What Evidence Is There That the Civil War Was Not About Slavery?
If Civil War was intended to end slavery, then how are the following explained:
- Why did the Emancipation Proclamation first go into effect more than a year and a half after the start of the war?
- Why did Emancipation Proclamation only free slaves in states that were in rebellion to the United States rather than all slaves?
- Why did the Emancipation Proclamation allow for Southern states to keep their slaves if they would re-join the Union?
- Why did the Emancipation Proclamation have a specific provision for allowing the slaves to enlist in the Union Army?
2 comments:
Some will, of course, point to the ordinances of secession. (As Mr. David Barton.) Now, we could prove against the argument that secession was entirely about slavery-but the real point worth mentioning here is that whatever the cause of secession might be, that was not the cause of the war. The cause of the war was denial of the right of secession. Secession did not necessitate war. That was merely a comprehensively lame excuse invented by Lincoln's government for the purpose of excusing their tyranny. Secession did not demand war. The Constitution never gave the Fed power to levy war on a seceding state. Of course, the charge of treason might be applied, but the problem is that the Constitutional definition of treason, which is explicitly stated, involves making direct war upon the United States. The South had as of yet made no war upon the North at the time of Lincoln's declaration of war-of course, somebody's going to point to Fort Sumter. But the fact is that the guns at Fort Sumter were pointed inland, and Lincoln was making every effort at reinforcing the place. He was the aggressor making aggressive preparations for war. One does not make defensive preparations by fortifying a stronghold hundreds of miles deep in territory that is not one's own. The Sumter incident, moreover, was not an act of war. It required no such response as Lincoln's. The South, in forcibly reposessing one of their own forts, could have lawfully done just as much under the constitution as not under the constitution. This was no cause for war! The South had declared no war, and intimated no other desire than that of self-defense, leading to the necessity of, wonder of wonders, possessing military assets within its own territory, to whom they rightly belonged!
Thus, the cause of the war was the denial of the right of secession.
I'm trying to find the document right now, but the Yankee Congress explicitly stated at the outset of the war that their purpose was not to interfere with any Southern institutions, but to preserve the Union. (A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Lincoln said. One wonders then, why he found it necessary to burn down one side of the house for the purpose of preventing its separation? Somehow the annihilation of the South was better than the separation of that loving brotherhood?)
Some say that the War Between the States was a war of brothers. Let men remember then, that Cain and Abel were indeed brothers-and yet one was murderer and the other murdered. One was innocent and the other guilty.
Buaidh no Bas,
Andrew R.
I'd like to add to Andrew's points about Fort Sumter. Those involved in the South attempted numerous negotiations with the U.S. Government, including offers to buy Fort Sumter and sign a peace treaty, to persuade them to evacuate or surrender the fort, but of course their efforts were flatly rejected. The Southerners did not want to be the aggressors, nor did they want others to see them as such if they could help it. But with the rearmament of fort Sumter, the cannons being aimed at Charleston, and the adamant determination of the Federal government to maintain a military foothold in Southern territory, Southern leaders determined that opening fire was necessary.
Some claim that South Carolina had no right to reclaim its land in the event of secession and that the Federal government was only interested in maintaining its "constitutional" right to its land. But a move made by Lincoln coupled with a quote of his should clear things up. Lincoln promised that Fort Sumter would be evacuated if Virginia, which had not yet seceded, would guarantee loyalty to the Union! When asked about this decision, he replied, "A state for a fort is no bad business."
Vincit veritas,
Daniel R.
Psalm 65:4
Facts obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
Post a Comment