The South Fought For Slavery

Since the Southern apologists advanced it during Reconstruction, many Americans endorse the theory that the South did not secede from the Union and fight the American Civil War over the issue of slavery. I just came across some interesting evidence. The logical way to figure out the true motivations of the Southern leaders who seceded is to simply read what they said were their motivations. The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States contains southern leaders officially cited reasons for seceding.

Georgia's reasons for seceding:
"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property."

"While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose."

Essentially, this guy is derisively describing the members of the Republican Party. He means the party is made up of political failures, followers of "condemned" theories, and corrupt individuals who want to protect special interests at the expense of everyone else. However, the thing that brings all these corrupt, evil failures together is their common mission to abolish slavery. This speaker identifies the mission of "anti-slavery" as the ultimate grievance in a long list of grievances.

Here is what Mississippi's leaders had to say about why they seceded.
"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."

This one speaks for itself.

The leader of secession, South Carolina:
"The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."

South Carolina presents the most lettered case for secession that is ostensibly least concerned with slavery, but when the speaker finally gets around to specifying the issue that all of these violations of state's rights ideas finally come into practice, it is about slavery!

Finally, this is what Texas had to offer:
"She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy."

Texas just said that the strongest ties between members of the Confederacy are those of slavery. In the first scentence, the speaker remarks that Texas only agreed to join the U.S. if it could maintain and protect "the institution of slavery."