That's quite a treatise. I thank you for taking the time to respond to my sentence with such a well thought out post. Being somewhat embarrassed at my brevity, I think it only proper to reply, now, in kind. So I'll warn everyone now that this post appears off topic and is lengthy. Go on to the next message unless you'd like to hear a different perspective regarding the Invasion of the Southern States.
First, I'm not a neo-confederate. I'm a Confederate; at least, I'm as Confederate as one can be in this day and age. That mind-set comes from being raised in a household in the deep south in which both maternal and paternal sides of my family fought, and some died, in that damn war. I've heard the stories since infancy and, although the stories are fourth hand now, they have lost not one whit of their intensity or emotion.
That having been said, let me also make clear that I heed the words of President Jefferson Davis who, in 1888, said, "The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future - a future full of golden promise; a future of expanding national glory, before which the world will be amazed. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished - a reunited country.”
There is no chip on my shoulder; but I remember. And I have learned a history of that war that is somewhat in opposition to yours. I'll agree with you as to the complexity of the issue, but I won't agree with your conclusions. Perhaps it is your simplification that has me at odds with your message. Perhaps if you took the time to expound we would find more common ground.
My sentence in response to your post is a paraphrasing from Shelby Foote's Civil War series, in which he quotes a ragged Confederate soldier who, having been taken prisoner by the Federals, and who is obviously not a slaveholder, is queried as to why he's fighting so vigorously for the South. His response, "I'm fightin' 'cause y'all are down here."
My point was that, while slavery was one of many issues that precipitated the war, it was not his issue. And it was not the issue of thousands who fought and died. It was a difficult time to exercise either passivism or neutrality during that war, especially in the northern regions of the Confederacy because y'all come down here, y'all destroy my crops, y'all take all my livestock, y'all burn my house, and y'all kill my family. What's an ol' boy to do?
That was the point that my original one sentence response was intended to make.
Regarding the contract you mention, I'll agree there was a contract. But you seem to be of the mind that the Union made the American States when, in actuality, the States made the Union. When the Constitution was drafted, the purpose was not to create a nation, but to continue the confederation making it a more perfect one, as the Constitution says, "between the States." The separate entity of the several sovereign States is recognized in the Constitution from end to end. The individual States reserved not only their sovereignty but also the right of secession. So, while there was a contract, it must be interpreted properly to recognize who breached that contract, thereby nullifying the contract.
You mention slavery as a contentious issue. How did it become so?
At one time slavery existed in every colony and State and was recognized and cared for in the Constitution. Indeed, an
eminent justice of the United States Supreme Court, Henry Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, had declared slavery "the cornerstone" of the government. Over time, the Northern States, where the slave trade originated, and whose shipping had brought most slaves to this country, abandoned slavery. Yet, slavery was still supported by the Constitution. Instead of honoring the Constitution, the Northern States became the place for numerous groups to form to promote slave revolt and insurrection in the South. No laws were passed by Northern States to restrain them.
Abolition sentiment continued to grow in the Northern States until, at length, a dozen Northern States nullified the Constitution and Acts of Congress. Every means was resorted to to disturb the peace of the South. The provision in the Constitution for returning slaves was nullified. Societies were formed for the purpose of running off slaves from plantations by secret means.
But none of these schemes was sufficient to solidify the people of the North until the idea of stopping the spread of slavery was adopted. As a result, there was no real probability of the formation of a new slave State. But the anti-slavery fanatics continued to fan the flames until civil war ensued in Kansas.
Now, enter he Republican party with its Abolitionists, Constitution burners, Know-nothings, and other agitators. When the Supreme Court of the United States decided in the Dred Scott case that the Constitutional right was all on the side of the South, they were derided as a group of common thieves.
The defamation of the South continued and the size and power of the Republican party grew. The South was challenged by many in the Republican party’s ranks to decide for themselves "whether we are to have justice peaceably or by violence, for whatever consequence - we are determined to have it one way or another."
Meanwhile, John Brown, murderer of innocents in Kansas, attacks Federal troops, kills a United States Marine, and captures the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, expecting the slaves to rise in rebellion. As news of John Brown's trial and execution spreads, he is deified throughout the North.
Then comes the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln who had been nominated at the Republican Convention in Chicago, who had voted in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, and had chided Stephen A. Douglas as "seditious" for introducing a resolution to punish those who sought to incite slave insurrections.
As an act of self-defense against twenty-five years of Northern agitation and the election of the agitators new leader, Abe Lincoln, South Carolina withdraws from the Union. Why?
President James Buchanan said it best in his annual message to Congress in 1859:
“It ought never to be forgotten that however great may have been the political advantages resulting from the Union, these would all prove to be as nothing, should the time ever arrive when they cannot be enjoyed without serious danger to the personal safety of the people of fifteen members of the Confederacy.
If the peace of the domestic fireside throughout these States should ever be invade, if the mothers of the families within this extensive region should not be able to retire to rest at night without suffering dreadful apprehensions of what may be their own fate and that of their children before the morning, it would be in vain to account to such a people the political benefits which result to them from the Union.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and therefore any state of society in which the sword is all the time suspended over the heads of the people must at last become intolerable.”,
So South Carolina sought safety by withdrawal from the Union.
What did Lincoln do in response? He sent troops to Fort Pickens and Fort Sumter and started the war.
It is because of the clear ubiquity of agitation within the pre and even post Civil War North, that the vast majority of reputable Southern historians agree that the abridgment of State’s rights and the failure of the North to uphold the Constitution of the Unite States was the chief and
immediate cause of war.
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