Next Time They Say the Civil War Wasn't About Slavery...
Next time someone says the Civil War wasn't about slavery, show them the Mississippi Articles of Secession
It seemed to me like an indisputable fact. A truism going all the way back to elementary school--like ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c.’ The Civil War was fought to decide the issue of slavery.
But when I started writing about race and history, some people retorted, “The Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights.”
They tried to frame the nation’s bloodiest war as a battle over jurisdiction. They claimed the federal government had overstepped its Constitutional boundaries and were telling the people of the South how to run their own local governments and communities.
If someone says the Civil War was about states’ rights you can tell them two things:
Yes. The Civil War was about state’s rights--the supposed right of states to enslave human beings for life and treat them like property.
Actually, “history has the receipts.”™ If you look at what the Confederate states actually said about why they broke from the Union, you’ll see in their own words that the issue was about the fate of race-based chattel slavery.
Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union after South Carolina. On January 9, 1861, the state legislature put its reasons for separation in writing.
Here’s what this group of white men said…
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.
Did you catch that? Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.
The Mississippi legislature made it clear that the main reason they wanted to break the Union and soon go to war had everything to do with slavery, or in their words, the greatest material interest of the world.
The Articles go on to state that people of African descent were uniquely suited to slavery because they could endure the hot and humid climate of the South.
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.
Notice also the copious references to racial capitalism.
People were willing to go to war over slavery because money was at stake. They said, “a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
Many people say that racism is America’s original sin. It would be more accurate to say that racism is America’s original symptom and its original sin is greed.
The pursuit of a bigger bottom line justified slavery as well as convict-leasing, debt peonage (sharecropping), and many other kinds of economic exploitation and unfree labor.
Wealthy white plantation owners most feared the loss of their human chattel. They understood it as a question of property rights and whether the federal government had the authority to abolish a lucrative industry. These white supremacist capitalists conveniently elided the fact that their wealth came through the brutalization and dehumanization of fellow human beings.
We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.
So, in order to preserve the institution of race-based slavery and, thus, a massive source of income, wealthy white people and legislators chose to break off from the Union and go to war on the side of the Confederacy.
In a word--the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery.
Don’t take my word for it. Read the Mississippi Articles of Secession. And if you live in another former Confederate state, link to your state’s articles of secession or quote from it in the comments below.
I live in Missouri, which has a complicated history as it was a slave state whose legitimate government remained in the Union while a renegade government declared secession. I do not, therefore, have a quote from the articles of secession from my state, but I gladly provide quotes from many more seceding states that evidence the cause of their separation. Those who claim slavery was not the core cause of the Civil War ignore the very words of whose who waged it.
The first two sentences of Georgia's causes: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. 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."
South Carolina's declaration: "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 '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...
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy."
The entire Texas declaration is about slavery, but a key quote: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."
While on the one hand, I agree with what you are saying (the cause of the Civil War (American) was slavery.....on the other hand if you had polled the union soldiers at the beginning of the war you would NOT have had them saying we are going to fight to end slavery. WE are going to Preserve the Union.....BUT the cause of the separation WAS Slavery.....and I think the main issue for Lincoln and the Republicans at the time was NOT permitting the extension of slavery into the territories. (AZ, NM, etc.) Check out A. Lincoln by Ron White. (another issue: U S Grant believed that the only states that "might" be able to legally secede were those that were part of the original 13, because the states that came after (Alabama, TX, FL, MS, etc. were PURCHASED BY the original 13) and had no legal right to secede since they were not of the original 13. Just saying that the logic and dialog that occurred before the war was not clear cut as to the rationale. (IF South Carolina had NOT fired on Ft Sumter and began the war (which some argue was Lincoln's plan anyway) would there have been the need for Federal Troops to fight? How could the Lincoln administration have solved the problem of the Federal Forts in seceding states (check out Florida, MS, AL, Louisiana) being taken over by southern states...? (think of Cambodia seizing the Mayaguez....no war with Cambodia resulted.) Stay healthy.