The Civil War Really Was About Slavery. Really. It Was. [View all]

[whereisjustice]

When someone gets on TV and says "it wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights...", they are lying. And it's also a subtle political threat. What they are really saying is "we have the right to impose terminal suffering on another human being in the pursuit of profit. It is our inalienable right, we fought for it then, it was a just cause, and we'll fight for it now."

So here is the truth taken from their own words as transcribed from the proceedings of slave holding states conventions on secession, 1860 - 1861. These are some of the best sources available for learning the true cause of the US Civil War: SLAVERY.

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.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

South Carolina

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." [editor's note: this is the Fugitive Slave Clause in the original Constitution whereby the North promised to return escaped slaves to their "owners" in the South]
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
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.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

Virginia

But, Mr. President, these feelings have gone – this hope has fled.*** I no longer believe that the Union of our fathers and the Government founded upon it can be preserved.*** I have brought myself to look upon a dissolution as inevitable; nay, more, in the presence of the events that surround us, and spread their baneful influences over the land, I look upon it as a necessity, and as desirable. I can never bring myself to consent that the slaveholding States shall become the subject provinces of the non-slaveholding States, to which condition their continuance in this Union, in my judgment, will reduce them.
Mr. BENJAMIN WILSON, of Harrison—
I beg pardon of this Convention while I assign the reason that induced me to vote for the proposition of the gentleman from Fauquier (Mr. SCOTT). We all admit that war is now imminent, nay, inevitable. It cannot be denied but that it is necessary for Virginia to take some action . . . The only question about which we differ, as I understand, is as to the manner in which she should protect herself. ***It is very important, and very desirable in this crisis that we should have the unanimous concurrence and co-operation of our people. . . . There is no use in endeavoring to disguise the fact that the institution of slavery is one of the acting causes that brought about this calamity. . .*** I understand that this Ordinance cannot be operative until the people pass upon it; and whilst we are in the embarrassing predicament of having passed the Ordinance of Secession, our enemies will go on preparing, and we will be liable to attack upon any of our borders without the means of defence . . . I think it is better for us to call to our aid the border slave States, whose co-operation in the coming struggle is essential to our success
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.
http://civilwarscholars.com/2011/11/the-comet-strikes-april-17-1861-the-conclusion/

Georgia

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution.
While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp

Alabama

The day for the election of delegates has been designated in advance of the issuance of the Proclamation in order that the minds of the people may at once be directed to the subject, and that the several counties may have ample time to select candidates to represent them. Each voter of the State should immediately consider the importance of the vote he is to cast. Constitutional rights, personal security, and the honor of the State are all involved. He must decide, on the 24th December, the great and vital question of submission to an Abolition Administration, or of secession from the Union. This will be a grave and momentous issue for the decision of the people. To decide it correctly, they should understand all the facts and circumstances of the case before them. It may not be improper or unprofitable for me to recite a few of them.
Who is Mr. Lincoln, whose election is now beyond question? He is the head of a great sectional party calling itself Republican: a party whose leading object is the destruction of the institution of slavery as it exists in the slaveholding States. Their most distinguished leaders, in and out of Congress, have publicly and boldly proclaimed this to be their intention and unalterable determination. Their newspapers are filled with similar declarations. Are they in earnest? Let their past acts speak for them.
Nearly every one of the non-slaveholding States have been for years under the control of the Black Republicans. A large majority of these States have nullified the fugitive slave law, and have successfully resisted its execution. They have enacted penal statutes, punishing, by fine and imprisonment in the penitentiary, persons who may pursue and arrest fugitive slaves in said State. They have by law, under heavy penalties, prohibited any person from aiding the owner to arrest his fugitive slave, and have denied us the use of their prisons to secure our slaves until they can be removed from the State. They have robbed the South of slaves worth millions of dollars, and have rendered utterly ineffectual the only law passed by Congress to protect this species of property. They have invaded the State of Virginia, armed her slaves with deadly weapons, murdered her citizens, and seized the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry. They have sent emissaries into the State of Texas, who burned many towns, and furnished the slaves with deadly poison for the purpose of destroying their owners.

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. As her neighbor and sister State, she desires the hearty co-operation of Texas in the formation of a Southern Confederacy. She congratulates herself on the recent disposition evinced by your body to meet this wish, by the election of delegates to the Montgomery convention. Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws and institutions. Between the citizens of each exists the most cordial social and commercial intercourse. The Red river and the Sabine form common highways for the transportation of their produce to the markets of the world. Texas affords to the commerce of Louisiana a large portion of her products, and in exchange the banks of New Orleans furnish Texas with her only paper circulating medium. Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. Each of the States has an extended Gulf coast, and must look with equal solicitude to its protection now, and the acquisition of the entire control of the Gulf of Mexico in due time. No two States of this confederacy are so identified in interest, and whose destinies are so closely interwoven with each other. Nature, sympathy and unity of interest make them almost one. Recognizing these facts, but still confident in her own powers to maintain a separate existence, Louisiana regards with great concern the vote of the people of Texas on the ratification of the ordinance of secession, adopted by your honorable body on the 1st of the present month. She is confident a people who so nobly and gallantly achieved their liberties under such unparalleled difficulties will not falter in maintaining them now. The Mexican yoke could not have been more galling to "the army of heroes" of '36 than the Black republican rule would be to the survivors and sons of that army at the present day. The History and Debates of the Convention of the People of Alabama", William R. Smith
http://civilwarcauses.org/govmoore.htm

Louisiana

The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery, if Texas either did not secede or having seceded should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy. If she remains in the union the abolitionists would continue their work of incendiarism and murder. Emigrant aid societies would arm with Sharp's rifles predatory bands to infest her northern borders. The Federal Government would mock at her calamity in accepting the recent bribes in the army bill and Pacific railroad bill, and with abolition treachery would leave her unprotected frontier to the murderous inroads of hostile savages. Experience justifies these expectations. A professedly friendly federal administration gave Texas no substantial protection against the Indians or abolitionists, and what must she look for from an administration avowedly inimical and supported by no vote within her borders. Promises won from the timid and faithless are poor hostages of good faith. As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slaveholding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her a theatre for abolition emissaries from the North and from Europe.
Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention http://www.civilwarcauses.org/gwill.htm

North Carolina

From my first entrance into public life, I have been an advocate of the right of secession . . .In this connection, I would state that, in my judgment, the time has come for the Southern states yet in the Union, [who recognize] recognizing the institution of slavery, should proceed to carry out this inestimable remedy of secession, and to seek, outside of the present Union, such associations as would afford them the protection denied them within it.
Mr. Speaker, this extraordinary crisis in the history of our country will mark an epoch long to be remembered. It will stand out boldly, in all coming ages, as a monument of the stupendous folly and wicked criminality of demented fanaticism; for no unprejudiced man can deny that the fanaticism of anti-slavery zealots has involved the country in the troubles now precipitating its destruction. Through the North, it has advanced with continuously-accelerated pace, gathering strength in its progress, until it has obtained control of the dominant party of the country, and prostrated all other parties before it. It now seeks to pass the boundary, and carry out its nefarious purposes in the South ; it seeks to arm brother against brother and father against son; it denounces slavery as the "sum of all villanies,"and proclaims its purpose to extirpate the institution. It has become a demon of destruction that fain would be " fed by rites more savage than the priests of Moloch taught." It now craves to satiate its gloating appetite with the blood of countless hecatombs of southern victims. To curb and suppress this fell spirit of fanaticism, the northern States should have exerted their energies; they should have inflicted condign punishment on the seditious agitators who nourished it. We had a right to expect this much of them. Have they done this? Not by any means. On the contrary, State Legislatures have encouraged it in almost every imaginable shape and form.
(Thomas Ruffin, 20 Feb 1861, in the US House of Representatives, delegate, representing Alamance County, to the May 1861 North Carolina Secession Convention in Raleigh, representative of NC at the Virginia Peace Conference in Washington)
https://archive.org/details/staterightsstate00ruff

Arkansas

1st. Resolved, That the platform of the party know^n as the black republican party, contains unconstitutional dogmas, dangerous in their tendency and highly derogatory to the rights of slave states, and among them the insulting, injurious and untruthful enunciation of the right of the African race in this country to social and political equality with the whites.

2d. Resolved, That it is the sense of this convention, from the pn?t history of the pai'ty, known as the black repubHcan party from the past action o\ its leaders, and their course in the present crisii!, and from the acts, utterances and conduct of its newly elected president, that said party intends to abide by and carry out, if possible, its insulting and unconstitutional platform.

3d. Resolved, That the seceded states have ample justification for having dissolved the tics w'hich bound them to the old Federal Union, in the constant and unconstitutional political warfare made by the party, known as the black republican party, upon the institutions of the slave states, wdiich warfare has culminated in the election of a president by that party, by a purely sectional vote — upon an unconstitutional platform, the principles of which, if carried out, would utterly ruin the South.

4th. Resolved, That this convention cannot shut its eyes upon the fact that the government of the United States is now under the control of said black republican party, and that said party has power to use every arm of the same, except, perhaps, the judicial.

5th. Resolved, That in the opinion of this convention it is a conclusion clearly resulting from the foregoing that every feeling of honor, interest and sympathy demand I hat the State of Arkansas should discontinue her present political relations with the United States of America, and unite herself with the Confederate States of x\merica.

Mi\ Kelley moved to refer said resolutions to the committee on federal relations; but afterwards withdrew his motion.

Mr. Bush offered the folio v.'ing as a substitute:
Resolved, That if the republican party should increase in strength, and thereby be able to carry out its purposes in the federal government, Arkansas, acting in concert with er sister border states, has ample means of resistance, and is fully able at any time to resist any unconstitutional aggressions, and wc have no need, therefore, to adopt, hastily, this last resort.

Great solace is indulged in by some, that it is the avowed purpose of black republican domination to permit slavery to remain unmolested in the states where it nov/ exists; whilst it is as distinctly announced upon the other hand, that the institution shall be denied all power of expansion over territory now possessed or hereafter to be acquired.

The laws of physical science perceive no stand point, from which there is neither progression nor retrogade action. Peoples, governments, and the institutions of government, must either recede or advance. The area of slavery must be exttndcd correhdive with its antagonism, or it will be put speedily in the " coarse of ultimate extinction." It must invest the southern portion of North America, from the Atlantic to the Paciiic, south of 3G deg. and SO min. north latitude, to be permanent; else when hemmed in by a cordon of fire, " like a scorpion, it will sting itself to death." Pu.t in the bounds, and it will soon have a general goal-delivery.

The extension of slavery is the vital 'point of the whole controversy between the North and the South, as is plainly manifested by the persistent opposition of the northern people to its being engrafted upon any newly acquired territory, whether south or north of the negro line. Does there exist inside the borders of Arkansas any diversity of sentiment, as to the religtous or moral right of holding negro slaves? Do any imagine that the non-slaveholder will be less involved pecuniarily and socially, in the extirpation of this institution than the slaveholder himself. The productive portion of the soil of Arkansas is so geographically circumstanced as to preclude the idea that it can be successfully cultivated by white labor. From these more fertile regions is produced by slave labor in stiperabundance, the staple commodity, cotton — justl}" stiled commercial king of Europe and America. From the exportation of this article alone, our people receive annually an influx of capital, which permeates the hill-tops and the valleys of every section and portion of the state. The cotton planter of the South exposed to insolubrious clim.es, indeed is but the factor for his northern neighbor — inhabitino: the mountain region, blessed with health, free trade and remunerative prices for his grain, frnit, stock and other articles produced for and sold in a southern market. Who colud find a market for the surplus products of North Arkansas, if the more genial soil of the South was deprived ot slave labor? God in his omnipotent wisdom, I believe, created the cotton plant — the African slave — and the lower Mississippi valley, to clothe and feed the world, and a gallant race of men and women produced upon its soil to defend it, and execute that decree.
https://archive.org/stream/journalofbothses00arka/journalofbothses00arka_djvu.txt

Tennessee

THE ninth section of the third article of the Constitution, provides that, on extraordinary occasions, the Governor may convene the General Assembly. Believing the emergency contemplated, to exist at this time I have called you together. In welcoming you to the capitol of the State, I can but regret the gloomy auspices under which we meet. Grave and momentous issues have arisen, which, to an unprecedented degree, agitate the public mind and imperil the perpetuity of the Government.

The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizen; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party, whose bond of union is uncompromising hostility to the rights and institutions of the fifteen Southern States, have produced a crisis in the affairs of the country, unparalleled in the history of the past, resulting already in the withdrawal from the Confederacy of one of the sovereignties which composed it, while others are rapidly preparing to move in the same direction.

To evade the issue thus forced upon us at this time, without the fullest security for our rights, is, in my opinion, fatal to the institution of slavery forever. The time has arrived when the people of the South must prepare either to abandon or to fortify and maintain it. Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity, and domestic happiness.
Call for a Referendum on a Tennessee Secession Convention, Tennessee Governor Isham G. Harris, January 7, 1861
http://www.americancivilwar.com/documents/isham_harris.html

Texas

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
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/south_secede/south_secede_texas.cfm

Alexander H. Stephens, Confederate VP, Savannah, Georgia, March 12, 1861

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. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. 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. 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. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
Alexander H. Stephens, Confederate VP, Savannah, Georgia, March 21, 1861 http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

Upon consideration of the above... for all the bloodshed and suffering of the Civil War, the rich and powerful have simply turned to Asia, Mexico, S. America for their ready supply of oppressed labor. The means to slavery has gotten more technical, more politically correct - the global economy, free trade, saving the 3rd world, etc. The apology rhetoric is also hauntingly familiar to the modern revisionists defending our historic reliance on oppressed workforces. Today we hear "people are so much better off as oppressed workers under free trade" , "their race predisposes them to doing mentally tedious tasks under high stress working conditions", "Asians are so much smarter and harder working" and so on.

Today, as it was 150 years ago, making money is about access to a cheap, carefully controlled workforce and an unregulated working environment. We haven't changed as much as we think we have.