Slavery was NOT the reason for the Civil War.
But that's what they teach children in grade school.
It was over economics and political power.
Lincoln was the first northern president to be elected in many years.
The balance of power had shifted from the southern states to the northern states.
The southern states felt that they would now be second class to the north, and resented their new status.
Slavery was just the emontional justification to stir up the population to enter into war.
In the words (in their “Declarations of Causes of Seceding States” at
Declaration of Causes of Secession ) of the Confederacy, who opposed Constitutional “states’ rights” –the reason for the Civil War?
• The Confederacy seceded universally and primarily to preserve racist slavery:
o “…our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government … the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…”– Mississippi
o “Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.” – Mississippi
o “We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions [slavery]; and have denied the rights of property [slaves] established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; - South Carolina
o “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 an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of 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 Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.” – Texas
o “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.” – Texas
o “That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; 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.” – Texas
o “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.…we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.” - Georgia
