Why do southerners continue to defend the confederacy?

Question

And delude yourselves into believing slavery had nothing to do with the civil war? That it was all about state rights?

DECLARATION OF SECESSION, MISSISSIPPI
"In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course."

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/missec.htm

I already caught myself some slavery apologists. This is why today's Southern based Republican Party will never get more then 12% of the black vote.

"and the reasons for the civil war, were plentiful-slavery was on the bottom of the list."

Really. Slavery was at the bottom of the list??? I just posted a historical document listing why exactly Mississippi seceeded from the union: SLAVERY!

ANOTHER ONE

DECLARATION OF SECESSION, GEORGIA
"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. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/geosec.htm

Slavery apologists just keep popping up. Slavery was not an issue until 1863??? Lincoln was elected in December 1860 on a platform of limiting slavery in the new territories. The whole northeastern Republican Party was built on anti-slavery. Lincoln did not actualy take office until March of the next year. By then, 7 states had already seceeded from the Union.

They seceeded because they didn't want the Republican dominated congress to limit their rights to own slaves.

To the state rights guy. It was only supposedly about "state rights' because the South lost the election. If they had won, they would have not seceed. It's just like todays' southern Republicans talking about "state rights" when they are out of power, but increasing the power of the federal government when they are in power. Examples besides the massive spending and the Patriot Act:
- trying to outlaw gay marriage through a federal amendment
- opposing California's medical marijuana laws
and
- opposing Oregon's right to die laws.

It's an EXCUSE to make southerners feel less bad about their ancestors, not a real reason.

Answer 1

I can only assume that you believe the Federal government wished to abolish all slavery from the outset of hostilities; nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone would be hard pressed in finding a person who actual believes that slavery was not the underlying cause for the war, but it was not a question of freeing the slaves, but rather if a new state had the right to choose to allow the institution.

The Union began their fight to free the slaves only when they were faced with several defeats. The Emancipation Proclamation, which only freed the slaves in states under rebellion, was nothing more than a political move to keep Europe out of the war on the side of the Confederates. It was not until the 13th amendment that slavery was abolished for good under the law.

No one is saying that slavery was a good thing, and if they are it is because of deep rooted ignorance, but to say that the war was not started over state's rights is being equally ignorant of history.

Answer 2

Unfortunately it is a stock history answer that slavery was the cause of the civil war. Naturally, it was an issue, but remember the majority of confederate soldiers were non-slave holders. When, in 1863, the Emancipation Act was published, many desertions occured on the Union side. The civil war was started, and remains a cause today, due to the Federal usurption of State Rights. While I realize there are many bigots who support the confederate idea due to their views on race, just as there are many bigots who push the Political Correct mouthings, many others still believe that the Federal Government has far exceeded its vested authority. Check out the "Patriot Act" and the US Constitution side by side for a good example.........

Answer 3

Well it was about states rights, and one of those rights was a states right to decide if it's citizens could own slaves, instead of the federal government. The legislatures of the Southern states thought slavery was OK. In the rest of the country they were planning to send the slaves to Africa, to undo something they believed was immoral. If this happened the African Americans would be gone, and Black America would not exist today. Lincoln and his 1st vice president were abolitionists. The South seceded and started a war so that Washington wouldn't take their slaves away. They lost the war, but they kept their black population.

Answer 4

I am for the south and for the flag. The actual reason for the war was over the right to succeed. It was not until 1863 did slavery become the issue. Lincoln's proc. did nothing to free slaves until after the war. What u and people like u do not understand is that the north wanted the south to end slavery, but did not try to help the south to develop another type of income except slavery. Grow up.

Answer 5

slavery was an issue but the reason slavery was an issue was because the south believed that it was he right of the state to make the laws that govern that state. small small federal government with the majority of the power going to the states. this is one of the main principals of the founding fathers. was slavery profitable hell yes, was it also tragic? hell yes. but there were other issues on the table. you are not posting the entirety of the letter of secession from these states, mostly it is not your fault because the liberal institution that is yale will not publish the entire letters themselves. i have seen the entire letter of secession from the state of alabama, my home state. it is quite long yet yale only publishes a small portion of it. the part that refers to slavery. this is biased and well very wrong for an institution of higher learning to do. states rights was the main issue and in the complete letters of secession they list many of the things that they believe to be states rights and yes slavery was one of those issues, but by no means the only one. do i apologize for slavery. no i will not apologize for crimes perpetrated by my ancestors. do i agree with slavery no of course not it was horrible. however the actual history of it has been distorted to be much much worse than it was. what i mean is the beatings and hangings and what not were not as common as people would like the world to believe. slaves were very very expensive and strong ones and women who could have strong healthy new slaves for the master, so when one got out of line it would have been very very bad for business to beat or hang the slaves especially the strongest of them.

Answer 6

You advise the yank flag represents slavery and treason, those were themes lengthy formerly the confederacy. the end results of the civil conflict replaced into the top of freedom for the yank people and the starting up of the statist equipment that has managed each element of life in view that, the country replaced into enslaved and nonetheless is.

Answer 7

As Southerners we are very proud of our heritage, a heritage that has been suppressed any way possible.


Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation because he was advised he would not win re-election otherwise. He could have cared less about the slaves.

Lord, there were slaves that helped the South in the fight. After the war many slaves refused to leave their masters. I know, My Great Granddad owned slaves.

When my Dad was growing up they still had the descendants of the slaves working there.

You do a good job of copying and pasting, why not try to use your own words.

"American by birth. Southern by the grace of God"

Answer 8

Slavery was one of many issues that was brought about in the Civil War. And if you look at other state's, such as Delaware, they were slave owning states in the Union. In West Virginia you could even own slaves up until they were twenty one. Slavery wasn't the main issue of the Civil War. Virtually no history textbooks mention the fact that each Confederate state retained the right to abolish slavery within its borders, and that the Confederate Constitution permitted the admission of free states into the Confederacy. In his analysis of the Confederate Constitution, historian Forrest McDonald says the following:

All states reserved the right to abolish slavery in their domains, and new states could be admitted without slavery if two-thirds of the existing states agreed—the idea being that the tier of free states bordering the Ohio River might in time wish to join the Confederacy. (States’ Rights and the Union, University of Kansas Press, 2000, p. 204)

But, the main reasons was because the North had economic dominance over the South. They were making the South pay four times as much in taxes than the Northerners did, and the North had more population than the South. They were also paying awfully high tariffs as well. The North was getting rich off of the South and were trying to tell them how to live. Also was the Constitution, many Southerners believed in strict reading of the Constitution and that the federal government should only perform those functions given to it by the Constitution. On the other hand, the Northerners believed in a loose reading of the Constitution and wanted to expand the federal government's powers. Many Southern States finally had enough and succeeded from the Union. We are not deluding ourselves about anything. What happened was the victors wrote the history books and some of the facts were either left out or rearranged. It was about state's rights and rather the South had the right to succeed from the Union or not.
To quote my source:


"When I began to study the Civil War, I realized that much of what I had been taught about it in school was either wrong or incomplete. It has been said that history is written by the victors. This is especially true when it comes to the Civil War. The Southern side of the story is rarely presented fairly in our public schools and textbooks today. I believe it is important that we as Americans know the whole truth about the Civil War. The purpose of this article is to present the South’s side of the story.

The following basic facts are undisputed: The seven states of the Deep South seceded in response to the victory of the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in the 1860 election. These states formed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy. A small federal garrison occupied Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on December 26, 1860. The Confederate government attempted to negotiate the withdrawal of the garrison from the fort. Lincoln decided not to evacuate the garrison. Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Lincoln issued a call-up for 75,000 troops to put down what he claimed was a rebellion in the South. Four more Southern states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln sent federal armies into the South. The war lasted approximately four years and ended in April 1865.

The version of the Civil War that’s taught in nearly all textbooks goes something like this: “The only reason the South wanted to leave the Union was to protect slavery. The South had no right to secede. The South started the war by firing on Fort Sumter. The war was fought over slavery. The defeat of the South was a victory for government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” This is the version of the war that I accepted for most of my life.

We will consider twelve issues relating to the Civil War: Why Did the South Secede? Did the South Have the Right to Secede? What Caused the War? Who Started the War? The Emancipation Proclamation. Republicans, the North, and Racism. Was the War Fought Over Slavery? What Happened at Andersonville Prison? Did the South Control the Federal Government Until 1860? The Reconstruction Era. The True Nature of the War. And, What If the South Had Been Allowed to Go in Peace?

Why Did the South Secede?

Nearly all textbooks give the impression that the South withdrew from the Union merely to protect the institution of slavery. This is a misleading, overly simplistic characterization. Slavery was not the only factor that led the South to secede. In fact, some of the wealthiest slaveholders opposed secession. They believed, for good reason, that slavery would actually be safer in the Union than out of it. Historian William Klingaman notes that even Lincoln argued that the South would have a harder time protecting slavery outside the Union:

But secession, Lincoln argued, would actually make it harder for the South to preserve slavery. If the Southern states tried to leave the Union, they would lose all their constitutional guarantees. . . . (Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, New York: Viking Press, 2001, p. 32)

To quote my source, "Most people aren’t aware that, even as president, Lincoln supported a proposed constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed slavery’s continuation forever. Lincoln mentioned his support for this amendment in his first inaugural address. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Lincoln acknowledged that slavery was protected by the Constitution. He also supported the Fugitive Slave Law. Therefore, some Southern statesmen didn’t believe Lincoln was going to threaten slavery’s existence. Yet, they supported secession anyway.

Most Southern leaders who advocated secession in order to protect slavery did so because they believed that Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress would try to abolish slavery by unconstitutional means and that Southern slaveholders would not receive compensation for their slaves. Southern spokesmen felt this would be unfair, since Northern slaveholders had been able to receive various types of compensation for their slaves when most Northern states had abolished slavery several decades earlier. They knew that emancipation without compensation would do great damage to the Southern economy. Critics note that many Southern statesmen voiced the view that slavery was a “positive good.” Yet, even the “positive good” advocates acknowledged that slavery had its evils and abuses. In any case, there were plenty of Southerners who opposed slavery and who were willing to see it abolished in a fair, gradual manner, as had been done in most Northern states. After all, 69-75 percent of Southern families did not own slaves. However, few Southerners believed the Republicans were interested in a fair, gradual emancipation program. The more extreme Republicans, who were known as “Radical Republicans,” certainly weren’t interested in such a program.

Few people today understand why the South distrusted the Republican Party. Not only was the Republican Party a new party, it was also the first purely regional (or sectional) party in the country’s history. Republican leaders frequently gave inflammatory anti-Southern speeches, some of which included egregious falsehoods and even threats (Susan-Mary Grant, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era, University of Kansas Press, 2000). Historian William C. Cooper points out that the Republicans “had no interest in cultivating support in the South, which they branded as basically un-American,” and that “No major party had ever before so completely repudiated the South” (Jefferson Davis, American, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, pp. 294, 295). British historian Susan-Mary Grant notes that the Republican Party that came into being in 1854 was “a sectional party with a sectional ideology . . . that was predicated on opposition to the South, to the economic, social, and political reality of that section” (North Over South, p. 17). Southerners were alarmed when dozens of Republican congressmen endorsed an advertisement for Hinton Helper’s book The Impending Crisis of the South, which spoke approvingly of a potential slave revolt that would kill untold numbers of Southern citizens in a “barbarous massacre.” The Republican Party even distributed an abridged edition of the book as a campaign document, and Republican editors added captions like “The Stupid Masses of the South” and “Revolution . . . Violently If We Must.” Southerners also noticed that the Republicans broke the long-established tradition of having a sectionally balanced presidential ticket. For decades, all major political parties had nominated tickets that consisted of one candidate from the North and one from the South. Each of the three other parties in the 1860 election followed this tradition, but not the Republican Party. Another reason that Southerners were worried about the Republicans was that the party’s leaders made it clear they would push for several policies that the South believed were harmful and unconstitutional. Many Southerners feared that Republican leaders were determined to subjugate and exploit the South by any means. With these facts in mind, perhaps it’s not hard to understand why the election of Lincoln triggered the secession of seven Southern states." As you can see it was the North was still going to get more compensation for the slaves. It was not a justification, but rather did the Southern states have a right to recieve the benefits that the North did. Again, about state's rights.

Answer 9

not that i care about the north or south, but why do people care, and the reasons for the civil war, were plentiful-slavery was on the bottom of the list.
why are we at war now...weapons of mass destruction?

Answer 10

I don't see the patriotism of celebrating a failed coup over 1/2 of the USA.