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@cjd you mean the second war of independence?
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It seems that the US Civil War actually had VERY little to do with slavery.
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@cjd maybe it would believable if they didn't make it the major theme of their secession paperwork. I don't know why anyone thinks we can rewrite history. They straight up told the world what the reason was -- they didn't want their slaves taken away. They wanted their "property" to not be taken away and they wanted to keep the economic engine they built upon them.
Georgia: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. 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."
Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."
South Carolina: "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."
Texas: "Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?"
Virginia: "The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."
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@cjd the only novel and interesting information provided is "non-slaveholders in the south probably didn't want to secede" but that doesn't mean they didn't agree with keeping slavery as the status quo. So it's completely meaningless.
Who cares that the people in the south who didn't have power didn't want what happened to happen?
There is not and never has been a social movement of people in the American south who identify with this forgotten historical group and want us to know that they didn't like the Confederacy either.
It's an interesting footnote in history, but has no material impact on anything we already know. The people maligned are those who had the power to start the war -- and everyone who supported or joined them. Those people who didn't want to secede could have en-masse fled to the north. But they didn't, did they?
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@cjd ok, but how does that change anything? The people with the political power disagreed and pushed to secede over slavery anyway and the slave-holders didn't fight against the Confederacy, they joined it.
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You got it backwards.
The OP's point was that non-slaveholders (vast majority) voted TO SECEDE. The slave-holders voted not to.
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@cjd I'd be willing to bet the vote against secession was purely a self-preservation measure. They knew secession would have massively negative economic repercussions, so it would be better to continue fighting this through whatever legal avenues were available.
I bet the same thing would happen today. People know a civil war would be a terrible thing to have to deal with and tons of conservatives would be against it, but once it starts you pick your side. What other option do you have in that scenario?
on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
cjd
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