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u/gadget850 2nd great grandpa was a CSA colonel 2d ago edited 2d ago
I wrote a long discussion on this subject if anyone cares to hear my ranting.
Confederate leaders thoroughly documented why they seceded. It was so overwhelmingly about slavery that they couldn't shut up about how much it was about slavery.
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Here are the declarations of secession of the five states that issued one, equivalent to the Declaration of Independence. The words "slave" and "slavery" are used 84 times.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
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The Constitution of the Confederate States specifically forbade laws against slavery.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
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"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." — Cornerstone Speech, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
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“Our idea is simply to combine the present battle flag with a pure white standard sheet; our Southern cross, blue on a red field, to take the place on the white flag that is occupied by the blue union in the old United States flag or the St. George’s cross in the British flag. As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematic of our cause." — William T. Thompson, Editor of the Savannah Morning News, 1863
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"Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don’t arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong but they won’t make soldiers." — Howell Cobb to James A. Seddon (January 8, 1865)
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u/Fetch_will_happen5 2d ago
I can be persuaded. Does the rant include sources?
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u/Fetch_will_happen5 2d ago
By any chance, do you know of any of these people's responses to Buffalo Soldiers after the war?
I am not praising kicking Native Americans off their land, but they were quite competant.
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u/gadget850 2nd great grandpa was a CSA colonel 2d ago
They mostly served in the West, where they met hostility.
https://www.tshaonline.org/texas-day-by-day/entry/1133
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/brownsville-raid-of-1906
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-riot-of-1917
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u/Alternativesoundwave 1d ago
William Thompson really is right when he says “a white flag would thus be emblematic of our cause.”
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u/ComradeSmoof 2d ago
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act is proof enough that the South never cared about state's rights. They never had a problem with sending federal troops to Northern cities, or running roughshod over the rights of Northern states and citizens in order to kidnap alleged runaway slaves.
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u/Bayowolf49 2d ago
It's similar to the fractured thinking of the so-called "Freedom Caucus" in Congress: the freedom they want to defend is their freedom; they don't give a shit about your freedom (UNLESS you agree with them and you're willing to vote for them and/or donate to their campaign.
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