"The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2023
Letters From An American: Heather Cox Richardson
'Haley has correctly been lambasted for her rewriting of history. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War. Stephens explicitly rejected the idea embraced by U.S. politicians from the revolutionary period onward that human enslavement was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.”
Instead, he declared: “Our new government is founded 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.”
President Joe Biden put the cause of the Civil War even more succinctly: “It was about slavery.”
My words: Just to clear up any confusion for Nikki Haley and folks like her. Anyone who believes that they are worthy to follow in the shoes of one of the greatest American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, had better know the history of their own goddamn country.
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secessi...b1861.html
DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861
A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.
...
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holdings States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
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.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.
5. Also, another important detail
is that Confederate states did NOT EVER actually believe in "states' rights." That's a myth. The proof? Their reaction to northern states (like Massachusetts and Vermont) whose residents sometimes refused to help return escaped slaves. Southern states were enraged by that, loudly stating that those states up north had no right whatsoever to do that.
21. It's not ignorance; they know the South's history and still yearn for those "glorious" antebellum times.
They view being forced to issue public disavowals of "Southern traditions" as more "political correctness," done to placate the "woke mob." And everyone knows "anti-woke" is just code for anti-black.
Behind closed doors, and out of earshot of polite society, they still talk openly about keeping former slaves "in their place." If left to their own devices, the institution of slavery would still exist in the South; a century of oppressive Jim Crow laws created in response to emancipation is proof of that.
Every day they demonstrate the factual basis of Critical Race Theory. They have been suppressing blacks and denying black history since the end of the Civil War. Blacks are still under-represented and being brutalized in America 60 years after the civil rights act of 1964 supposedly brought the era of Jim Crow to an end.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2023
Letters From An American: Heather Cox Richardson
'Haley has correctly been lambasted for her rewriting of history. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War. Stephens explicitly rejected the idea embraced by U.S. politicians from the revolutionary period onward that human enslavement was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.”
Instead, he declared: “Our new government is founded 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.”
President Joe Biden put the cause of the Civil War even more succinctly: “It was about slavery.”
My words: Just to clear up any confusion for Nikki Haley and folks like her. Anyone who believes that they are worthy to follow in the shoes of one of the greatest American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, had better know the history of their own goddamn country.
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secessi...b1861.html
DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861
A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.
...
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holdings States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
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.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.
5. Also, another important detail
is that Confederate states did NOT EVER actually believe in "states' rights." That's a myth. The proof? Their reaction to northern states (like Massachusetts and Vermont) whose residents sometimes refused to help return escaped slaves. Southern states were enraged by that, loudly stating that those states up north had no right whatsoever to do that.
21. It's not ignorance; they know the South's history and still yearn for those "glorious" antebellum times.
They view being forced to issue public disavowals of "Southern traditions" as more "political correctness," done to placate the "woke mob." And everyone knows "anti-woke" is just code for anti-black.
Behind closed doors, and out of earshot of polite society, they still talk openly about keeping former slaves "in their place." If left to their own devices, the institution of slavery would still exist in the South; a century of oppressive Jim Crow laws created in response to emancipation is proof of that.
Every day they demonstrate the factual basis of Critical Race Theory. They have been suppressing blacks and denying black history since the end of the Civil War. Blacks are still under-represented and being brutalized in America 60 years after the civil rights act of 1964 supposedly brought the era of Jim Crow to an end.
