Quote:The entire world was consumed by slavery, the war was over the reality of one group telling another group how they could or couldn't commence commerce. If it was all about slavery then explain the slave states in the North. They didn't secede because ending slavery didn't destroy their commerce, the northmen slave states where not dependent on agriculture to survive.

 

Was the South racist, yes. Was the South dependent on Slavery, yes. Was the war fought over Slavery, No. Heck Lincoln had to bring in foreign fighters to fight his war, it wasn't about slavery it was about holding a union together regardless of the people's desire to be apart of the union anymore.

 

And why, pray tell, did they not want to be a part of the union any more?  

 

No one gets a divorce just because they disagree on whether they have a right to get a divorce.   There's always an underlying issue, and it's only then that they assert their right to a divorce. 

 

Here is a copy of the Articles of Secession of South Carolina: 

 

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

 

They start by asserting their right to secede.   But that's not why they are seceding.    The articles speak about the right to hold slaves, and the disagreement with the North over that right.   They talk about the right to hold slaves as their property rights,  And they say they are seceding to preserve slavery, which they say is under threat from the North.  

 

Read it. 

 

Here's an excerpt: 

 

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection." 

 

"For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the <i><b>forms</b></i> of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. 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."

 

If you read these Articles of Secession of the State of South Carolina, you can see that the entire issue is one of whether slavery shall exist, and that they seceded because of the perceived threat to their ability to hold slaves in their states. 

 

Here's the Texas Ordinance of Secession: 

 

http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/secesson.htm

 

"<i>In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States. </i>


<i>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-slave-holding States. "</i>


 

Eric, I don't see how you can deny, the South seceded over the issue of slavery and the perceived threat to slavery from the Northern states.  

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