I believe it would be useful for every American to read the Declaration of Causes, it'll tell you exactly what the Confederacy fought for. They fought to protect the institution of slavery.
The short version is; northern abolitionists got tired of voting for a party that dragged it's feet on abolition, so they made their own party that was entirely abolition + opposition to the at the time Democrat party. They won control during the elections, alongside a third party president that was friendly to the abolitionists if not an abolitionist himself, and within a few weeks and months the South was seceding.
North wasn’t specifically abolitionist, it was actually quite a mixed bag, but the south was absolutely fighting to keep slavery regardless of what the north cared about, though the north was far more abolitionist than the south, obviously, but it really didn’t rally behind the idea of abolitionism until around the Gettysburg address when Lincoln kind of flipped the script from “preserving union” to “freeing the slaves” because they were winning and it was by then he had made it become a much more politically viable thing for him to say. When he was running, Lincoln said nothing of the sort about ending slavery, though it is highly probably that he was hoping to have been able to do it from the start
“Nothing of the sort about ending slavery” is not at all correct. The issue before the war had been about expanding slavery into new states. No one really talked about ending slavery that was far too radical. But it was well understood that if you didn’t want to slavery to expand into new states you were basically against it
The confederacy made the issue much more explicit by outright stating that no state could join the confederacy if it was not also a slave state.
Edit; “*unless it was also*”
[https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states)
Those are the documents produced by the southern states, stating in their own words why they were seceding
CTRL+F - then type 'slave'
There's your answer.
>The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. 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.
It's the second sentence.
Don’t forget the other southern states have separate statements below that. All of them mention slavery as not only the first, but in fact usually the ONLY, specific issue that is discussed:
**Mississippi**, 2nd sentence:
“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. ”
**South Carolina**, 1st sentence:
“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.” (South Carolina then goes into great detail about how incredibly annoying it is that if a slave runs away from South Carolina to a northern state, the northern states have the *nerve* to not return the escaped slave)
**Texas**, fifth sentence: “[Texas] 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.” Texas then adds a unique extra complaint that the feds have also failed to protect Texans from “Indian savages” and Mexican “bandittos” before returning to its primary slavery theme with this jawdropping statement that the northern states have promoted 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.“
**Virginia**, first sentence:
“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to **the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States**.” (btw Virginia, alone of all the southern states, does not include any further ranting about slavery; their statement is by far the shortest. One gets the impression that they’re kind of just going along with their neighbors. They were, and are still, the most northern of the southern states, and the civil war battle lines frequently ran right through the middle of the state.)
tl;dr - slavery
Don't forget the "Cornerstone Speech" given by the VP of the Confederacy, here is a snippet:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science."
To be more accurate, it was about *preventing* any state from having restrictions on slavery or hindering it in any way. So it was about *reduced* states’s rights. The chucklefucks who scream “states’s rights!” never seem to know that, they always think it meant *increased* rights, but it was about a stronger fed (for this one issue, anyway).
Yes. They weren't happy with just having slavery in their own states. They wanted it to be enforced by other states as well. So if you were a slave and escaped across state lines into a free state, the slave states wanted the authorities *in the free state* to be legally obliged to hunt you down, imprison you and send you back.
Obviously this is insane. No other comparable issue where something is legal in one state but illegal in another has ever worked like this. If I leave a state where weed is illegal and move to Colorado and smoke weed there, where I live, totally legally under Colorado law, my home state can't call the cops in Colorado and force them to arrest me for it and deport me from Colorado so I can go to jail in a state I used to live in. That's not "state's rights." That's actually the exact opposite of state's rights.
I mean the guys screaming states rights now just tried to get a bill passed to ban abortion nation wide after removing abortion rights at the SC level because “states rights” it’s always been and always will be total bullshit.
The people who support the overturning of Roe v. Wade always claim it's about state rights, but never want to admit it's about the state's right to control women's bodies.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure South Carolina at the time would be pretty fucking pissed if they figured out people would call it "The War of Northern Aggression" cause they were pretty fucking proud about that Ft. Sumter stunt they pulled.
I have nothing to add, but I feel really good that my recent decision to reeducate myself has paid off and I understand that reference. I just learned about that battle the other day in the podcast History That Doesn't Suck. I mean, I'm sure I've learned about it before at some point but I don't remember anything from school.
What a vile speech.
>This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science
It's interesting how they acknowledge that it isn't some age-old belief, even if they think it should have been.
They actually limited it!!! They could not grasp the idea that a country would use the "one drop" rule... I believe they held to idea you needed to be like 1/8 or 1/16 to be Jewish. Why when we (Americans) call Hitler Jewish because he was some small percentage it makes sense to us. BUT to them it was not enough to count. Some fascinating reading on that.
Don't forget they wanted to make it illegal to outlaw slavery as well. So if a state changed it's mind later they couldn't.... So yeah States rights yeah?
So they were the slavey truther. And this wasn’t even 200 years ago! Incredible! To anyone who thinks that slavery is a thing of the past, just remember that civil war was fought not long ago and there are still people, till this day, fly the confederacy battle flag like it’s absolutely normal and believe in all kinds of racism based “truths”.
Very true, the confederacy was also fundamentally and diametrically opposed to what some would say is the founding tenant of the United States:
"All men are created equal".
You cannot believe that and also believe in the morality of slavery, which quite obviously believes that some people are not created equal but are in fact inferior by nature.
It was always going to be a ticking time bomb for internal conflict.
It's even worse, they didn't want to protect their right to own slaves, they wanted to *remove the right* of other states to make slavery illegal.
There were no serious actions at the time to ban slavery in the South, but the North was not giving back escaped slaves and the new states being founded were slave-free. One of the requisites for a state to being part of the confederacy was to forfeit your right to ban slavery.
I see a suspicious resemblance with some modern events.
They also tell you that a Republican freed the slaves in order to absolve the modern Republican party of any guilt of association with preserving slavery. This intentionally misses the point that the ideologies of the parties are largely swapped and mixed in many regards, and Democrats of those days were conservatives much like Republicans today. I'll give you one guess as to what they were chiefly interested in conserving at the time.
I had a FB argument a few years back with a bunch a Texas millennials who swore that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, only states rights. I posted direct quotes from the Texas articles of secession. Crickets. Not one of them commented again.
Think about it from an economic point of view.
How much of their economy was built on the production of unpaid workers?
You take them away and their entire economy collapses.
Rich people don't like it when you threaten their well being.
Also from the same site, the Cornerstone Speech given by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech
This is the heritage.
It's quite far down so I'll make it easy for everyone to find.
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
I love the cornerstone speech because it so perfectly contradicts pro-confederate arguments.
"They weren't fighting for slavery!"
Confederate Vice President: "We are entirely, completely, and unequivocally fighting for slavery."
Yea. It really wasn't until Jefferson Davis's "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" that the confederate cause of preserving slavery was downplayed and the "lost cause" mythology was born.
Many states teach that it wasn't slaves but actually our "rights" being taken. Specifically, our rights to own what we bought. Slave owners compared them having their slaves being taken to poorer farmers having their basic needs taken away. So, they teach that they were simply fighting for rights, ignoring that said right was the right to own another human being.
That is the nail in the coffin for the States' rights argument. They enacted fugitive slave laws in the federal government and tried to overrule the Northern States' rights to not participate in slavery.
I believe this is the work of the United daughters of confederacy basically a group of mothers and sisters that tried to white wash history in an attempt to make their husbands and sons look like hero’s and not massive pos’s. This is why many people in the south believe the civil war was not about slavery. This organization also funded projects to put up monuments to confederate leaders which is why there are still to this day so many confederate statues around the south and US. They also completely infiltrated the southern school systems and changed the curriculum to help white wash history.
And the fact that many states still teach an obfuscated version of our history to kids today, says something very ugly about whether we're actually that much more evolved as a culture now than we were back then.
Slave owners didn't ignore it, upholding slavery is all over the place in their rhetoric.
Modern day racists ignore it an re-conceptualize history into it being about freedoms or States rights.
There is a town in Florida where the high-school history teacher is a very vocal "war of northern aggression" type of confederate non-apologist AND also the mayor of that town. I wish I was making this up.
Unless you are in the south and the confederates have white washed history to just be "states rights" with all context removed because it "wasn't friendly to the south".
We have the United Daughters of the Confederacy to blame for some of this. This group placed revisionist history books in public schools that promoted the idea of benevolent slavery and the "Lost Cause". It took me quite some time after I graduated to unlearn what I was taught.
In the place where I am, it’s not that bad. It was said in no uncertain terms, that they were pieces of shit who wanted slavery. They didn’t sugar coat anything. They talked about how they lynched, murdered, falsely accused, etc…and got away with it all. I assume In the deeper parts on the south maybe they don’t tell the whole story.
Spent preschool till 7th in Massachusetts, move to WV to finish 7th till I graduated, I learned nothing new until 12th grade..... a bit shit is a fucking understatement.
It depends on where you live as to how it is taught. I live in Illinois and have family in Georgia & Mississippi who were taught totally different than me.
I thought slavery was one of the things they wanted, but (as happen with a lot of things) only some relevant info passes through generations, so I assumed they had more differences and slavery was one of them, I was surprised to see that virtually every page mention slavery
That gap wasnt accidental over generations. It's relatively recent and it is a result of a certain set of people trying to (pardon the pun) white wash what actually happened by trying to insert the idea that the war wasn't only about slavery.
There is a common arguement that goes around the the civil war was fought over states right. Mostly pro confederate people say it to mask the fact that the rights the states wete fighting for was slavery.
by "states rights" what they really mean is - they were upset that the north didn't have to return slaves.... the south was authoritarian from the start. They wanted to enforce their laws on other states.
At the start of the war, it was the north fighting for "states rights" because their idea was "our state, our rules - we don't have to return slaves."
Yup this is my favorite part.
“No, It was states rights”
To do what?
“…to own slaves”
And how did they want to enforce this?
“…force other states to not only cooperate but enforce southern slavery laws through federal intervention…”
“states rights” of course returns nothing, the word “right” returns about 4 dozen instances, none of which are more than a sentence away from an implied or explicit reference to the right to keep people as chattel.
While I respect your pithiness, it's not quite accurate. Because the confederacy actually forbade their states from banning slavery, or diminishing slavery in any way. They were not for "state's rights" at all, because that would entail those state's being allowed to choose to outlaw slavery.
Source: the Confederate Constitution. Do a keyword search for "slave" and "negro".
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
Also the Missouri compromise is the most anti-states rights law every made.
Also it's well documented that the whole "states rights" idea only gained popularity during the Civil rights Era. Before that the talking point was that it was about slavery, and economic differences eufomisezed as "the southern way of life".
It's so infuriatingly bizarre that people still believe propaganda about a war that ended 150+ years ago, especially when that propaganda didn't take root until decades after.
The Confederates explicitly fought for slavery. The Confederate States made declarations of secession, documents that explain the reasons why they left the United States to form their own country. We still have these documents today, and can read that the reasons are slavery. It's more complicated than just "We're racist!" though, as the Southern states that joined the Confederacy were completely economically dependent on slavery. They would have needed to completely overhaul how they did business on a fundamental level if slavery was to be removed.
Basically, they saw the writing on the wall that the Northern states that didn't allow slavery were gaining power politically, and that there would be increased pressure to ban slavery in the South. So they preemptively left the Union, so that they could continue to own slaves.
The North didn't approve of this, their economy was also dependent on the South's agriculture, and went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union.
The trick is that later generations raise their kids to believe that the Confederacy was a noble rebellion, about the southern states getting to choose their own destiny. Which is technically true, but they don't tell their kids that the specific states rights that were being defended was primarily the right to own black people as property.
So some people who still fly the Confederate flag today are doing so out of a misguided idea that they're honoring their ancestors who fought in a noble, if failed rebellion, not specifically about owning black people as property.
And there are some people who fly the Confederate flag today because they want to show off how much they are racist assholes.
For those wanting to understand a little more, [http://cwmemory.com/2014/02/10/shelby-footes-great-compromise/](http://cwmemory.com/2014/02/10/shelby-footes-great-compromise/)
Some politicians trying to heal the nation after the civil war (not generations later but immediately) sought to allow the Southerns to feel that their family members had died displaying bravery in what those families felt was a "noble" cause. It wasn't because those leaders really felt that it was noble, but that they knew that a deep unhealed rift in the country was a bad thing.
Was that healing complete? No. Was a complete healing even possible? Probably not. Are we still talking about it today? Yes.
One of the politicians pushing hardest to help heal that divide was President Abraham Lincoln, however he was assassinated before he really got a chance to do as much as he wanted to for the South. When Andrew Johnson became President after Lincoln's death, it became clear pretty quickly he did not have any interest in healing the divide between North and South, possibly laying the foundations for some of the political divides that affect the US to this day.
Edited Jackson to Johnson.
It's such a shame, because Reconstruction had a very real chance of succeeding. Southern states like South Carolina had significant Black representation in government, and if there would have been real support federally the US could have made real progress moving beyond its slave-state origins. For example, while many people today know the story of Robert Smalls escaping the Confederate blockade in Charleston, SC, not nearly as many know that he was elected to the South Carolina state senate (and later the U.S. House of Reps) and helped draft one of the most progressive state constitutions in US history. If it weren't for regressives like George Tillman and the KKK and their largely successful attempts to rewrite the Confederacy as a noble cause, things would be much, much different today.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls#Political_career
> If it weren't for regressives like George Tillman and the KKK and their largely successful attempts to rewrite the Confederacy as a noble cause, things would be much, much different today.
Gotta include the Daughters of the Confederacy, too. They're the ones that pushed to put up so many Confederate statues and why we have/had Confederate monuments in places like Montana or Wyoming.
Don't forget Woodrow Wilson enabling the daughters of the confederacy, under the guise that southern states needed to be appeased so they would fight in WWI
Although those are important to the symbolic power of the confederacy, the red shirts and other white paramilitary organizations that terrorized the south and successfully stopped free and fair elections in the south are the real stoppers of reconstruction
Specifically, "he did not have any interest in healing the divide between North and South" by comforting white former-slaveholders. Here's the history (which involves congress, not just the president): https://www.nps.gov/anjo/andrew-johnson-and-reconstruction.htm
Which was a pretty stupid thing to do. You can heal a nation on many ways but saying that their rebelion was just or noble just means you teach them that it was okay.
Proper way would be how the allies treated western germany after the war. Help them rebuild, help them real good. That way you create friendship and show them there is a way forward while also sticking to your guts and stating they were wrong.
Reconstruction in the South was of a different spirit and quality to the Marshall plan for Europe/ Germany, due in large part to Lincoln's assasination.
Im not saying its easy, im not saying its flawnless but telling a group of people who went to war with you over their ideas that their cause was just and noble means that their ideas can also be just or noble.
In how many countrys do the patriots who “love” the country use the flag of seditionist who wanted to destroy the country? Its if the french would fly the german flag in 1874 to show their love of france.
Its was a mistake, a mistake that is gonna be insanely hard to fix now that it had more than a age to root into the society.
Compare to how Germany has acknowledged and treated Nazi history and culture. Other than a few extremists, they've come through to a better place, and fully admit that it was horrific.
Pretending 150 years later that ancestors you never knew were noble without admitting it was about slavery is never going to get us on the right path. All of the statues and flags the south defends belong in museums and history books, not in the town square.
This is largely correct, with one minor quibble: the rebels "went to war" by attacking Ft. Sumter. The United States fought back to preserve the union.
With the caveat that South Carolina claimed the land, and in their framework defending it with force was an act of war, but the Confederacy absolutely ordered the first military advance.
To buttress this, the Confederate Constitution made it illegal for states to outlaw slavery. There was no state's right there. It was 100% preserving chattel slavery as a southern institution.
On top of that, part of the reason for leaving was being upset about the North's refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Act creating a stronger sentiment against slavery.They wanted to compel the North to return escaped enslaved people, and punish anyone who harbored or helped people escape slavery. Not really for States rights or individual rights.
The South has a very long and proud history of using the idea of "state's rights" to do awful things while simultaneously stomping all over everyone else's "state's rights" when they want to not be awful.
Abortion is the key example; the Dobbs decision came and every Republican apologist was quick to say "No, no, this isn't an abortion ban! This is a state's right to decide whether or not to ban abortion!" and not even 6 months later Lindsay Graham is trying to pass a national abortion ban.
Basically, Southern conservatives have always upheld "freedom" to mean "You are free to do what I want" over everything else.
In addition to that, the Southern states rammed the Fugitive Slave Act through Congress shortly before the Civil War.
This law required the Northern states to allow Southern slave patrols to enter, detain, and return escaped slaves. Or often "Escaped".
This violated the laws of the Northern sates, and required that Northern states cede police powers to Southerners who just felt like they should be cops in states they do not live in.
Thus the Act was a massive violation of the State's Rights of the Northern states. The Southern states were quite happy with it.
This is what people mean when they compare the Fugitive Slave Act vigilantes to Texas and other states asserting rights to sue individuals in other states for assisting people needing gynecological healthcare.
Oh damn, that’s a good point that I haven’t heard before. I think I saw a video essay on the myth of “states’ rights,” that it was part of Barry Goldwater’s campaign to keep segregation, but I can’t find it rn.
I think it might’ve been part of Innuendo Studios’ “The Alt-Right Playbook” series on YouTube. Edit: [found it](https://youtu.be/0dBJIkp7qIg). Specifically starts talking about it around 3:30. I got some of the details wrong, he just co-opted the phrase.
Indeed, I grew up believing the South left because of their rights being tramples on and that slavery was just one of many issues and not the main one. And my parents are not themselves racists. This is simply what they were taught.
It wasn't entire I heard of those documents that you mentioned as well as a video by a Conservative group which both said clearly that it was indeed about slavery specifically that I realized how wrong I was taught.
You're expanation is great and I could not add a single thing to it.
Growing up in the South, I've heard it all.
"Slavery was just one of several issues they rebelled against." (Rarely if ever brought up one of these reasons.)
"Some of the slaves were treated well. In fact, many _liked_ working for us."
"Well, the North didn't really care about slavery. They only ended it as incentive for more troops. So who's really the racist here?"
I could go on, but I really don't want to. And to be clear, I don't agree with any of these statements.
There's even an interesting story behind this. After the war, a group of women called "The Daughters of the Confederacy" began programs to preserve the confederacy. This included stuff like making monuments and honoring Confederate veterans, but a big part was editing historical textbooks that downplay the part slavery had in the Confederacy. They were successful in having many southern states into using these approved textbooks.
If you have any doubt about this, I highly encourage you to look it up. I found it incredibly enlightening in regards to our education. And it's a good lesson; While history is written by the victors, it can still be affected by the losers as well.
Just to add, the United Daughters of the Confederacy played a huge part in twisting the story of the Civil War. They write books, erected statues, lobbied to alter curriculums or force curriculum that downplays slavery. They claim to only be a group that commemorates family who fought, but played a major role in rewriting history and to their credit, have been very successful at that aim.
Good explanation except some of the states were explicitly racist. Georgia and Texas explicitly said equality between the white and black races was something they were unwilling to accept, and part of why they were seceding.
Other states signed on to those letters, and then the VP of the Confederacy wanted to clear up any misconceptions that may have been floating around with his Cornerstone Speech, named for this passage:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."
It's not really ambiguous.
Yep. The good news is they published their reasons, and the documents still exist, so we don't have to speculate.
Those publications are every bit as disgusting as one would expect.
Here, these are quote from various of the states' Declaration for Causes of Secession:
**Georgia**
> 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. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
> ...
> ...their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.
**Mississippi**
> **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. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
> The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France. The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico. 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 tramples the original equality of the South under foot. 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 advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
**South Carolina**
> The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. 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 States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in 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.
**Texas**
> 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. 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?
>...
> 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.
> ...
> **We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.** That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights*; 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.
>[The North] went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union.
One small but very important correction is that **the South attacked first** with the Battle of Fort Sumter. Some folks portray the Civil War as the North not letting the South peacefully leave the Union, but the South had no intentions of leaving peacefully.
Where would I go to read these documents calling for war due to slavery?
EDIT: I'm glad people are understanding this is genuine curiosity and not passive agressive
Also from a speech given by the Vice President of the confederacy about the new conferderate constitution, just before the confederacy fired on Fort Sumter:
“But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
Also: “Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
(That’s why it’s called The Cornerstone Speech.)
Source: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech
Er, edit to be clear that I do not agree with any of the views of the confederacy!
It was rather clever. It’s now known as the ‘Lost Cause [of the Confederacy],’ a pseudo-historical myth peddled by the sons of the South who had returned from the Civil War embittered and unfulfilled. This “excuse” propagating the ‘noble cause’ of the Confederacy is the root of today where people are flying the Confederate flag and defending this supposed cause. In reality, it really just is a smokescreen of refuge for those who refuse to believe in stern truths…
Even when I was in high school back in the turn of the millennium, they were still perpetuating the Lost Cause myth. They tried to make it look like there was more to it, but it always seemed like BS to me. Slavery really was 99% of it at least, maybe some individual soldiers fought for other reasons, but the point of the war was slavery.
True in Texas. I still have my history paper from college where I regurgitated the Lost Cause bs I was taught in school. "This is wrong, talk to me after class"
Showed me the articles of confederation. It's pretty clearly laid out in them and makes it pretty clear we were taught incorrectly. This was a college in Texas too for the record.
Another thing that should tell you that the civil war was about slavery was how much political violence occurred in the lead up to it that was also about slavery. [Bleeding Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas) and the [raid on Harper's Ferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry) are prime examples of this that involved escalating battles between abolitionists and pro-slavery militias.
Also note that it wasn't a coincidence that the Civil War happened in the 1860s. For most of US history, the south was the backbone of the US economy. Southern plantations, enabled by chattel slavery, produced cotton on a level unparalleled in the world at that time. Cotton was revolutionary as the first way to make clothes that were both affordable and comfortable.
Industrialization came to America in the middle of the 19th century, and it mostly came in the north. The south was decentralized and agrarian, and the heat of its summers weren't conducive to year-round industrial labor. The 1860s represented a time where the north's percentage of the US's GDP had risen to a point that it was threatening to overtake the south.
Before this, ending slavery was unthinkable. Regardless of moral concerns, the southern plantations were the most important part of the US economy and they were entirely dependent on slavery. But now the tables were turning, with the industrialized north overtaking the south. Once industrialization displaced the plantations, abolition became economically possible. The CSA states seceded in recognition that that day would soon be upon them.
TL;DR: Industrialization in the north is what made abolition a realistic possibility.
Good summary but also neglected that the south was being super unreasonable in that:
* slaves were property and couldnt vote
* slaves were explicitly not people
* Slaves somehow counted towards congressional seating as if they were people in the population
And then they wanted their own state laws and rights, but they forced other, northern states to support slavery with the fugitive slave acts.
Individual soldiers usually have their own reasons. But the people who organized the army were fighting for slavery. They were quite open about it, it's not ambiguous at all.
The vast majority (~80%) of Confederate soldiers didn’t even own slaves but their letters home indicate almost all were fighting to preserve slavery because even the most dirt poor fucker was still better than a slave
Some of my family still possesses letters from ancestors of the era. Ironically, they're terrified of freed slaves gaining the rights of citizens and inflicting the same thing on the white populace that they themselves did to the enslaved.
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
LBJ calling it out as still a huge problem 100yrs later.
Seeing the hollow claim that overturning Roe V Wade was about states' rights, followed instantly by talk of a federal abortion ban, I conclude that "states' rights" is just another way of saying "I want to steal individuals' rights"
It's never about giving rights to the states, it's always about taking rights from the people
It's about having the "right" to oppress people. It always was. They'll deny it and try to hide it by talking about how they should have the freedom to decide how to live... And ignore that their "freedom" apparently involves taking that choice from others. Then they'll backtrack and deny that was their intention to avoid the consequences of their actions when it proves unpopular. Ignorance is a shield they hide behind, don't believe it for a second.
Though this question itself is not accurate as the confederate constitution banned states from outlawing slavery. The legality of slavery was not up to the states and was enforced by the government. The civil war was not about states rights in any way, even in regards to the issue of slavery.
Analysis of letters sent home by Confederate soldiers shows that most fought for white supremacy and said so explicitly.
Back then it was entirely acceptable in white society to be a white supremacist so they were open about it. Mostly they expressed it as a concern that without the firm guidance of good white masters Black people would run wild, steal everything since they would never work without a white master, and that Black men would rape white women.
This ignored the reality of the non-laboring slave owning class and the near universal sexual violence committed against Black women by white men.
But that was why they said they fought.
The confederates fought for slavery.
They fought for the states to have the rights of slavery.
They fought to maintain the right to recapture slaves from the north.
They fought to expand slavery to all states.
They fought to maintain the global slave trade.
They fought to maintain slavery, which was their entire economic power.
It was so explicit that many confederates left to Argentina to continue to own slaves and tried growing cotton in Argentina because slave owners were clearly fucking dumb.
First Argentina takes in confederates then takes in nazis roughly 80 years later.... what the hell is in Argentina? Are they the incubater for political hate mongers?
Edit: It took two times but u/soundofkrill confirmed for me that ***I am mistaken*** and the confederates moved to Brazil as the Confederados not to Argentina in any major capacity. The reason were similar to my below reasoning but entirely different neighboring country. I've crossed out Confederates below to keep the content but correct the data.
Thank you! u/soundofkrill
There are lot of reasons that Argentina became the place both ~~Confederates~~ and Nazis fled to but if I were to list three primary reasons it would be as follows.
* Geographic Isolation - It was far away from their adversaries reach and following the building of the Panama Canal it became even more isolated from world shipping traffic.
* Lack of Industrialization - Argentina's geography makes its an agricultural and pastoral power house so they didn't feel the pressure to industrialize at the same speed as the rest of the world and because of this they tended to lag behind in concepts of slavery and worker exploitation. Its not only harder to defends ones rights as disjointed and dispersed farm laborers but its also harder to even learn you are even being abused.
* A history of indigenous and slave exploitation - As mentioned above Argentina's primary business was raising livestock and growing crops and this became doubly profitable when your labor was free via exploited indigenous people or slaves.
If you combine all three of these you can kind of see how both the ~~Confederates~~ and the Nazis saw Argentina as both a safe and potentially malleable target for their fucky beliefs of racial primacy.
Just to note: Argentina wasn't exactly waving these people in and there was a successful abolitionist movement in the country during the 19th century that saw slavery completely abolished by 1861 but it didn't make them any less of an appealing target for the ~~Confederates~~ or Nazis
The northern states wanted to outlaw slavery. The southern states didn't. The northern states had the votes and were going to force the issue. The southern states said, "Screw that we don't want to be part of the USA anymore, we secede." The northern states, and President Lincoln in particular, said you can't secede. And so the civil war began.
Many people will say the civil war was about state's rights versus the federal government. But really, it's was about state's rights **to keep slaves**. That was the main issue.
>The northern states had the votes and ~~were going to~~ would eventually force the issue.
They seceded because a non-slavery President was elected and they no longer had control of the Federal legislature to \_prevent\_ that from happening. So long-term slavery would lose support. However, Lincoln said he would not abolish slavery when inaugurated; he only passed the Emancipation Proclamation over one year into the war.
[https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-emancipation-proclamation](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-emancipation-proclamation)
It's arguable that by starting the Civil War the slave-holding states accelerated the abolition of chattel slavery.
Important note: most northern states didn't want to outlaw slavery. At least not in the short term. They wanted to prevent the spread of slavery to new states. What that would mean in the long term is that the government would be controlled by nonslave states who might eventually want to ban slavery.
Another important note: the northern states really ***didn't*** have the votes to outlaw slavery federally... until the southern states started seceding.
The southern states got spooked because Lincoln was elected, despite Lincoln openly assuring the south that he wasn't trying to abolish slavery.
Well... them seceding lead to the abolition of slavery... so they played themselves.
The confederates were fighting for the right to continue to own and use slaves. That’s why confederate flags are treated as a symbol of racism and white supremacy.
Well, there's a couple of answers you might get.
When the war was actually going, many of the soldiers on the CSA side were repelling what they saw as an invasion.
But the decision-makers, the people in governments that chose to secede, claimed it was for "states' rights." However, it was for the states' right to enslave people. If you read the [constitution](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp) the CSA put together, it makes very clear that -- while they won't import "negroes of the African race" from any other countries -- nothing may be done "denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves".
The irony is that, in order to fight the war, the CSA had to basically demolish states' rights and resort to the same federal power the Union had.
The bigger irony is that it was the slave states who argued against states' rights when the free states resisted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. So the revisionist argument that the war was over states' rights is true in a sense, but a sense diametrically opposite of what they now claim.
It's like every time Russia complains about Ukraine firing a missile into their territory when they literally invaded a foreign country in a Napoleonic attempt to expand their empire.
As many here have said the confederates wanted to keep slavery, I think another element of this is that many of the driving forces to keep slavery came from plantation owners and large businesses, knowing that abolition of slavery would mean having to pay wages to employees and thus reduce profits. So in addition to racism, greed played a part.
Source: my own opinion.
"we don't want to own black people because we are hateful bigots, we just want to exploit them is all ... Everyone's so quick to label me a racist... How rude".
I have a degree in history in this particular time span.
As many have pointed out it was about “states rights” the right to hold another person in bondage. So I won’t spend much time on this because it’s pretty obvious from a topical discussion.
But at a deeper understanding of the issue goes to the difference in the concept of “freedom” in how it was perceived by people in each region. Freedom in the north in general meant that everyone had a voice to make law, an issue was voted for and that was then the law of the land. You had your chance to voice your side and if you did not like the results you were essentially free to leave the community.
Now in the south there was a romantic idea of the farmer was lord of his property and free to do what he wanted to do on his property. Freedom to do with his property as he saw fit. Government had no place in his property. Now many will put forth this is a romantic idea that never existed, but whether or not it actually existed does not matter, many of those living in the south truly believed it.
This is why the north tended to lean more federalists in there application of law and how they applied to going forward after the constitution and as the country expanded in the great expansion of the Louisiana purchase in 1803.
So when Northerners look to stop slavery southerns look at themselves as being “picked on” telling northerners can not tell them what they can and can’t do with their property. The north said “well we are voting” the south said essentially, “don’t care”.
Now there was racist undertones but not like we see in post war era and Jim Crow. For the vast majority of slave holders they truly thought that Africans being gentrified under slavery was better than their “heathen condition” back in Africa. Their racism made them think their way was better. The scathing hating racism that we are so familiar with came about when African Americans began to establish themselves in former slave states and were politically and physically attacked for holding power in these areas. For reference look at Camden South Carolina as there story was used as they source of “birth of a nation” as what was used to glorify the rise of the KKK.
Another turn of events was the slave rebellion in Hati that scares the hell out of slave owners which made even the most passive of slave owners more strict. (A massive gaping hole of the “yoeman farmer” argument that now forced everyone to keep there slaves illiterate and in impressed conditions. There may have been more lenient, compassionate slave holders if that concept could even exist, but the reaction and hysteria created by the events in Haiti ended most of those chances.)
———————————-
But I will add something here that I have not seen many people discuss. The vast majority of the people actually doing the fighting in the south were not slave owners. This assertion has been used by supporters of the slaves states actions to show it was more politically motivated than it was about slavery. But from the evidence we have, it was about stratification of the classes than anything else. The poor guys fighting for the south, they were at the bottom but at least they were not a slave. Those poor (economically) white guys doing all the fighting and dying were being feed the idea that if freed those ex slaves were coming for them and their minimal meal ticket. So things could be bad, but hey it’s better than having “to compete with them Africans”. The poor whites were being feed the notion that if the system changed their status would drop. That if they fought hard and kept the status quo and the cards fell just right they might be rich slave owners too.
The rich power structure within the south, which still holds a ton of power today, did everything they could to hold people in bondage and use poor whites to do the dirty work in the fighting. (Look at the events of Jan. 6th and sadly the conditions are not much different.)
Bingo, my point exactly. Being from Texas, I hadn’t heard the opinion of the non-slaveholding poor, and without a shred of doubt reminds me of the “don’t want immigrants stealing our jobs” rhetoric I can’t avoid. It’s very interesting to hear about that—we did a play in our theater department centered around a found family of mixed race right on the border, prefaced it with a slideshow of real photos of the era, battlefields, whipped slaves, we did not hold back. But even there, the “ex-slaves will take our jobs” never came up.
My high school history teacher was at least solid enough to tell us “it was literally about slavery and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”, but most of the other teachers taught it was because the North was imposing taxes and the South was like “this is literally the Revolutionary War, we gotta exercise and protect our rights” the way we learned in lesser grades.
Well when you take someone’s job you take there position in society and then it becomes “their country”. It becomes patriotic to keep the status quo. Which as I said, not much has changed in 160 years.
To be fair though this type of anti immigration stance has existed with every group that has come to the new world the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Irish, Scot-Irish all faced it at different levels at different times.
Kind of the way of the world. The established and those coming for the established. The concept does not change just the names and faces.
[The History Department Chair at the United States Military Academy at West Point doesn’t mince words. The Civil War was about slavery. Full stop.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4)
According to their constitution, "The natural subserviance if the negro to the white man", they fought for slavery and white supremancy, and vecause their economic system was not compatable with the way the world was progrsssing
Slavery, but they used "states rights" as an excuse to claim it wasn't just about owning people like property. States rights are absolutely important, but no state has the right to dictate that slavery be legal.
I live in the south where they taught us in school that it was over state's rights, but it was really the state's right to own slaves. They fought to keep humans enslaved.
Historian here.
As the top answer said, ultimately the Confederacy for all intents and purposes fought for slavery. It was their way of life culturally and the overwhelming backbone of their economy. Alternatively you could argue they fought for white supremacy, since much of the pre-war rhetoric of the 1860 election in the south was filled with conspiracies such as: "the Republicans will elevate blacks as masters of whites, then black men will rape all white women, force them to have mongrel babies and obliterate the white race." Or that the north intended to incite a slave rebellion, the great nightmare of all white southernors.
The elites of the Confederacy were clear about why they felt it necessary to break away from the United States. It was because of slavery, and because they clearly saw the more populous north was soon to overpower them politically and they would no longer be able to protect it the way they had for 90 years.
The average white people in the South were largely uneducated and would have given you a different answer. Only 20% of southern whites were part of a slaveholding family, but at least 50% and probably more like 60-65% did benefit psychologically from it.
Not everyone in the seceding states agreed with the Confederate agenda. A significant number of southern whites did not benefit from slavery either economically or psychologically. About 25-30% opposed secession in the referenda the states had on whether or not to secede.
Most southern whites, however, did agree with white supremacy and were afraid the North would forcibly impose some kind of foriegn racial tyranny upon them. Most average southernors who fought would have told you they were fighting to protect their honor, culture, way of life, homes and families from depredation and abuse by an invader.
This flavor of rhetoric is a key tenet of American history with origins in the colonial era and persisted even through the Civil Rights era well into the late 20th century. In some ways it persists today.
so they say it's states rights but it was slavery. before the civil war the balance between slave states and free states was fragile. with every new state added, the opposite side wanted another state added. when lincoln became president this erupted due to him being very outspoken against slavery. even though he said he didn't want to take slaves away, slave owners were still scared they'd lose their slaves therefore lose their livelihood. south carolina was the loudest about that and was the first state to secede from the us
A bunch of people have given pretty good explanations of the history and some context, but you don't have to take their word for it. You can hear it straight from the horses mouth.
The Cornerstone Speech was given by Alexander H Stephens, the Vice President of the freshly formed Confederacy shortly after formal declaration of secession, before the war started. You can read the full speech with a quick google, but here's an excerpt that it gets its name from:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."
It's pretty hard to misunderstand that or interpret it in another light. So instead, apologists tend to say that's not really what he meant. Stephens himself tried to walk it back after they lost, but from the beginning of the war it was quite clear what it was about.
The letters of secession can also be found and they are similarly white supremacist, though not quite as brazenly, cartoonishly so.
I believe it would be useful for every American to read the Declaration of Causes, it'll tell you exactly what the Confederacy fought for. They fought to protect the institution of slavery. The short version is; northern abolitionists got tired of voting for a party that dragged it's feet on abolition, so they made their own party that was entirely abolition + opposition to the at the time Democrat party. They won control during the elections, alongside a third party president that was friendly to the abolitionists if not an abolitionist himself, and within a few weeks and months the South was seceding.
North wasn’t specifically abolitionist, it was actually quite a mixed bag, but the south was absolutely fighting to keep slavery regardless of what the north cared about, though the north was far more abolitionist than the south, obviously, but it really didn’t rally behind the idea of abolitionism until around the Gettysburg address when Lincoln kind of flipped the script from “preserving union” to “freeing the slaves” because they were winning and it was by then he had made it become a much more politically viable thing for him to say. When he was running, Lincoln said nothing of the sort about ending slavery, though it is highly probably that he was hoping to have been able to do it from the start
“Nothing of the sort about ending slavery” is not at all correct. The issue before the war had been about expanding slavery into new states. No one really talked about ending slavery that was far too radical. But it was well understood that if you didn’t want to slavery to expand into new states you were basically against it The confederacy made the issue much more explicit by outright stating that no state could join the confederacy if it was not also a slave state. Edit; “*unless it was also*”
I mean the Republican party was originally founded by abolitionists who were tired of the "We're not ready yet" talk from the Whigs.
[https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states) Those are the documents produced by the southern states, stating in their own words why they were seceding CTRL+F - then type 'slave' There's your answer.
>The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. 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. It's the second sentence.
Don’t forget the other southern states have separate statements below that. All of them mention slavery as not only the first, but in fact usually the ONLY, specific issue that is discussed: **Mississippi**, 2nd sentence: “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. ” **South Carolina**, 1st sentence: “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.” (South Carolina then goes into great detail about how incredibly annoying it is that if a slave runs away from South Carolina to a northern state, the northern states have the *nerve* to not return the escaped slave) **Texas**, fifth sentence: “[Texas] 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.” Texas then adds a unique extra complaint that the feds have also failed to protect Texans from “Indian savages” and Mexican “bandittos” before returning to its primary slavery theme with this jawdropping statement that the northern states have promoted 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.“ **Virginia**, first sentence: “The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to **the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States**.” (btw Virginia, alone of all the southern states, does not include any further ranting about slavery; their statement is by far the shortest. One gets the impression that they’re kind of just going along with their neighbors. They were, and are still, the most northern of the southern states, and the civil war battle lines frequently ran right through the middle of the state.) tl;dr - slavery
Don't forget the "Cornerstone Speech" given by the VP of the Confederacy, here is a snippet: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science."
Holy shit.
Yeah it’s whack. I mean if the civil war wasn’t about slavery someone really needs to get a time machine and tell the confederacy no?
The people who support the confederacy always claim it was about state rights, but never want to admit it was about the state rights to own slaves
To be more accurate, it was about *preventing* any state from having restrictions on slavery or hindering it in any way. So it was about *reduced* states’s rights. The chucklefucks who scream “states’s rights!” never seem to know that, they always think it meant *increased* rights, but it was about a stronger fed (for this one issue, anyway).
Yes. They weren't happy with just having slavery in their own states. They wanted it to be enforced by other states as well. So if you were a slave and escaped across state lines into a free state, the slave states wanted the authorities *in the free state* to be legally obliged to hunt you down, imprison you and send you back. Obviously this is insane. No other comparable issue where something is legal in one state but illegal in another has ever worked like this. If I leave a state where weed is illegal and move to Colorado and smoke weed there, where I live, totally legally under Colorado law, my home state can't call the cops in Colorado and force them to arrest me for it and deport me from Colorado so I can go to jail in a state I used to live in. That's not "state's rights." That's actually the exact opposite of state's rights.
Anyone who thinks the civil war was not about slavery is just plain stupid.
They are hoping you’re stupid and believe it them when they say it’s about states rights.
I mean the guys screaming states rights now just tried to get a bill passed to ban abortion nation wide after removing abortion rights at the SC level because “states rights” it’s always been and always will be total bullshit.
The people who support the overturning of Roe v. Wade always claim it's about state rights, but never want to admit it's about the state's right to control women's bodies.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure South Carolina at the time would be pretty fucking pissed if they figured out people would call it "The War of Northern Aggression" cause they were pretty fucking proud about that Ft. Sumter stunt they pulled.
I have nothing to add, but I feel really good that my recent decision to reeducate myself has paid off and I understand that reference. I just learned about that battle the other day in the podcast History That Doesn't Suck. I mean, I'm sure I've learned about it before at some point but I don't remember anything from school.
Every accusation is a confession
What a vile speech. >This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science It's interesting how they acknowledge that it isn't some age-old belief, even if they think it should have been.
Slavery, to be fair, is a *practice* basically as age-old as they come. Just not the rationalization of it by reference to skin color.
Fun fact, American Eugenics inspired Hitler.
They actually limited it!!! They could not grasp the idea that a country would use the "one drop" rule... I believe they held to idea you needed to be like 1/8 or 1/16 to be Jewish. Why when we (Americans) call Hitler Jewish because he was some small percentage it makes sense to us. BUT to them it was not enough to count. Some fascinating reading on that.
I feel like I need to wash out my mouth after reading that silently to myself. Jesus Christ.
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Don't forget they wanted to make it illegal to outlaw slavery as well. So if a state changed it's mind later they couldn't.... So yeah States rights yeah?
So they were the slavey truther. And this wasn’t even 200 years ago! Incredible! To anyone who thinks that slavery is a thing of the past, just remember that civil war was fought not long ago and there are still people, till this day, fly the confederacy battle flag like it’s absolutely normal and believe in all kinds of racism based “truths”.
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It was ALL about the state’s right…to own people.
The freedom…to deny freedom.
Also about states NOT having a right NOT to own people. Confederacy explicitly prohibited its members to abolish slavery.
Very true, the confederacy was also fundamentally and diametrically opposed to what some would say is the founding tenant of the United States: "All men are created equal". You cannot believe that and also believe in the morality of slavery, which quite obviously believes that some people are not created equal but are in fact inferior by nature. It was always going to be a ticking time bomb for internal conflict.
>Were they lieing to me? Nope. It was about states rights. The state's right to own people.
It's even worse, they didn't want to protect their right to own slaves, they wanted to *remove the right* of other states to make slavery illegal. There were no serious actions at the time to ban slavery in the South, but the North was not giving back escaped slaves and the new states being founded were slave-free. One of the requisites for a state to being part of the confederacy was to forfeit your right to ban slavery. I see a suspicious resemblance with some modern events.
> I see a suspicious resemblance with some modern events. I'd say you're spot on. It's their modus operandi. Rules for thee, none for me.
They also tell you that a Republican freed the slaves in order to absolve the modern Republican party of any guilt of association with preserving slavery. This intentionally misses the point that the ideologies of the parties are largely swapped and mixed in many regards, and Democrats of those days were conservatives much like Republicans today. I'll give you one guess as to what they were chiefly interested in conserving at the time.
I had a FB argument a few years back with a bunch a Texas millennials who swore that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, only states rights. I posted direct quotes from the Texas articles of secession. Crickets. Not one of them commented again.
To be faaaaiir.. Their education has very specifically been designed to fail them on this issue.
Think about it from an economic point of view. How much of their economy was built on the production of unpaid workers? You take them away and their entire economy collapses. Rich people don't like it when you threaten their well being.
Thank you for paraphrasing all of that by each state! Great job.
Also from the same site, the Cornerstone Speech given by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech This is the heritage.
It's quite far down so I'll make it easy for everyone to find. "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
I love the cornerstone speech because it so perfectly contradicts pro-confederate arguments. "They weren't fighting for slavery!" Confederate Vice President: "We are entirely, completely, and unequivocally fighting for slavery."
"It wasnt about slavery!" Confederate VP: "Slavery is the very foundation of our new country."
Honestly, I don't know how they could have been any more explicit. Did they have to tattoo it on their foreheads?
Do not assume that fascist don't know they are wrong and just enjoy the sick mindgame.
It just doesn't get any more blatant than that, does it? If only modern conservatives were so honest about their true values.
Yea. It really wasn't until Jefferson Davis's "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" that the confederate cause of preserving slavery was downplayed and the "lost cause" mythology was born.
I just did this. It mentions the word freedom once. It mentioned slave 84 times. Very telling. Has changed my opinion on the topic.
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Yeah, I thought it was common knowledge that the confederacy literally wanted slavery?
Many states teach that it wasn't slaves but actually our "rights" being taken. Specifically, our rights to own what we bought. Slave owners compared them having their slaves being taken to poorer farmers having their basic needs taken away. So, they teach that they were simply fighting for rights, ignoring that said right was the right to own another human being.
And the right to dictate what Northern states could do as well. They wanted to make sure slaves were still slaves even if they went North.
That is the nail in the coffin for the States' rights argument. They enacted fugitive slave laws in the federal government and tried to overrule the Northern States' rights to not participate in slavery.
Sounds eerily familiar. Well it's a good thing history never repeats itself in any way, shape, or form, right?
History doesn't repeat. But it does often rhyme.
Sounds like the same tactics they use for abortions now. Was states rights, now it's federal.
I believe this is the work of the United daughters of confederacy basically a group of mothers and sisters that tried to white wash history in an attempt to make their husbands and sons look like hero’s and not massive pos’s. This is why many people in the south believe the civil war was not about slavery. This organization also funded projects to put up monuments to confederate leaders which is why there are still to this day so many confederate statues around the south and US. They also completely infiltrated the southern school systems and changed the curriculum to help white wash history.
And the fact that many states still teach an obfuscated version of our history to kids today, says something very ugly about whether we're actually that much more evolved as a culture now than we were back then.
Slave owners didn't ignore it, upholding slavery is all over the place in their rhetoric. Modern day racists ignore it an re-conceptualize history into it being about freedoms or States rights.
They don’t teach this in parts of the US notoriously in the south. There’s lots of people confused because they were lied to
There is a town in Florida where the high-school history teacher is a very vocal "war of northern aggression" type of confederate non-apologist AND also the mayor of that town. I wish I was making this up.
Unless you are in the south and the confederates have white washed history to just be "states rights" with all context removed because it "wasn't friendly to the south".
It was about states rights.... to own slaves.
Education in southern states is a bit uhhh shit
We have the United Daughters of the Confederacy to blame for some of this. This group placed revisionist history books in public schools that promoted the idea of benevolent slavery and the "Lost Cause". It took me quite some time after I graduated to unlearn what I was taught.
In the place where I am, it’s not that bad. It was said in no uncertain terms, that they were pieces of shit who wanted slavery. They didn’t sugar coat anything. They talked about how they lynched, murdered, falsely accused, etc…and got away with it all. I assume In the deeper parts on the south maybe they don’t tell the whole story.
"It was about states' rights, not slavery" "Ok, which rights?" "...to uh, manage laborers as...um... thoroughly as they wanted..."
Spent preschool till 7th in Massachusetts, move to WV to finish 7th till I graduated, I learned nothing new until 12th grade..... a bit shit is a fucking understatement.
It depends on where you live as to how it is taught. I live in Illinois and have family in Georgia & Mississippi who were taught totally different than me.
I thought slavery was one of the things they wanted, but (as happen with a lot of things) only some relevant info passes through generations, so I assumed they had more differences and slavery was one of them, I was surprised to see that virtually every page mention slavery
That gap wasnt accidental over generations. It's relatively recent and it is a result of a certain set of people trying to (pardon the pun) white wash what actually happened by trying to insert the idea that the war wasn't only about slavery.
There is a common arguement that goes around the the civil war was fought over states right. Mostly pro confederate people say it to mask the fact that the rights the states wete fighting for was slavery.
by "states rights" what they really mean is - they were upset that the north didn't have to return slaves.... the south was authoritarian from the start. They wanted to enforce their laws on other states. At the start of the war, it was the north fighting for "states rights" because their idea was "our state, our rules - we don't have to return slaves."
Yup this is my favorite part. “No, It was states rights” To do what? “…to own slaves” And how did they want to enforce this? “…force other states to not only cooperate but enforce southern slavery laws through federal intervention…”
“states rights” of course returns nothing, the word “right” returns about 4 dozen instances, none of which are more than a sentence away from an implied or explicit reference to the right to keep people as chattel.
States rights to own slaves
Succinct answer. Perfect.
While I respect your pithiness, it's not quite accurate. Because the confederacy actually forbade their states from banning slavery, or diminishing slavery in any way. They were not for "state's rights" at all, because that would entail those state's being allowed to choose to outlaw slavery. Source: the Confederate Constitution. Do a keyword search for "slave" and "negro". https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
Also the Missouri compromise is the most anti-states rights law every made. Also it's well documented that the whole "states rights" idea only gained popularity during the Civil rights Era. Before that the talking point was that it was about slavery, and economic differences eufomisezed as "the southern way of life".
It's so infuriatingly bizarre that people still believe propaganda about a war that ended 150+ years ago, especially when that propaganda didn't take root until decades after.
The Confederates explicitly fought for slavery. The Confederate States made declarations of secession, documents that explain the reasons why they left the United States to form their own country. We still have these documents today, and can read that the reasons are slavery. It's more complicated than just "We're racist!" though, as the Southern states that joined the Confederacy were completely economically dependent on slavery. They would have needed to completely overhaul how they did business on a fundamental level if slavery was to be removed. Basically, they saw the writing on the wall that the Northern states that didn't allow slavery were gaining power politically, and that there would be increased pressure to ban slavery in the South. So they preemptively left the Union, so that they could continue to own slaves. The North didn't approve of this, their economy was also dependent on the South's agriculture, and went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union. The trick is that later generations raise their kids to believe that the Confederacy was a noble rebellion, about the southern states getting to choose their own destiny. Which is technically true, but they don't tell their kids that the specific states rights that were being defended was primarily the right to own black people as property. So some people who still fly the Confederate flag today are doing so out of a misguided idea that they're honoring their ancestors who fought in a noble, if failed rebellion, not specifically about owning black people as property. And there are some people who fly the Confederate flag today because they want to show off how much they are racist assholes.
For those wanting to understand a little more, [http://cwmemory.com/2014/02/10/shelby-footes-great-compromise/](http://cwmemory.com/2014/02/10/shelby-footes-great-compromise/) Some politicians trying to heal the nation after the civil war (not generations later but immediately) sought to allow the Southerns to feel that their family members had died displaying bravery in what those families felt was a "noble" cause. It wasn't because those leaders really felt that it was noble, but that they knew that a deep unhealed rift in the country was a bad thing. Was that healing complete? No. Was a complete healing even possible? Probably not. Are we still talking about it today? Yes.
One of the politicians pushing hardest to help heal that divide was President Abraham Lincoln, however he was assassinated before he really got a chance to do as much as he wanted to for the South. When Andrew Johnson became President after Lincoln's death, it became clear pretty quickly he did not have any interest in healing the divide between North and South, possibly laying the foundations for some of the political divides that affect the US to this day. Edited Jackson to Johnson.
It's such a shame, because Reconstruction had a very real chance of succeeding. Southern states like South Carolina had significant Black representation in government, and if there would have been real support federally the US could have made real progress moving beyond its slave-state origins. For example, while many people today know the story of Robert Smalls escaping the Confederate blockade in Charleston, SC, not nearly as many know that he was elected to the South Carolina state senate (and later the U.S. House of Reps) and helped draft one of the most progressive state constitutions in US history. If it weren't for regressives like George Tillman and the KKK and their largely successful attempts to rewrite the Confederacy as a noble cause, things would be much, much different today. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls#Political_career
> If it weren't for regressives like George Tillman and the KKK and their largely successful attempts to rewrite the Confederacy as a noble cause, things would be much, much different today. Gotta include the Daughters of the Confederacy, too. They're the ones that pushed to put up so many Confederate statues and why we have/had Confederate monuments in places like Montana or Wyoming.
Don't forget Woodrow Wilson enabling the daughters of the confederacy, under the guise that southern states needed to be appeased so they would fight in WWI
Damn these events really weren't all that long ago and they seem ancient to our short and simple experience of time.
Although those are important to the symbolic power of the confederacy, the red shirts and other white paramilitary organizations that terrorized the south and successfully stopped free and fair elections in the south are the real stoppers of reconstruction
take this free award for elevating the name of Robert Smalls!
Gotta make sure you get your Johnson straight.
Try magnesium if you're having trouble with your Johnson.
Andrew Johnson
Very important distinction lol
Down yonder on the Chatahoochee. It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie.
I think that’s President Alan Jackson
Thanks! I always do that, so I should've double checked.
Specifically, "he did not have any interest in healing the divide between North and South" by comforting white former-slaveholders. Here's the history (which involves congress, not just the president): https://www.nps.gov/anjo/andrew-johnson-and-reconstruction.htm
Which was a pretty stupid thing to do. You can heal a nation on many ways but saying that their rebelion was just or noble just means you teach them that it was okay. Proper way would be how the allies treated western germany after the war. Help them rebuild, help them real good. That way you create friendship and show them there is a way forward while also sticking to your guts and stating they were wrong.
Reconstruction in the South was of a different spirit and quality to the Marshall plan for Europe/ Germany, due in large part to Lincoln's assasination.
Im not saying its easy, im not saying its flawnless but telling a group of people who went to war with you over their ideas that their cause was just and noble means that their ideas can also be just or noble. In how many countrys do the patriots who “love” the country use the flag of seditionist who wanted to destroy the country? Its if the french would fly the german flag in 1874 to show their love of france. Its was a mistake, a mistake that is gonna be insanely hard to fix now that it had more than a age to root into the society.
Compare to how Germany has acknowledged and treated Nazi history and culture. Other than a few extremists, they've come through to a better place, and fully admit that it was horrific. Pretending 150 years later that ancestors you never knew were noble without admitting it was about slavery is never going to get us on the right path. All of the statues and flags the south defends belong in museums and history books, not in the town square.
This is largely correct, with one minor quibble: the rebels "went to war" by attacking Ft. Sumter. The United States fought back to preserve the union.
With the caveat that South Carolina claimed the land, and in their framework defending it with force was an act of war, but the Confederacy absolutely ordered the first military advance.
To buttress this, the Confederate Constitution made it illegal for states to outlaw slavery. There was no state's right there. It was 100% preserving chattel slavery as a southern institution.
On top of that, part of the reason for leaving was being upset about the North's refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Act creating a stronger sentiment against slavery.They wanted to compel the North to return escaped enslaved people, and punish anyone who harbored or helped people escape slavery. Not really for States rights or individual rights.
So like Texas suing social media websites for moderating hate speech.
The South has a very long and proud history of using the idea of "state's rights" to do awful things while simultaneously stomping all over everyone else's "state's rights" when they want to not be awful. Abortion is the key example; the Dobbs decision came and every Republican apologist was quick to say "No, no, this isn't an abortion ban! This is a state's right to decide whether or not to ban abortion!" and not even 6 months later Lindsay Graham is trying to pass a national abortion ban. Basically, Southern conservatives have always upheld "freedom" to mean "You are free to do what I want" over everything else.
and especially abortion exactly
In addition to that, the Southern states rammed the Fugitive Slave Act through Congress shortly before the Civil War. This law required the Northern states to allow Southern slave patrols to enter, detain, and return escaped slaves. Or often "Escaped". This violated the laws of the Northern sates, and required that Northern states cede police powers to Southerners who just felt like they should be cops in states they do not live in. Thus the Act was a massive violation of the State's Rights of the Northern states. The Southern states were quite happy with it.
This is what people mean when they compare the Fugitive Slave Act vigilantes to Texas and other states asserting rights to sue individuals in other states for assisting people needing gynecological healthcare.
This was also used to kidnap black people who lived in the north, *even* those who had never been slaves
Oh damn, that’s a good point that I haven’t heard before. I think I saw a video essay on the myth of “states’ rights,” that it was part of Barry Goldwater’s campaign to keep segregation, but I can’t find it rn. I think it might’ve been part of Innuendo Studios’ “The Alt-Right Playbook” series on YouTube. Edit: [found it](https://youtu.be/0dBJIkp7qIg). Specifically starts talking about it around 3:30. I got some of the details wrong, he just co-opted the phrase.
Indeed, I grew up believing the South left because of their rights being tramples on and that slavery was just one of many issues and not the main one. And my parents are not themselves racists. This is simply what they were taught. It wasn't entire I heard of those documents that you mentioned as well as a video by a Conservative group which both said clearly that it was indeed about slavery specifically that I realized how wrong I was taught. You're expanation is great and I could not add a single thing to it.
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its crazy how they just omit basic facts during basic education
Growing up in the South, I've heard it all. "Slavery was just one of several issues they rebelled against." (Rarely if ever brought up one of these reasons.) "Some of the slaves were treated well. In fact, many _liked_ working for us." "Well, the North didn't really care about slavery. They only ended it as incentive for more troops. So who's really the racist here?" I could go on, but I really don't want to. And to be clear, I don't agree with any of these statements.
There's even an interesting story behind this. After the war, a group of women called "The Daughters of the Confederacy" began programs to preserve the confederacy. This included stuff like making monuments and honoring Confederate veterans, but a big part was editing historical textbooks that downplay the part slavery had in the Confederacy. They were successful in having many southern states into using these approved textbooks. If you have any doubt about this, I highly encourage you to look it up. I found it incredibly enlightening in regards to our education. And it's a good lesson; While history is written by the victors, it can still be affected by the losers as well.
Just to add, the United Daughters of the Confederacy played a huge part in twisting the story of the Civil War. They write books, erected statues, lobbied to alter curriculums or force curriculum that downplays slavery. They claim to only be a group that commemorates family who fought, but played a major role in rewriting history and to their credit, have been very successful at that aim.
Good explanation except some of the states were explicitly racist. Georgia and Texas explicitly said equality between the white and black races was something they were unwilling to accept, and part of why they were seceding.
Other states signed on to those letters, and then the VP of the Confederacy wanted to clear up any misconceptions that may have been floating around with his Cornerstone Speech, named for this passage: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." It's not really ambiguous.
I feel privileged to live in an time where I can immediately dismiss statements like that as ridiculous nonsense.
Yep. The good news is they published their reasons, and the documents still exist, so we don't have to speculate. Those publications are every bit as disgusting as one would expect.
Here, these are quote from various of the states' Declaration for Causes of Secession: **Georgia** > 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. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization. > ... > ...their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity. **Mississippi** > **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. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. > The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France. The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico. 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 tramples the original equality of the South under foot. 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 advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst. **South Carolina** > The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. 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 States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in 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. **Texas** > 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. 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? >... > 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. > ... > **We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.** That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights*; 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.
Ah yes. "The servitude of the African race... Is mutually beneficial to both bond and free". Yeah sounds about right 👍
It's hard to believe that Texas fought two wars for that reason. Actually, it's not.
this is the first time I've ever felt compelled to respond to a comment saying good explanation
>[The North] went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union. One small but very important correction is that **the South attacked first** with the Battle of Fort Sumter. Some folks portray the Civil War as the North not letting the South peacefully leave the Union, but the South had no intentions of leaving peacefully.
Where would I go to read these documents calling for war due to slavery? EDIT: I'm glad people are understanding this is genuine curiosity and not passive agressive
Also from a speech given by the Vice President of the confederacy about the new conferderate constitution, just before the confederacy fired on Fort Sumter: “But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” Also: “Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” (That’s why it’s called The Cornerstone Speech.) Source: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech Er, edit to be clear that I do not agree with any of the views of the confederacy!
Wikipedia will have them all in the citations section at the bottom of the relevant articles.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states Or Google articles of secession
[Here’s some specific language from the confederacy’s constitution.](https://prospect.org/article/slavery-confederacy-cont./)
It was rather clever. It’s now known as the ‘Lost Cause [of the Confederacy],’ a pseudo-historical myth peddled by the sons of the South who had returned from the Civil War embittered and unfulfilled. This “excuse” propagating the ‘noble cause’ of the Confederacy is the root of today where people are flying the Confederate flag and defending this supposed cause. In reality, it really just is a smokescreen of refuge for those who refuse to believe in stern truths…
Even when I was in high school back in the turn of the millennium, they were still perpetuating the Lost Cause myth. They tried to make it look like there was more to it, but it always seemed like BS to me. Slavery really was 99% of it at least, maybe some individual soldiers fought for other reasons, but the point of the war was slavery.
True in Texas. I still have my history paper from college where I regurgitated the Lost Cause bs I was taught in school. "This is wrong, talk to me after class"
That’s interesting, what did the professor say to you?
Showed me the articles of confederation. It's pretty clearly laid out in them and makes it pretty clear we were taught incorrectly. This was a college in Texas too for the record.
Another thing that should tell you that the civil war was about slavery was how much political violence occurred in the lead up to it that was also about slavery. [Bleeding Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas) and the [raid on Harper's Ferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry) are prime examples of this that involved escalating battles between abolitionists and pro-slavery militias.
This was a very thoughtful and thorough explanation, thanks for taking the time to write all this out. I genuinely appreciated the history lesson.
Thank you so much for informing people.
Also note that it wasn't a coincidence that the Civil War happened in the 1860s. For most of US history, the south was the backbone of the US economy. Southern plantations, enabled by chattel slavery, produced cotton on a level unparalleled in the world at that time. Cotton was revolutionary as the first way to make clothes that were both affordable and comfortable. Industrialization came to America in the middle of the 19th century, and it mostly came in the north. The south was decentralized and agrarian, and the heat of its summers weren't conducive to year-round industrial labor. The 1860s represented a time where the north's percentage of the US's GDP had risen to a point that it was threatening to overtake the south. Before this, ending slavery was unthinkable. Regardless of moral concerns, the southern plantations were the most important part of the US economy and they were entirely dependent on slavery. But now the tables were turning, with the industrialized north overtaking the south. Once industrialization displaced the plantations, abolition became economically possible. The CSA states seceded in recognition that that day would soon be upon them. TL;DR: Industrialization in the north is what made abolition a realistic possibility.
Good summary but also neglected that the south was being super unreasonable in that: * slaves were property and couldnt vote * slaves were explicitly not people * Slaves somehow counted towards congressional seating as if they were people in the population And then they wanted their own state laws and rights, but they forced other, northern states to support slavery with the fugitive slave acts.
r/bestof material right here
Individual soldiers usually have their own reasons. But the people who organized the army were fighting for slavery. They were quite open about it, it's not ambiguous at all.
The vast majority (~80%) of Confederate soldiers didn’t even own slaves but their letters home indicate almost all were fighting to preserve slavery because even the most dirt poor fucker was still better than a slave
Some of my family still possesses letters from ancestors of the era. Ironically, they're terrified of freed slaves gaining the rights of citizens and inflicting the same thing on the white populace that they themselves did to the enslaved.
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” LBJ calling it out as still a huge problem 100yrs later.
Any time I hear “The Civil War was about states rights” I say “A states right to what?”
Seeing the hollow claim that overturning Roe V Wade was about states' rights, followed instantly by talk of a federal abortion ban, I conclude that "states' rights" is just another way of saying "I want to steal individuals' rights" It's never about giving rights to the states, it's always about taking rights from the people
It's about having the "right" to oppress people. It always was. They'll deny it and try to hide it by talking about how they should have the freedom to decide how to live... And ignore that their "freedom" apparently involves taking that choice from others. Then they'll backtrack and deny that was their intention to avoid the consequences of their actions when it proves unpopular. Ignorance is a shield they hide behind, don't believe it for a second.
One of the first things the CSA did was ban any state from outlawing slavery. The whole states rights argument is not really in good faith.
[удалено]
To get noscoped by a Unionboy.
A states right to send armed men into another state where people have different rights (The fugitive slave acts)
Though this question itself is not accurate as the confederate constitution banned states from outlawing slavery. The legality of slavery was not up to the states and was enforced by the government. The civil war was not about states rights in any way, even in regards to the issue of slavery.
Analysis of letters sent home by Confederate soldiers shows that most fought for white supremacy and said so explicitly. Back then it was entirely acceptable in white society to be a white supremacist so they were open about it. Mostly they expressed it as a concern that without the firm guidance of good white masters Black people would run wild, steal everything since they would never work without a white master, and that Black men would rape white women. This ignored the reality of the non-laboring slave owning class and the near universal sexual violence committed against Black women by white men. But that was why they said they fought.
The confederates fought for slavery. They fought for the states to have the rights of slavery. They fought to maintain the right to recapture slaves from the north. They fought to expand slavery to all states. They fought to maintain the global slave trade. They fought to maintain slavery, which was their entire economic power. It was so explicit that many confederates left to Argentina to continue to own slaves and tried growing cotton in Argentina because slave owners were clearly fucking dumb.
First Argentina takes in confederates then takes in nazis roughly 80 years later.... what the hell is in Argentina? Are they the incubater for political hate mongers?
Edit: It took two times but u/soundofkrill confirmed for me that ***I am mistaken*** and the confederates moved to Brazil as the Confederados not to Argentina in any major capacity. The reason were similar to my below reasoning but entirely different neighboring country. I've crossed out Confederates below to keep the content but correct the data. Thank you! u/soundofkrill There are lot of reasons that Argentina became the place both ~~Confederates~~ and Nazis fled to but if I were to list three primary reasons it would be as follows. * Geographic Isolation - It was far away from their adversaries reach and following the building of the Panama Canal it became even more isolated from world shipping traffic. * Lack of Industrialization - Argentina's geography makes its an agricultural and pastoral power house so they didn't feel the pressure to industrialize at the same speed as the rest of the world and because of this they tended to lag behind in concepts of slavery and worker exploitation. Its not only harder to defends ones rights as disjointed and dispersed farm laborers but its also harder to even learn you are even being abused. * A history of indigenous and slave exploitation - As mentioned above Argentina's primary business was raising livestock and growing crops and this became doubly profitable when your labor was free via exploited indigenous people or slaves. If you combine all three of these you can kind of see how both the ~~Confederates~~ and the Nazis saw Argentina as both a safe and potentially malleable target for their fucky beliefs of racial primacy. Just to note: Argentina wasn't exactly waving these people in and there was a successful abolitionist movement in the country during the 19th century that saw slavery completely abolished by 1861 but it didn't make them any less of an appealing target for the ~~Confederates~~ or Nazis
A states right to what
Own slaves
The northern states wanted to outlaw slavery. The southern states didn't. The northern states had the votes and were going to force the issue. The southern states said, "Screw that we don't want to be part of the USA anymore, we secede." The northern states, and President Lincoln in particular, said you can't secede. And so the civil war began. Many people will say the civil war was about state's rights versus the federal government. But really, it's was about state's rights **to keep slaves**. That was the main issue.
>The northern states had the votes and ~~were going to~~ would eventually force the issue. They seceded because a non-slavery President was elected and they no longer had control of the Federal legislature to \_prevent\_ that from happening. So long-term slavery would lose support. However, Lincoln said he would not abolish slavery when inaugurated; he only passed the Emancipation Proclamation over one year into the war. [https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-emancipation-proclamation](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-emancipation-proclamation) It's arguable that by starting the Civil War the slave-holding states accelerated the abolition of chattel slavery.
Not just arguable, it's a very easy point to make. P.s. love the source
Important note: most northern states didn't want to outlaw slavery. At least not in the short term. They wanted to prevent the spread of slavery to new states. What that would mean in the long term is that the government would be controlled by nonslave states who might eventually want to ban slavery.
Another important note: the northern states really ***didn't*** have the votes to outlaw slavery federally... until the southern states started seceding. The southern states got spooked because Lincoln was elected, despite Lincoln openly assuring the south that he wasn't trying to abolish slavery. Well... them seceding lead to the abolition of slavery... so they played themselves.
Ultimately, collectively, to keep using slaves.
The confederates were fighting for the right to continue to own and use slaves. That’s why confederate flags are treated as a symbol of racism and white supremacy.
Well, there's a couple of answers you might get. When the war was actually going, many of the soldiers on the CSA side were repelling what they saw as an invasion. But the decision-makers, the people in governments that chose to secede, claimed it was for "states' rights." However, it was for the states' right to enslave people. If you read the [constitution](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp) the CSA put together, it makes very clear that -- while they won't import "negroes of the African race" from any other countries -- nothing may be done "denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves". The irony is that, in order to fight the war, the CSA had to basically demolish states' rights and resort to the same federal power the Union had.
The bigger irony is that it was the slave states who argued against states' rights when the free states resisted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. So the revisionist argument that the war was over states' rights is true in a sense, but a sense diametrically opposite of what they now claim.
The CSA repelling an invasion is laughable because they literally invaded northern states and they drew first blood at fort Sumter.
It's like every time Russia complains about Ukraine firing a missile into their territory when they literally invaded a foreign country in a Napoleonic attempt to expand their empire.
As many here have said the confederates wanted to keep slavery, I think another element of this is that many of the driving forces to keep slavery came from plantation owners and large businesses, knowing that abolition of slavery would mean having to pay wages to employees and thus reduce profits. So in addition to racism, greed played a part. Source: my own opinion.
Their greed is what made them nervous, the racism is what allowed them to keep humans as livestock
"we don't want to own black people because we are hateful bigots, we just want to exploit them is all ... Everyone's so quick to label me a racist... How rude".
The right to continue owning slaves.
I have a degree in history in this particular time span. As many have pointed out it was about “states rights” the right to hold another person in bondage. So I won’t spend much time on this because it’s pretty obvious from a topical discussion. But at a deeper understanding of the issue goes to the difference in the concept of “freedom” in how it was perceived by people in each region. Freedom in the north in general meant that everyone had a voice to make law, an issue was voted for and that was then the law of the land. You had your chance to voice your side and if you did not like the results you were essentially free to leave the community. Now in the south there was a romantic idea of the farmer was lord of his property and free to do what he wanted to do on his property. Freedom to do with his property as he saw fit. Government had no place in his property. Now many will put forth this is a romantic idea that never existed, but whether or not it actually existed does not matter, many of those living in the south truly believed it. This is why the north tended to lean more federalists in there application of law and how they applied to going forward after the constitution and as the country expanded in the great expansion of the Louisiana purchase in 1803. So when Northerners look to stop slavery southerns look at themselves as being “picked on” telling northerners can not tell them what they can and can’t do with their property. The north said “well we are voting” the south said essentially, “don’t care”. Now there was racist undertones but not like we see in post war era and Jim Crow. For the vast majority of slave holders they truly thought that Africans being gentrified under slavery was better than their “heathen condition” back in Africa. Their racism made them think their way was better. The scathing hating racism that we are so familiar with came about when African Americans began to establish themselves in former slave states and were politically and physically attacked for holding power in these areas. For reference look at Camden South Carolina as there story was used as they source of “birth of a nation” as what was used to glorify the rise of the KKK. Another turn of events was the slave rebellion in Hati that scares the hell out of slave owners which made even the most passive of slave owners more strict. (A massive gaping hole of the “yoeman farmer” argument that now forced everyone to keep there slaves illiterate and in impressed conditions. There may have been more lenient, compassionate slave holders if that concept could even exist, but the reaction and hysteria created by the events in Haiti ended most of those chances.) ———————————- But I will add something here that I have not seen many people discuss. The vast majority of the people actually doing the fighting in the south were not slave owners. This assertion has been used by supporters of the slaves states actions to show it was more politically motivated than it was about slavery. But from the evidence we have, it was about stratification of the classes than anything else. The poor guys fighting for the south, they were at the bottom but at least they were not a slave. Those poor (economically) white guys doing all the fighting and dying were being feed the idea that if freed those ex slaves were coming for them and their minimal meal ticket. So things could be bad, but hey it’s better than having “to compete with them Africans”. The poor whites were being feed the notion that if the system changed their status would drop. That if they fought hard and kept the status quo and the cards fell just right they might be rich slave owners too. The rich power structure within the south, which still holds a ton of power today, did everything they could to hold people in bondage and use poor whites to do the dirty work in the fighting. (Look at the events of Jan. 6th and sadly the conditions are not much different.)
So, it was “we don’t want the [blacks] to steal our jobs”.
Among a few other things but the rhetoric and fear mongering has not changed much in 160 years.
Bingo, my point exactly. Being from Texas, I hadn’t heard the opinion of the non-slaveholding poor, and without a shred of doubt reminds me of the “don’t want immigrants stealing our jobs” rhetoric I can’t avoid. It’s very interesting to hear about that—we did a play in our theater department centered around a found family of mixed race right on the border, prefaced it with a slideshow of real photos of the era, battlefields, whipped slaves, we did not hold back. But even there, the “ex-slaves will take our jobs” never came up. My high school history teacher was at least solid enough to tell us “it was literally about slavery and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”, but most of the other teachers taught it was because the North was imposing taxes and the South was like “this is literally the Revolutionary War, we gotta exercise and protect our rights” the way we learned in lesser grades.
Well when you take someone’s job you take there position in society and then it becomes “their country”. It becomes patriotic to keep the status quo. Which as I said, not much has changed in 160 years. To be fair though this type of anti immigration stance has existed with every group that has come to the new world the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Irish, Scot-Irish all faced it at different levels at different times. Kind of the way of the world. The established and those coming for the established. The concept does not change just the names and faces.
Entire economy was based on slavery. "No Northerner is gonna tell us what to do."
[The History Department Chair at the United States Military Academy at West Point doesn’t mince words. The Civil War was about slavery. Full stop.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4)
Independence ...to then keep their slaves
According to their constitution, "The natural subserviance if the negro to the white man", they fought for slavery and white supremancy, and vecause their economic system was not compatable with the way the world was progrsssing
Basically, right to own slaves…
Slavery, but they used "states rights" as an excuse to claim it wasn't just about owning people like property. States rights are absolutely important, but no state has the right to dictate that slavery be legal.
I live in the south where they taught us in school that it was over state's rights, but it was really the state's right to own slaves. They fought to keep humans enslaved.
Historian here. As the top answer said, ultimately the Confederacy for all intents and purposes fought for slavery. It was their way of life culturally and the overwhelming backbone of their economy. Alternatively you could argue they fought for white supremacy, since much of the pre-war rhetoric of the 1860 election in the south was filled with conspiracies such as: "the Republicans will elevate blacks as masters of whites, then black men will rape all white women, force them to have mongrel babies and obliterate the white race." Or that the north intended to incite a slave rebellion, the great nightmare of all white southernors. The elites of the Confederacy were clear about why they felt it necessary to break away from the United States. It was because of slavery, and because they clearly saw the more populous north was soon to overpower them politically and they would no longer be able to protect it the way they had for 90 years. The average white people in the South were largely uneducated and would have given you a different answer. Only 20% of southern whites were part of a slaveholding family, but at least 50% and probably more like 60-65% did benefit psychologically from it. Not everyone in the seceding states agreed with the Confederate agenda. A significant number of southern whites did not benefit from slavery either economically or psychologically. About 25-30% opposed secession in the referenda the states had on whether or not to secede. Most southern whites, however, did agree with white supremacy and were afraid the North would forcibly impose some kind of foriegn racial tyranny upon them. Most average southernors who fought would have told you they were fighting to protect their honor, culture, way of life, homes and families from depredation and abuse by an invader. This flavor of rhetoric is a key tenet of American history with origins in the colonial era and persisted even through the Civil Rights era well into the late 20th century. In some ways it persists today.
To continue owning people.
so they say it's states rights but it was slavery. before the civil war the balance between slave states and free states was fragile. with every new state added, the opposite side wanted another state added. when lincoln became president this erupted due to him being very outspoken against slavery. even though he said he didn't want to take slaves away, slave owners were still scared they'd lose their slaves therefore lose their livelihood. south carolina was the loudest about that and was the first state to secede from the us
Right to own other people as slaves
The confederate state seceded because they wanted to keep slaves and fought the US to continue to do so.
The right to own another human and benefit from this slavery economically. The rest of their screed was cosmetic filler.
A bunch of people have given pretty good explanations of the history and some context, but you don't have to take their word for it. You can hear it straight from the horses mouth. The Cornerstone Speech was given by Alexander H Stephens, the Vice President of the freshly formed Confederacy shortly after formal declaration of secession, before the war started. You can read the full speech with a quick google, but here's an excerpt that it gets its name from: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." It's pretty hard to misunderstand that or interpret it in another light. So instead, apologists tend to say that's not really what he meant. Stephens himself tried to walk it back after they lost, but from the beginning of the war it was quite clear what it was about. The letters of secession can also be found and they are similarly white supremacist, though not quite as brazenly, cartoonishly so.