"[Our situation] illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established." - Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America by Alexander Massa
(libertarian)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Confederacy is looked down upon by many today because of widespread ignorance about the Civil War and history in general. As any educated person could tell you, the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It was a conflict over states' rights and whether or not the South had a legal right to seceede from the United States and form a separate independent nation.
The fact is that the Confederacy was truer to the original Constitution of the United States than the Union itself was. The Confederate States of America was a country in which the states had actual rights, and a country in which the federal government did not have hegemony over them. This was in stark contrast to the United States, which was turned into a virtual dictatorship under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln, who today is treated as a hero but never actually was one.
The reason many associate slavery with the Civil War is because the secession of the Southern states largely resulted from the heated slavery debate in the United States. However, the war wasn't over the legality of slavery; it was over the legality of secession and the states' rights to leave a Union they joined a hundred or so years earlier.
If you look at how our nation was founded and came to be, it can be argued that the states voluntarily agreed to enter into a coalition of independent states (which eventually became the United States). If this is true, then what prevents said states from voluntarily pulling out of the Union. If they voluntarily joined, who is to say that they cannot also voluntarily seceede?
The Civil War was started by Federal forces, there is no doubt about it. There is a reason the Civil War is known in the South as the "War of Northern Aggression". It was started by the United States to retake what it saw as lost provinces. The problem there is, that lost land was an independent nation, and the North was invading it. A large problem during the Civil War was that the Lincoln Administration refused to recognize the CSA as an independent nation. They considered the Civil War a war against a rebel insurrection, not a war against an independent nation. Perhaps if they had treated the CSA as a nation instead of a group of rebels, the war could've been averted.
We must remember that the CSA was fighting a defensive war. They weren't fighting to take over the United States. Rather, the United States was fighting an agressive war to conquer the South. The Confederates just wanted to be left alone. They weren't fighting a war for empire, like the North was. They were fighting a war for independence.
So if the war was the fault of the North, then why is the South constantly demonized and it's flag disgraced? The reason is, quite simply, because the victor always writes the history of any war. Because the North won, we look at the Civil War from a decidedly (biased) Northern position. If the South won, we would look at the war much differently. Children would be learning that Abraham Lincoln was a traitor, instead of Jefferson Davis.
So let us look at the sides of the Civil War without bias. The North was fighting to prevent the dissolution of the Union. The South was fighting for independence and the right to seceede from what they saw (rightly so, I might add) as a federal government which was quickly becoming tyrannical. There is no Constitutional provision that bars secession. So if we look at this conflict from a Constitutional perspective, the South would be the side that is in line with the Constitution. They were fighting for states' rights, which is an important part of the Constitution that has been neglected for a long time now.
I know many will brand me a racist because I support the Confederacy. However, both sides were equally racist, and slavery was actually permitted in the North. The border states, such as Kentucky, were slave states which remained in the Union. So if the war was over slavery, the North would've had to fight itself as well as the South. Simply put, the Civil War was a struggle over states' rights. And with that in mind, I side with the South.
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Alexander, Thank you for correctly depicting one of the most misrepresented periods of our history. As I grew up in the North, I like most, heard the "northern version." Moving to the South and marrying the great-great-great granddaugher of a CSA general spurred my interest in more serious study of the history, confirming your analysis.
A similar case can be made for Southern secession based on federal tax policy that punished the agrarian economy of the South versus the industrial economy of the North. Unfair taxation led to the American Revolution and the rebelious insurection against England that we laud, while vilifying the South for the exact same actions.
Interestingly things that never get mentioned in Northern version of history is that many areas of the South were already voluntarily eliminating slavery prior to the war. Union County Georgia was named that to reflect their views. Prior to the war, fewer than 5% of Southerners owned slaves. Most whites in the South were simple farmers or shopkeepers who either didn't want slaves or couldn't afford them. The average house slave in today's dollars cost over $120,000. How many of us in today's economy could afford one, let alone enough to run a farm. While horror stories exist (and were magnified by Northern historians to justify the war), many slaves were treated as members of the family, working alongside their owners to make a subsistance living.
Likewise, many of us have visions of white English or Americans raiding African villages, capturing and hauling off prisoners to become slaves. The truth is that many American slaves were sold to Portugese slave traders by the victors of African tribal wars.
I don't write this to justify or validate slavery--it was and is certainly abhorant, and a disgrace on our country, but l also believe that we should tell the truth in our history books rather than what is politically correct.
Alexander, One minor correction to your history: It can be argued that the CSA General Beauregard actually started the war by firing on Fort Sumter; however, what historians often forget to report is that the South offered to buy the fort, but Lincoln refused; offered to allow the troops at the fort to leave peacefully and even to transport them to the North, but the Major commanding the garrison refused; and that the North was invading Charleston by trying to resupply the fort by force.
What is more important is to draw the parallel between what caused the Civil War and our current political situation. As in 1860/61, a president was elected that insisted on imposing federal authority on the states, ignored the mandates of the Constitution, and imposed onerous taxes on some while favoring others. Hopefully our country is smart enough and mature enough to avoid another armed conflict—somehow, I fear that we are not.
I had this same argument with my wife and a couple of friends over cocktails recently. You are absolutely correct in your report and any search for the facts will confirm that with minimal effort. It is amazing how ignorant and well programmed we have become over the years.
You are right, the Civil War -- -and the period leading up to it --- are often misrepresented in our classrooms, and popular culture (movies, music).
The truth about the Confederacy is perhaps more grotesque than we dare teach in school. For some reason, it has become politically incorrect to show what the Southern leaders themselves bragged about at the time, and the actions they took.
For example, no text book mentions the Five Ultimatums by the Southern leaders in March of 1861. The ultimatums were made by the same people who wrote the Southern Constitution - and the ultimatums were issued at the same time.
Never mind what is in those Ultimatums -- they would be the most important issues, as express by the Southern leaders, at the time.
What were the Five Ultimatums? All these ultimatums were about slavery. The First Ultimatum was that slavery must be spread -- by force - into the territories, meaning at the time, Kansas.
Never heard of those ultimatums? That's really my point.
The ultimatums were announced proudly and loudly by Southern leaders themselves, and cheered in the Southern press. Why then are they not referred to proudly and loudly now? Or even, at all?
See the Richmond newspapers March 23, 1861, where the headline about the Ultimatums reads "The TRUE ISSUE"
The true issue, according to Southern leaders THEMSELVES -- not some historian writing later -- was to force slavery into the territories, especially Kansas.
Now, Kansas had just won the war "Bloody Kansas" and voted an astonishing 98% to 2% against allowing slavery.
The Southern leaders -- officially, loudly, and proudly, then demanded, under threat of war against the US --- that slavery be FORCED into Kansas and the territories.
Clearly people in Kansas did not want slavery. But even more clearly, the Southern leader's first ultimatum was to FORCE slavery into Kansas. The SOuth had just declared itself a separate nation, and the FIRST act by this new nation, was to issue an ultimatum to force slavery into areas not under it's control, and more oddly, to demand the US force slavery there.
How's that for state's rights?
Were the Southern Ultimatums the odd and goofy "mistake" by a few radicals in Montgomery ? No.
The ultimatums written by the exact same people who wrote the Southern Constitution and named the government. Who officially seceded from the US. There ultimatums were simply the articulation of what the South was up in arms about for decades.
We don't like to admit it now, but the spread of slavery was the main goal of those in power in the South, from 1820 on.
From 1820's on, Southern leaders suppressed free speech in the South, via the "anti incendiary" laws. Before 1820, there were 130 anti slavery publications in the South, newspapers, pamphleteers, book publishers.
But all that was shut down, by violence if needed, but shut down they were. Ships were searched, the mail was searched, and if anyone was accused of owning the wrong book, they were searched. Men were tried and tortured for owning any written material that "could cause a slave to be dissatisfied".
The growing number of slaves, and the increasing fear of slave rebellion, was the cause of the anti -incendiary laws. The fear of slave rebellion was so strong, that some in the South called for the arrest and execution of anyone in the NORTH who dared publish books against slavery. This was a life and death issue to many people in the South, who lived in fear of slave unrest.
Jefferson Davis insisted that the "African slave was the most contented laborer on earth" until "the evil serpent whispered the lie of freedom" into his ear. Slaves fighting back, rebelling, running away- the Southern leaders blamed on the vile abolitionist, who "stirred up" the slaves.
So a monumental effort was made to stop the "evil serpent" from whispering anything about freedom into the slaves ears. The slave owners could not grasp that the slaves THEMSELVES did not want to be slaves, to be beaten, to have their children sold, and all the other horrors that I won't go into.
Debow, the founded of Debow's Review -- said Almighty God silenced the opposition to slavery -- but actually it was anti-indendiary laws, and the punishment of torture that silenced most opposition.
If you ever wondered why other states could end slavery -- but the South never did -- it was because those states that ended slavery, did it by free speech, by public discourse and voting. By books and pamphlets and sermons against slavery.
Even sermons against slavery were punished in the South. Slavery might well have ended decades sooner if the people of the South were allowed free speech, free press, and freedom of religion. Slavery could not thrive where it was debated, where it's evils were discussed, and where people were allowed to vote on it.
Just speaking out against slavery, the Southern leaders found out, would cause unrest among slaves. You can not have the slaves even learning about the dispute, you must keep the slaves themselves unaware of the world which was denouncing slavery. Davis called it "the evil serpent" whispering the LIE of freedom, but it was actually the truth, shouting the RIGHT of freedom, that Davis and others did not want the slave to hear.
Slaves could not be kept as slaves if they were upset, if they were rebellious. It would simply take too much force and violence to suppress slaves once they knew there was a an entire different idea about life -- freedom. The South had to keep the slave in the dark, and tell him God ordained his plight. Slavery could not tolerate anything else.
The only way anyone can romanticize the South's actions in the Civil War, is to be purposely blind to what really happened between 1820-1861. To be blind to the violent suppression of free speech, to be blind to the South's violent attacks to spread slavery, and to be blind to the Southern Ultimatums issued by the Southern leaders in 1861.
Keep in mind, Southern leaders boasted that slavery was "the foundation -- the cornerstone" of their new nation. Davis and Stephens BOTH bragged about it.
Davis said "Slavery was a Divine Gift" and that the South had always assumed slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Stephens said the Southern Confederacy was based "on the great moral truth" that God ordained white men to enslave the inferior black race.
What their leaders bragged about, what their ultimatums demanded, what their actions showed - somehow is over overlooked, particularly by people trying to romanticize the Confederacy.
Learn what happened from 1820 -1861, and learn about the Southern Ultimatums to force slavery into Kansas and the territories, and then compare that to the romanization.
Posted By: George Purvis
Date: 2010-12-31 13:26:43
FCO,
I see you have found another place to post your ranting and raving.
If this Mark person is you who posted to Civil War memory then, I see that even Kevin Levin couldn\'t follow these rants, and you didn\'t have the knowledge to make an informed reply to him --http://cwmemory.com/2010/12/08/states-rights-v-slavery-no-discernible-difference/ Everyone knows that Kevin hates the Confederates and looks mostly for derogatory things to post about the Confederacy and your ranting didn\'t even set well with him.
You are bad about not posting sources therefore, I have spent time chasing down your 5 Ultimatums. Theses ultimatums as you call them are nothing more than rights any person should of the 1800s would have .. Now I should mention that you conveniently forgot to post this as part of your rant --
That the African slave trade shall be prohibited by such laws of Congress as shall effectually prevent the same.
FCO see the problem in trying to get a civil, factual debate with folks like you, is the fact that you really didn\'t do the research yourself, you honestly haven\'t a clue about what you are talking about, and you haven’t the backbone to defend your statements. As I have said, I have found these rants on several websites, posted by either one individual using several usernames or there is a group of people copying and pasting the same un-sourced, biased, hateful, trash on many websites Either way it doesn\'t matter to me I have traced this crap back to what I believe is the main source of information from which you copied and pasted. This source is located at
posted by SEEKER. You are stealing another persons work!!!!!!
If you really do know something of the conflict, then you are invited to take me on in a factual, civil debate. I am going to post your name and your \"post\" to the website I do research for. You are free to invite all your buddies who post the same trash to defend these statements.
The New England states, whose citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of secession through their prominent men; and in the convention which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the disruption of the Union unless the war should be discontinued. The assertion of this right has been repeatedly made by their politicians when their party was weak, and Massachusetts, the leading state in hostility to the South, declares in the preamble to her constitution, that the people of that commonwealth "have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free sovereign and independent state, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may hereafter be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in congress assembled.
Excerpt from Robert E Lee letter to Lord ActonLexington- 15 Dec. 1866
LOL..."The South fought on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause for quarrel, than slavery"...Col. John Singleton Mosby...The Confederacy's Gray Ghost.
Short, sweet, and a silver bullet right through the black heart of the Confederate beast.
BTW...Your entire post is nothing but a re-tread of the same tired, bogus, politically correct dogma, known as the Lost Cause Myth. Been around for years.
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