>>They didn't think the civil war was about slavery, they thought it was about states rights according to the constitution.<<
A lot of people think this, and certainly that was the way I was taught it at school in Louisiana, while integration was going on around us, but it's actually not true. I know it's an article of faith in the Southern Partisan, which my husband subscribes to, but he's a Yankee, and so are a lot of the writers.
However, if you actually study contemporary documents (contemporaneous with the events, I mean), like each state's Articles of Secession, you will see that preservation of slavery was the primary motivation for secession.
What they meant by "state's rights" was that they thought that they had the right to leave the Union voluntarily - the believed that they were legally and morally justified in seceding because they only agreed to join the Union on the condition that slavery not be abolished.
People tend to confuse the motivation with the justification. They weren't fighting to preserve their right to secede, they seceded because they were afraid after Lincoln was elected that slavery would be abolished. They thought they had the right to secede, but they never would have seceded except that they wanted to preserve slavery.
I think it's one of history's strange twists of fate that by seceding, the South gave Lincoln the power to do what he never intended to do, free the slaves in the South, and gave Congress the power to exclude from office people who would have voted against the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Maybe it's karma.
Unlike most people who opine on this topic, I do actually read contemporary documents. I know how precious and important slavery was to the economy of the South, and how horrifying the idea of freeing the slaves was. They were terrified of retribution, and they also believed the slaves were ignorant savages, incapable of functioning independently. So there were a lot of reasons to want to preserve slavery. |
