Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The cause of the Civil war, as told by South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi

I'm tired of arguing this. Maybe I've been taught wrong.  Maybe the civil war really was about something other than slavery.  If so, however, I'll have to look somewhere other than the declarations of secession from South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, that's for sure.

I quote from the South Carolina Declaration of Succession, which mentions slavery 18 times:

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Georgia (36 mentions):

The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery and to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere.
... 
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.


Mississippi (8 mentions, but it's short):

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.
...
a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
...
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.
...
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.

Texas (22 mentions):
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slaveholding States. 

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