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There's the old saying that if you know nothing about it, the Civil War was about slavery; if you know a little about it, it was about state's rights; and if yo

by morley 6y ago

There's the old saying that if you know nothing about it, the Civil War was about slavery; if you know a little about it, it was about state's rights; and if you know a lot about it, it was about slavery. The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern, revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy

henriquez 6y ago
Yes I believe slavery was the straw that broke the camel’s back but it wasn’t the primary factor of conflict. Slavery and protecting the property of rich plantation owners was not the reason poor southern kids were fighting and killing their own family members. To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states rights as “historical revisionism” is itself historical revisionism.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  The question is complicated, but slaveholding was not some thing just done by rich gentry. There was a long-tail of slaveholders with just a handful of slaves. With white slaveholding families in the confederacy comprising 20-50% of white families... https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of-slave-ownership-in-the-united-states-in-1860/ https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of...
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states rights Question #1: Name three states rights the South supposedly aruged for. Question #2: Count how many of those rights they actually granted to their own states. For it being supposedly such a major factor in their succession, states rights are conspicuously silent in both the ordinances of succession, contemporary oratory, and in the text they wrote in their own Constitution.
  - henriquez 6y ago
    Your questions miss the point. The Confederate states wanted to be free from federal economic control. Such a freedom is not an individual liberty that would be conferred by the state upon its citizens but rather an organizational mainstay that would define the state’s relationship with the federal government. Slavery was the tipping point but the conflict goes much deeper than that.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      The only federal economic control they objected to was the abolitionism movement that would rid them of slaves. At an extreme stretch, maybe you could claim objections over federal industrial policy and internal improvements, but you'll have to observe that there was zero mention of this in their ordinances of succession, they were avid supporters of this on the state level, and despite their constitutional prohibitions against it, they enacted such policies during the Civil War due to their abysmal infrastructure. And as a footnote, it is worth pointing out that a large part of the animus against internal improvements is driven by fear of the dilution of wealth in the slaveholding elite.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  Reads these secession letters and tell me that slavery was not the primary factor. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati... States rights... to own slaves.

by morley 6y ago

henriquez 6y ago

Yes I believe slavery was the straw that broke the camel’s back but it wasn’t the primary factor of conflict. Slavery and protecting the property of rich plantation owners was not the reason poor southern kids were fighting and killing their own family members. To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states rights as “historical revisionism” is itself historical revisionism.

softwaredoug 6y ago
The question is complicated, but slaveholding was not some thing just done by rich gentry. There was a long-tail of slaveholders with just a handful of slaves. With white slaveholding families in the confederacy comprising 20-50% of white families... https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of-slave-ownership-in-the-united-states-in-1860/ https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of...
jcranmer 6y ago
> To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states rights Question #1: Name three states rights the South supposedly aruged for. Question #2: Count how many of those rights they actually granted to their own states. For it being supposedly such a major factor in their succession, states rights are conspicuously silent in both the ordinances of succession, contemporary oratory, and in the text they wrote in their own Constitution.
- henriquez 6y ago
  Your questions miss the point. The Confederate states wanted to be free from federal economic control. Such a freedom is not an individual liberty that would be conferred by the state upon its citizens but rather an organizational mainstay that would define the state’s relationship with the federal government. Slavery was the tipping point but the conflict goes much deeper than that.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The only federal economic control they objected to was the abolitionism movement that would rid them of slaves. At an extreme stretch, maybe you could claim objections over federal industrial policy and internal improvements, but you'll have to observe that there was zero mention of this in their ordinances of succession, they were avid supporters of this on the state level, and despite their constitutional prohibitions against it, they enacted such policies during the Civil War due to their abysmal infrastructure. And as a footnote, it is worth pointing out that a large part of the animus against internal improvements is driven by fear of the dilution of wealth in the slaveholding elite.
cwhiz 6y ago
Reads these secession letters and tell me that slavery was not the primary factor. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati... States rights... to own slaves.