South Carolina:
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. 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.
Mississippi:
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
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.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. 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.Etc.
So, we see, the Civil War was not about slavery. No, not at all.
It was about States Rights.
The Rights of slave-states to continue holding human beings as slaves.
It's a subtle distinction worthy of most nuanced European, isn't it?
4 comments:
This may be a distinction w/o a difference to what you said, but slavery was legal at the time. Didn't say right, I said legal. Northern states had on their own decided to do away w/slavery, the Southern states hadn't, so from that point slavery was a states' rights issue, (there were other issues also, ie the North screwing the South over on prices and costs.) The North ran the slave ships and were more than happy to take the money for their 'product' but wanted the South to take the loss when the North's sin started to bother them. Slavery would have ended w/the invention of the tractor, combine, etc. There could have been a more peaceful resolution than the War of Northern Aggression.
But, yeah it was about slavery as well as other stuff.
And yeah, my great, great grandfather fought for the South.
Thank You-sometimes it is hard to be a TRUTH teller -especially when the established record is false but everyone -now- believes it...
The great Robert E. Lee (West Point -graduate-war hero and WP Superintendent) gave up his commission...He was a Patriot- First!! ---and believed the Federal Government was out of order...
C-CS
I think this subject is a kind of mental version of an optical illusion.
I see it from a Northerners side, and Sameno sees it more from a Southerners side.
I understand the Northerners point, intellectually. I get the point you are making, but it makes no paradigmatic sense to me. It is a truth spoken in a void, as far as I'm concerned.
And, I'm pretty sure many Southerners would say my point is a truth spoken in a void as well.
And, in my opinion, the Southerners ought to give it up.
But, you know, I'm a Northerner-type. (though my father is from Missouri, and my Mother from England - both parents have lived in England for most of my life.)
Anyway, I posted this because I recently saw a blogger who I respect using the Civil War states rights argument to make a case for secession because of Obama's policies.
I think that is a losing argument.
In my opinion, we have a real problem on our hands with Obama. If our argument is made with appeal to A pre-Civil War paradigm, WE LOSE.
Another point I intend to make in a post soon is that Dennis Prager and other prominent radio talk show hosts speak about a "new Civil War" between and the left. But, the thing is, they are content to see this be a cultural war. I think it is time for them to drop the "Civil War" rhetoric.
We are coming close to a situation wherein that will not help.
There is a distinction, and an important one at that, between a cultural war and a Civil War. That distinction is VIOLENCE.
Their rhetoric is rendered lame by the very real specter of violence on the horizon.
We don't need to go about re-asserting 'states' rights' in our fight against Odama's marxism. The fight for states rights was lost in the years following the War of Northern Aggression :)
We now have an ever-growing imperial federal gov't subverting the Constitution, lumping everything under the 'Commerce Clause' and generally doing whatever they/it wants to do. And screw the states.
The divide between North&South is now as large as it was in the years preceding 1861. Northerners tend toward the nanny state, Southerners just want to be left alone. As the temperature rises between those two extreme cultures/mindsets, some nut-cases are going to boil out of the mix and make things difficult for all of us.
I don't think this is going to end well.
If we lose the culture war do we just bend over and grease up?
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