The Southern Lie

[marjaerwin]

No, the war was not about "states' rights," it was about slavery.

For decades the slaveholders in the South had sought to expand slavery into the West and impose slavery on the North.

If they had cared about "states' rights," they wouldn't have forced the Fugitive Slave Act and the Mexican War, and wouldn't have sent federal marshals to force Massachusetts to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act. If they had cared about "states' rights" they wouldn't have invaded Kansas in 1854 and neutral Kentucky in 1861. If they had cared about local autonomy they would not have invaded eastern Tennessee or western Virginia in 1861.

But they went to war for slavery, by their own admission. It's in the various articles of secession and the Cornerstone Speech.

Now it's easy to understand why Southern institutions push this lie, but it's harder to understand why the wider public has bought into the lie. I think it absolves the Southern politicians for the war, but just as importantly, it absolves their Northern counterparts for turning their backs on reconstruction, land reform, and civil rights for the freed victims of the slave system.

Inspired by the recent Salon excerpt from Tracy Thompson's The New Mind of the South

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/16/the_south_still_lies_about_the_civil_war

And by James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me

http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=22520482

By the way, tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. Given the topic, let's remember that Saint Patrick was himself enslaved by Irish raiders for six years before escaping.

Comments

[marjaerwin]

I certainly don't mean to defend the Unionist war aims. Only to expose a strain of history I had to deal with in Virginia, about the Confederate war aims. I mean... tarriffs? as a major cause of the war?

I think the presence of slavery made secession more explosive than it would have been in the absence of slavery. First off, slavery was itself war. An independent slavery-based state would require substantial armed forces to patrol its borders and prevent escapes. Second, slavery was unpopular in large areas of the south, some of which sided with the Union. Lincoln couldn't abandon west Virginia. Conversely, Davis couldn't permit a series of pro-Union states from west Virginia through east Tennessee, which would have made it infinitely harder for the Confederacy to patrol its borders. Third, Fire-Eaters had been demanding the expansion of slavery. Sooner or later they would attempt again to seize Kansas, or New Maxico, or even Pennsylvania. Fourth, the secession of some slave states destroyed the 'balance' between the slave states and the 'free' states. If it left only a few slave states, as it did, it could easily lead to civil war within these remaining slave states between factions trying to keep them in the Union and factions trying to shift them into the Confederacy. Isn't that what happened in Missouri? Fifth, if Maryland secedes, it leads to a Fort Sumter crisis over DC.

So instead of Bleeding Kansas, independence would lead to a long bleeding border from the Atlantic to the plains. Given their actions in the previous decade, I'm not sure the Confederates really aimed for independence, so much as to provoke a war - and grossly underestimating the North militarily - expecting to conquer the remainder of the Union.