired them to some noble cause.

New York City draft riots - Wikipedia

Some Nuggets About Chickenhawks

As would be expected if people knew what this war was all about, the spoiled-putrid brats of the anti-South rich mostly bought their way out of having to fight for the ideals they forced on plebeian Whites. In fact, the High Abolitionist descendants of President John Adams begged one of their sons not to be so foolish as to actually go fight in the war.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The Civil War was fought over Southern independence, not over slavery, or tariffs, or anything else. The South fought because the North invaded and refused to allow the South to leave in peace. Soon after the Confederacy was formed, and long before that Sumter attack, the Confederacy sent a peace delegation to Washington, D.C., seeking to establish peaceful relations and full trade relations with the U.S. Lincoln would not meet with the delegation. The Confederacy offered to pay the South's share of the national debt and to pay compensation for all federal installations in the South. This offer was rejected--in fact, as far as we can tell, it was never even seriously considered by Lincoln and his cabinet.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

The issue was slavery

They never would have seceded if not for trying to preserve slavery forever

Until the next issue came up where some states were fed up with other states and their bullshit.

The issue of secession would have remained.

Would there have been a war?

According to Lincoln--YES.

 

[Doc1]

Too simplistic: Secession of the deep south was over slavery, but was not the reason for states like Virginia to secede.

The war, as I have said, was over the sovereignty and independence of states. It was a power struggle which is separate and apart from the reasons behind secession.

Again, no secession = no war

no slavery, the question surround the authority to secede were still at issue.

Show us where the secession would have happened anyway?

 

[Doc1]

Man, I knew our education system was in the toilet. We have pseudocon tards who think Nazis are left wing, and that the civil war wasn't about slavery.

Let's take a look at those states who filed their reasons for secession, shall we? When we do, we find that in four declarations, slavery is mentioned no less than 82 times!!!

They literally could not write three sentences without mentioning slavery at least once.

Declaration of Causes of Secession

We'll start with Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.

This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States.

The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity.

We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end.

Slavery was forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787.

They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves).

In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution. After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her special object, but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri.

The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time.

That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.

Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property.

The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty.

Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union.

These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

On to Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

Now South Carolina:

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right.

The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

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.

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.

The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

The great state of Texas:

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

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.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

Don't you just think your just the brightest little boy You truly do not have one reason to be condescending to anyone o great and mighty G.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Why would anyone care about the Confederate cause? .

Ask most of the conservatives who get in their feels when this question is asked

I was born in the north in the 20th century and I have no romantic illusions about the Confederacy, but neither do I have any about Lincoln or the Union. You mocked me when I tried to narrow down your yes or no question so that I could answer it in an intelligent manner. Was the Civil War itself over slavery? No, and Lincoln admitted as much himself. Was southern secession primarily about slavery? Well, yes, for the states of the deep south it certainly was. Georgia, Mississippi, and so on. Virginia? No.

So as long as Lincoln allowed the states to have their states rights circle jerk -- with the absence of slavery -- then there wouldn't have been a war?

Because the Missouri Compromise didn't prevent it -- because states wanted their slaves.

I don't know what you're saying here. Are you asking me if Lincoln had let the southern states secede, but somehow forced them to give up slavery would there have been a war?

No, if Lincoln gave the states their states rights that they have been asking for -- except for their right to maintain slaves -- would those states stayed in the union or succeed -- if your answer is that they would have succeeded -- then that tells me that the Civil War was over slavery -- compromises were tried in the past and they failed -- because those states wanted slave labor -- not only did they want that - they made it clear that they felt blacks were meant by God to be subservient to whites -- they were wrong -- they lost -- they don't deserve passionate defenses from conservatives whose main default is to say "democrats want slavery"

I see what you're asking, but it makes no sense to ask it. Lincoln was not in a position to "give" anything to the first wave of southern states to secede because he was not president when they seceded. But, again, as I've said all along, the deep south seceded over slavery. There's no question. The question is whether the Civil War was fought over slavery, which it explicitly was not. Lincoln favored the Corwin Amendment to make slavery explicitly protected by the Constitution where it existed in the south, and did everything he could to convince southern states he had no interest in abolishing slavery. He fought the war to force them back into the Union.

 

[cnm]

Lincoln wasn't president when the first wave of states seceded.

Nor did he go to war over those states' secessions. Well, in the histories I've read.

 

[Biff_Poindexter]

Bif wants to preach, not debate.

Debate why Louisiana said this in their declaration?

"As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery."

Why none of these states that you claim fought the war for some noble cause -- never say in their declaration that it isn't over slavery?

Again, how about you hop in a time machine and tell all of those states to cut out all of that preserving slavery talk, its making you look bad

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

Yes, and they lost. They failed. Losers don't write the history for a reason

So, I am right?

 

[cnm]

Again, no secession = no war

No theft of Federal property, no war.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Man, I knew our education system was in the toilet. We have pseudocon tards who think Nazis are left wing, and that the civil war wasn't about slavery.

Let's take a look at those states who filed their reasons for secession, shall we? When we do, we find that in four declarations, slavery is mentioned no less than 82 times!!!

They literally could not write three sentences without mentioning slavery at least once.

Declaration of Causes of Secession

We'll start with Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.

This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States.

The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity.

We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end.

Slavery was forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787.

They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves).

In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution. After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her special object, but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri.

The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time.

That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.

Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property.

The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty.

Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union.

These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

On to Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

Now South Carolina:

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right.

The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

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.

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.

The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

The great state of Texas:

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

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.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

You're equating the reasons for secession of particular states with the reasons behind the Civil War. These are two separate events. Perhaps it's you the government schools failed.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

Nor did he go to war over those states' secessions. Well, in the histories I've read.

Did he go to war for some other reason.

It has been well established that slavery was not the reason, even well into the war.

 

[Biff_Poindexter]

Why would anyone care about the Confederate cause? .

Ask most of the conservatives who get in their feels when this question is asked

I was born in the north in the 20th century and I have no romantic illusions about the Confederacy, but neither do I have any about Lincoln or the Union. You mocked me when I tried to narrow down your yes or no question so that I could answer it in an intelligent manner. Was the Civil War itself over slavery? No, and Lincoln admitted as much himself. Was southern secession primarily about slavery? Well, yes, for the states of the deep south it certainly was. Georgia, Mississippi, and so on. Virginia? No.

So as long as Lincoln allowed the states to have their states rights circle jerk -- with the absence of slavery -- then there wouldn't have been a war?

Because the Missouri Compromise didn't prevent it -- because states wanted their slaves.

I don't know what you're saying here. Are you asking me if Lincoln had let the southern states secede, but somehow forced them to give up slavery would there have been a war?

No, if Lincoln gave the states their states rights that they have been asking for -- except for their right to maintain slaves -- would those states stayed in the union or succeed -- if your answer is that they would have succeeded -- then that tells me that the Civil War was over slavery -- compromises were tried in the past and they failed -- because those states wanted slave labor -- not only did they want that - they made it clear that they felt blacks were meant by God to be subservient to whites -- they were wrong -- they lost -- they don't deserve passionate defenses from conservatives whose main default is to say "democrats want slavery"

I see what you're asking, but it makes no sense to ask it. Lincoln was not in a position to "give" anything to the first wave of southern states to secede because he was not president when they seceded. But, again, as I've said all along, the deep south seceded over slavery. There's no question. The question is whether the Civil War was fought over slavery, which it explicitly was not. Lincoln favored the Corwin Amendment to make slavery explicitly protected by the Constitution where it existed in the south, and did everything he could to convince southern states he had no interest in abolishing slavery. He fought the war to force them back into the Union.

Then why did so many of the states wrote in plain English -- it was over slavery?

Not one state made a justification for war without letting it be known it was over slavery and how detrimental ending the institution of slavery was to them

 

[BlackSand]

Americans, and clearly that means white Americans, are simply dishonest about race.

At no time in this country's history did white American believe that blacks were "that bad off", including during the height of Jim Crow atrocities.

It continues that way today, in where white Americans don't think that blacks "have it that bad" and firmly believe that it's WORSE to be CALLED racist than to have ACTUAL racism occur.

Conservatives are largely white, so....that's the long and short of it.

So basically the War of Northern Aggression has pretty much just met with an extended and somewhat sketchy cease-fire.

.​

sure

come back and get your ass kicked any time you want

That's funny ... the south won every battle that was fought here.

.​