For the last time, the American Civil War was not about states’ rights

[markpkessinger]

NOTE: This is possibly one of the best debunkings of neo-confederate historical revisionism regarding the Civil War that I have seen anywhere to date.

[font size=5]For the last time, the American Civil War was not about states’ rights[/font]

?w=800

< . . . .>

. . . (T)he historiography of the Civil War is somewhat unique. Rarely in human history has a conflict’s losing side been lent such considerable say in how the textbooks remember it. As such, American social studies curricula have long been hobbled by one of the most pervasive myths in US history: that the Civil War was fought to preserve (or undermine) the spectral concept of “states’ rights.”
It’s a self-delusion some use to justify neo-Confederate pride: stars-and-bars bumper stickers, or remnants of Confederate iconography woven into some of today’s state flags. “It’s about Southern pride,” they insist. “It’s about heritage”—forgetting, intentionally perhaps, that slavery and its decade-spanning echoes are very much a part of the collective American heritage. Confederate denialism, in the form of states’ rights advocacy, permits sentimentalists to keep their questionable imagery without having to address its unsavory associations.

< . . . . >

In its constitution, Confederate leaders explicitly provided for the federal protection of slaveholding:

“In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”

It’s a provision that clashes jarringly with neo-Confederate mythos—how could the South secede to preserve states’ rights if its own constitution mandated legal, federally protected slavery across state borders?

<. . . . >

[randys1]

1. And plantations were not plantations, they were concentration camps. Thanks Thom Hartmann

for saying that

[markpkessinger]

2. +1 n/t

[Panich52]

3. Yep. It was about states' rights to be morally abhorrent by viewing Af-Ams and other non-whites as

inferior, thereby perfectly fine for enslaving and treating as animals (except, of course, when they got a hard on and raped those female 'animals').

[malthaussen]

4. For far from the last time, the Civil War was not monocausal.

Pushing the "it was all about slavery" discourse distorts the subject as much as ignoring the slavery does.

-- Mal

[TreasonousBastard]

7. No one's listening. The financial vise-grip the Northern banks, traders, and...

industrialists had on the South had a little bit to do with it.

Slavery was a dying institution, although that didn't stop a whole bunch of white folk, many not slave owners themselves, from trying to keep it alive. Poor crop prices, lack of investment, new states and territories economically and politically aligned with Northern states...

Likely remembering that only about a third of the colonists supported the first revolution and it worked, no doubt a few rabblerousing Southerners had what they thought was a good idea. To be left alone by the North for whatever they wanted to do, including selling cotton to England and keeping house servants in New Orleans must have seemed like the Impossible Dream to some of them.

I don't think illiteracy and acting like assholes was in the plan, but not all plans work as expected.

[joeybee12]

8. Good Lord...yeah, something as emotional as "tarrifs" would have caused the war...

While there were diagreements, you take slavery out of the equation no war...it's that simple.

[Art_from_Ark]

13. Yeah, tariffs were no big deal

except for tariffs like the "Tariff of Abominations". And then there was the Morill tariff of 1860, which the South vehemently opposed, and which was passed only after South Carolina and 6 other states had seceded.

Even with slavery in the equation, there might not have been a war if the South hadn't fired on Ft. Sumter.

But then again, the original goal of the war was mostly to reunite the Union. As Lincoln himself wrote to Horace Greely on August 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

[Journeyman]

9. Quite true. Very few human actions are traceable to a single cause. . .

let alone an upheaval as large and encompassing as the American Civil War.

It's easier, however, for people to attribute singular causes for vast human conflicts. It makes it easier for them to comprehend. Ultimately, continued exploration proves it highly unsatisfactory, but until an individual's research brings about this realization, there's little opportunity for persuasion.

[markpkessinger]

14. I have never said it was "all" about slavery . . .

. . . nor would I, and neither does the article say that. Of course there were multiple causes/issues in play (although I think Southern apologists often make some of the other issues out to be more significant than they actually were). But the article is debunking the very intentional pushing of a narrative that attempts to minimize, or in some instances exclude altogether, slavery as one being foremost, or at least very high in priority, among those causes/issues. That narrative is inaccurate as well as culturally toxic. You are right that one cannot say it was "all about slavery." But at the same time, one cannot say, "it had little or nothing to do with slavery."

[marym625]

5. K&R

Although I am positive, it won't be the last time

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. All one needs to do is read the declarations of secession from various Confederate States

Last edited Mon Jun 22, 2015, 09:09 PM - Edit history (1)

From Mississippi for example:

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.

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.

-more-

http://www.civilwar-online.com/2011/01/january-9-1861-mississippi-secedes-from.html

[d_r]

11. One of the ones

That makes me bash my head is the tarrifs. "The north was keeping the southern farmers form fairly selling their natural resources products." Dude, what was that product? It was cotton grown so that slave labor. It had everything to do with slavery.

[scarletwoman]

12. *kick*