Quote:Here's an interesting opinion piece in today's Washington Post:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteveryt...d=pm_pop_b

 

"Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded for states’ rights. When each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration Of The Causes Which Impel The State Of Texas To Secede From The Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended them: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. These states had in fact exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some also no longer let slaveowners “transit” through their states with their slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding <i>against</i>. Texas also made clear what it was seceding <i>for</i>: white supremacy.

 

<blockquote>
"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."

 

"Teaching or implying that the Confederate states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate history. It is white, Confederate-apologist history. It bends — even breaks — the facts of what happened."


</blockquote>
 

Every state believed in white supremacy - the benevolent north included.  

 

Funny how each leader made it clear that they seceded over slavery, yet four states didn't even join the Confederacy until after Lincoln announced he would invade the south.  Those four states were overwhelmingly pro Union when put to a vote earlier.  They voted to secede because they felt Lincoln had no right to invade the south.  At the very least, for four of the eleven states, it was totally unrelated to slavery.  And like I said previously, the original 7 states seceded for many reasons, slavery included, but that was a part of the state rights thing.  The biggest issue the south had was the tariff.  South Carolina almost went to war with the United States 30 years before the Civil War over the tariff.  In 1861, right before the war, the House passed a huge increase in the tariff.  There are literally dozens and dozens of speeches decrying the tariff from southern representatives.  And, as I've said, Lincoln and his republicans offered to write into the constitution the constitutional right to own slaves if the south would return to the Union and accept the tariff.

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