Over at the American Spectator, Rich Rostrom made some good comments regarding the issue of whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War. While neo-confederates or Lincoln-haters deny it, or belittle it as a cause, there is no real doubt among serious historians that slavery was the issue that brought about the Civil War. See:
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/02/12/shades-of-gray
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Mississippi Declaration of Causes: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…”
Georgia Declaration of Causes: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”
Texas Declaration of Causes: “In all the non-slave-holding States… the people have formed … a great sectional party, now strong enough … to control the affairs of … those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery…”
Florida Declaration of Causes: “The nullification of [fugitive slave] laws by… two thirds of the non slaveholding States… [is] evidence of an open disregard of constitutional obligation, and of the rights and interests of the slaveholding States and of a deep and inveterate hostility to the people of these States.”
South Carolina’s Address to the Slaveholding States: “Experience has proved that slave-holding States can not be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States.”
Etc. (Full texts of these and related documents may be seen at
http://civilwarcauses.org/plat.htm
The Southern secessionists themselves openly, repeatedly, and at great length stated that secession was necessary to preserve slavery and for no other reason. Why deny it now?
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Vern
