The Confederacy Was Not About Slavery

Follow this link
ttp://www.csawardept.com/history/defense/index.html
as it will explain things better than I can.

Also, as a Confederate, I can honestly say I harbor no ill will towards any man just because of the color of his skin as can all other *true* Confederates.

Why do I bring this up? Someone mentioned in the gun control thread about the Civil War being fought to free the slaves.

Also, it wasn't the Civil War. Look it up in the dictionary and you'll see that the term does not apply. The War Between the States is favored by many, though I tend to favor The Second War for Independence.

 

It is commonly known as the Civil War because that's what it was. War Between the States is a common Southern term for it.


It didn't start explicitly about Slavery, but that was the root of the matter, and I don't think anyone can honestly deny that.

 

Also, as a Confederate, I can honestly say I harbor no ill will towards any man just because of the color of his skin as can all other *true* Confederates.

Er, unless you're over 140 years old, I don't think you can say you are or ever were a Confederate.

You're a U.S. citizen. Stop living in the past, and get used to it.

 

No, it wasn't a civil war. A civil war is where two or more parties are fighting for the establishment of a single government - theirs - over the others in a single nation. The South did not want to impose themselves on the North and wanted only independence. Therefore, the term does not apply to Lincoln's nonsense.

<<EDIT: Thank you Warlord....You have now been banned. If you did not read the TOS, you can't be faulted for not knowing our language policies, but since you agreed to them, you are held to them>>

Warlord Zsinj

 

While I probably would have sided with the confederates during the Civil War, I now think it was for the best that the Union won because in light of the last 100 years the outcome of our nation could be very different if the confederates were in power.

 

"Lincoln's nonsense"?

See the last line of my last post...

 

You think the Confederacy is the past? I think you need to shed some ignorance my friend.

To this very day the causes for the Confederacy live on through the action of the United States government. Now, I don't remember every thing that's gotten me mad over the years, but I do remember one quote by the Attorney General in relation to making federal laws against doctor assisted suicide: ".. wrong no matter what State law says." <<EDIT: YOu banned yourself with this language. I didn't do it, you did it>> I'm supposed to accept that? IT DOES MATTER WHAT STATE LAW SAYS! THAT'S WHY THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED IN THE FIRST PLACE!

As I've said before, follow the link, read the article.


Warlord Zsinj

 

A civil war is a war between two factions of a country... if the North and South were at war, how could it not be a civil war???

Also, if you *really* are a Confederate, do you go around using Confederate money???

 

<<EDIT: I think you get the drift by now>>

 

Oh, shutup. Whats wrong with this guy? He's swearing at everybody.

 

You think his swearing's bad?

Look at his spelling!

 

Warlord,

Yes the Civil War was not fought strictly about slavery. I do agree with you about that.

But remember that the winners write the history. The north won and they were calling it the Civil War, therefore it IS "The Civil War".

And you gotta remember, the Confederate States of America doesn't exist because you all lost the war. We're all under the USA.

 

Yeah, you got your ass kicked. Your government fell apart and got assimilated back into the US 140 years ago!!! So stop the hick nonsense already.

And slavery was the whole point of the war. The plantation owners wanted to keep the slaves to maintain their farms. And those who were poor and white, wanted to maintain their "superiority" over the slaves. The whole uproar over states right was an excuse used by the South to find a loophole and leave the US.

One final point, the US has always maintained a powerful federal government. That's why the Articles of Confederation were thrown out and the Constitution was adopted. Do states set some of their own rules? Yes, but they still fall under the scrutiny of the federal government (aka the Supreme Court).

EDIT: And it's not the most inbiased site, is it? It omits LARGE amounts of information to make the Confederacy seem better than it was. I find this part laughable:

If secession is wrong, we owe the British Parliament a huge apology, and whole lot of back taxes!

The reason the whole war started was because you guys fired first on Ft. Sumter. Up until that point, there had been no military conflict between the two sides.

 

Darn, I made it to this party after it was over!

 

I use the term as a politcal alingment as do all the others.

There are others? Now I'm worried.

 

Perhaps Yankees call it the "Civil War" to imply that there were no good guys or bad guys in the war.

 

As been said the Civil war wasnt strictly about Slavery, but it was the heart of the war.

States Rights is what the modern day southerners shout. What right did they want their state to have? They didnt want the feds to take away their slaves.

Poor farmers didnt have slaves but nor did they want freed slaves to compete with.

Slavery was the core of the issue

 

Jedi Xen and others are right - there was more to the war than slavery, but that was a, if not the, core issue.

No state has the right to secede from the Union, or else the Union is meaningless. Anyone who doubts this (now long-settled) point should go back and read Lincoln. First Inaugural Address: "Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments ... If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it - break it, so to speak - but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? ... [It follows that] no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances." Second Inaugural Address: "All knew that this interest [slavery] was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it."

What a truly great, in every sense of the word, man.

By the way, I'm a born Southerner but I don't understand, and have no sympathy for, those who still believe the South was right on the issues of secession and slavery.

 

If states can't seceed, then the union is forced rather than voluntary. It was voluntary before the "Civil War." The war was a huge turning point in US history, better or worse.

 

Now there's an incisive insight

Again: "Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."

There's nothing forced about the Union; each state entered into the Union voluntarily, the original states even before the Constitution was written. The Constitution was written "to form a more perfect Union" than that which already existed. The Civil War certainly was a major turning point in national history (for the better), but not because it suddenly settled the point that states could not secede. That is, it did settle it, but that truth already inhered in the terms of the "fundamental law" of the country.

 

I'd also like to add that, as stated in the Civil War documentary of Ken Burns' fame, if the South hadsucceeded in seceding, it would have been disastrous for them, and eventually probably the North as well. The South's economy was entirely based upon agriculture and slavery. This could not have survived ....tbc

 

The North would have suffered but survived. Food can be bought with machine made goods and ore, products made in the North.

 

I would like to start this post off as saying that I see the Civil War as the

Second American Revolution.

Why?

Well the Civil War finally settled the dispute on whether you would have a strong federal government or a more independent states rights systems which was around during the early Republic.

It finally settled the issue that our founding fathers avoided and other avoided for 76 years of our history, by either ignoring the issue, or by coming up with Compromises, such as the Compromise of 1820, and then later on the Compromise of 1850.


There is not just one reason why the Civil War happened. It's a multitude of things combining into one big **** sandwhich.

1. The expansion of slavery into the frontier with the land we aquired in 1848 from the war with Mexico had a big part due to the fact that the North and South were worried about losing representation in the House and Senate. Example would be the fight over the Kansas area, and we had the Kansas Nebraska act which got rid of the Compromise of 1820.

2. Both radicals on both sides of the issue. Pro and anti slavery people were getting more and more aggresive and violent. The South was scared to death of slave revolts and uprisings and with men like John Brown and his actions at harpers ferry and pamplets distributed in the South on freeing the slaves the South was not going to put up with someone wrecking their way of life which they or at least the elite class who could own slaves thought was their right to property.

3. A carry on from point 2. The South had several state laws and federal laws on the books which saw the black slave as property and saw any action trying to deny these rights as a sign of Northern aggresion trying to first deny them of their property and way of life and second to ruin it's economic situation which was based on slave labor not wage labor in the North.

4. When Lincoln won the South saw that they must do something quickly and get away from those who would threaten their way of life and so the left the Union as Burns points out in his great piece of work which really should be a bit longer and more detailed.

However you cannot say that slavery was the reason, or that states rights were the issue, or that radicals on both sides had grown more passionate. Rather collect all of that and roll it into one big explanation of why the Civil War happened and why it had to happen, because it was the only way to resolve these very issues.

The problem with Americans and others is that they want the quick 1 word answer to why the Civi War happened. They want the quick and abriged version but like many historical events you can't give a easy answer. There simply is not one big reason, but a mulitude of reasons. If you look at the people living in the South when slavery was going on, you had a small % of elite or middle area white males who could have slaves and could afford them. This is not the 28,000 dead who fought on the side of the South during the battle of Gettysburg. However most southerns saw the North coming in and telling them how to live to be a direct threat to their way of life, honor of their family and they would fight and die for that honor. The south was very aristocratic and keeping the family name, property was first priority.

 

Or the people who talk about "The War of Northern Aggression!"

If they had won, you'd have a total Balkanization of the US. It would be insane.

It happened a long long time ago. The Confederates lost. Get over it.



(I once got into an argument with someone who STILL called it the War of Northern Aggression, and insisted that Lincoln was the AntiChrist. She also said Martin Luther King was a pervert and a communist, and referenced a site run by David Duke. "But she's not a racist!" -gag-)

 

Whether or not the Civil War was fought for the reasons of slavery actually depend on the individual reasons of the men and women who fought that war. I'm quite sure that some ppl fought because they did feel that it would eradicate slavery. There seems to be a new (actually rather old) notion that slavery played a minor part in the conflict. This revision of history is absurd. The role of slavery can not be underplayed. If on considers slavery to be an economic institution. Also one must look at the fact that the entire debate about slavery was banned from discussion in government for a time. No, slavery was a major catalyst in the War between the States.