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Documents of Secession by the confederate states.

For all those people that keep persisting that the southern states just were angry about "states-rights" because you can't seem to get "slavery" over your tongue. Just read the documents that these people wrote and why they wanted to move away from the Union. If you don't think it was about slavery, you just were just too lazy to look up and see what these parties had to say for themselves.


South Carolina

Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

[...]

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

[...]

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

[...]

SOURCE: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp


Georgia

Confederate States of America - Georgia Secession

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. [...]

[...]

The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees it its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization

[...]

Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.

SOURCE: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp


Mississippi


A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

[...]

SOURCE: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp


Texas

A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.

[...]

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] 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?

[...]

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--[b]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.[/b]

[...]

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.

[...]

SOURCE: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html


Cornerstone Speech (1861)

On top of all that, Alexander H. Stephens (Georgia) gave a speech as the vice president of the confederacy on the 21st of March 1861. He explains the reason for the revolt and the creation of the confederacy:

[...]

[...] The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, 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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

[...]


- Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate states, 21st of March 1861

SOURCE: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/cornerstone-speech/
Kwek00
41-45, M
51 replies 306 views Feb 9, 2022
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Edited: 1 yr ago
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Carla · 61-69, F
So, do you reckon any of the morons that deny historic fact will read this? And if they do, do you reckon they will read into it just only what the first phrase of your first paragraph states?
After a hundred and fifty years, those that refuse to accept facts, have a definite agenda. And we all know what that is.
+ 10 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022 · Edited: 2 yrs ago
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@Carla I'm just tired of looking this up every time some of these people pop up. Now I can just copy paste it from here. Makes life a bit easier.

If they read it, that's great. If they don't, then I hope someone else reads it. To be honest, I think there is too little understanding of this time and knowledge of these texts. And in that ignorance, snake oil salesmen can do their stuff. So if one person reads this and gets educated. That's already a win for me.
+ 10 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Carla · 61-69, F
Well @Kwek00, I do certainly appreciate your effort.

It was an interesting read by the way.
+ 5 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@Carla I kinda love going through these things. Thomas Jeffersons "on virginia" is an intresting one too.
+ 3 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
ArishMell · 70-79, M
Very chilling reading. Very chilling indeed, even if you try to see it as they may have done, beyond our 21C social mores.

It is very difficult to understand the motives behind past wrongs in times and cultures so very different in many ways to our own. That is one reason why trying to extort spurious "apologies" from countries centuries later is so meaningless. The intended apologisers know their ancestors did wrong, but no amount of ceremonial grovelling will achieve anything very useful.

However, those Confederacy texts are also chilling if you compare the philosophy behind them to more modern acts of suppression, from those of the Nazis in the 1930s-40s, the old Boer-based regime in South Africa, and of the Chinese Government currently against its Uighurs. It's as well to recall too that some US states clung to old apartheid laws until quite late in the 20C - though at least repealing them did not need go as far as South Africa, with a radical change of national governance. (S.Africa's old regime was nearly as mysoginist as racist, a point not often recognised, but told to me by white women who had lived there.)

There is not that much difference in the minds of those responsible even if the ideologies and methods are vastly different - all show an absolutist view of their own supremacy and rightness, based on thinking twisted to evade responsibility.

A lesson to be learnt now, facing the rise of assorted racial- and sexual- supremecist ideologies in the USA and Western Europe. To stem them though, we need understand their attraction to their followers, despite being hampered by those who cannot or will not differentiate between "understanding" and "condoning".

'

Interesting as well as chilling, the different States' own thinking, though the common thread appears that of feeling oppressed by a remote government that - in their view - was exceeding its powers over States it did not understand.

South Carolina made those political fears plain.

Georgia seemed uncertain. Its document rejects the Northerners' avowal of the -
equality of the black and white races
,
then unwittingly but ironically refers to the,
ancient right of themselves and the human race
.
It almost seems the Georgians were reluctant to admit that by their common view the latter clause really means "white", not "human", race.

Texas could only shuffle its responsibility off onto the shoulders of poor old God.

Mississippi was at least honest: its motive was money, money, and more money.

+

When things did boil over into the Civil War, the abolitionists received a lot of support in kind from Great Britain, which had originally supported slavery but was already turning against it. A lot of Mississippi-area cotton was exported to the Northern English textiles manufacturers, but many of these companies now started boycotting slave-cultivated cotton. Whatever was the commercial effect on the State, that did hit the English weaving firms and their employees hard, but helped Britain to be among the first in the "Old World" at least, to abolish slavery altogether.
+ 5 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@ArishMell
[...] That is one reason why trying to extort spurious "apologies" from countries centuries later is so meaningless. The intended apologisers know their ancestors did wrong, but no amount of ceremonial grovelling will achieve anything very useful.

I don't fully agree here.

-> It's not because it's hard to understand previous wrongs or, what you don't mention, feel guilty for a crime you didn't commit (which is often an argument) that the group (or nation) is in fact fully onboard with what happened and what their ancestors (or people that lived in the same occasion) actually did something wrong or think that it has to influence todays world that they inhabbit.

Things that often come up with dealing with these types of groups, is the creation of a socio-political identity that one can be proud off. For the south of the USA, this identity that a person can be proud off, is threatened by a history that takes away from the perceived glory that one can be proud off. If this happens, you can do a number of things:

1. Double down and just embrace that what others perceive to be bad as something good. Because "identity" often needs a negative reflection. It's ussually not about what "we" are, it's very often about what "we" are not. Add a bit of polish and some romanticism and a "just cause" (like the right to freedom in once states territory) and slave-owners become freedom fighters. Freedom fighters that are the victim of a corrupt authoritarian governement. The slavery issue isn't only pushed towards the background, the people that engaged with slavery are now glorfied heroes that deserve statues on the market square.

2. Just forget about it, and deny/censor it's excistence. The: "lets not talk about it and go on with our lifes as if the last 100 years didn't happen"-approach. The elements are still there, but they are just erased from conciousness. And thus it becomes a taboo and a subconcious ill that can never be adressed because it isn't allowed to excist in the open. A bit like loving capitalism and hating globalism at the same time, as if these things are not connected in anyway. Which gives a problem that can't be solved because no one may adress the issues of capitalism because we have to love it unconditionally and the good of capitalism is "self-evident". So to adress globalism, the devotee of a capitalist system has to fabricate some kind of cospiratorial plot that scapegoats something else they don't like because you just can't talk about capitalism in a negative light.

3. Accept it and perceive it as part of history. Learn from it, reevaluate your position and create an awareness and understanding that your identity (and by extend national identity) doesn't have to be all great. That things might had happened in the past, that you don't agree with today. But todays generation learned from it, tried put themselves above it without forgetting it, make it something that can be talked about and doesn't have to be loved absolutely as part of your membership to the national identity. Bit like the diffrence between a patriot and (most forms) nationalist. The patriot can deal with criticism and even gives criticism on ones nations, not because (s)he hates it but because his/her love for the nation pushes them to make it better. And you can only become better, if you adress mistakes, become aware of them, and work on them over time. While a nationalist espouses blind devotion to the nation, and the moment someone looses their faith they are expelled as traitors from the flock.

Now, there are probably more ways of dealing with this kind of stuff... but these are reactions that I'm aware of that happen in society today.

A lesson to be learnt now, facing the rise of assorted racial- and sexual- supremecist ideologies in the USA and Western Europe. To stem them though, we need understand their attraction to their followers, despite being hampered by those who cannot or will not differentiate between "understanding" and "condoning".

That's why more people need to read these kinds of ideas and think critically about them. Also writers like: Oswald Mosley, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Evola, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, ... etc. Because some of these ideas have an intellectual background that is quite extensive. But the writers only write for the vanguard (those that are going to lead the movement). These kinds of movements have a very low idea of "the mob" or their followers. For them, the normal folk are just a tool to rise to power so they can become the new elites that set the course for the next couple of years. When it comes to the poppulation, what ever gets the vanguard into power is what is nescessary and fuck everyone else that isn't helping.

It almost seems the Georgians were reluctant to admit that by their common view the latter clause really means "white", not "human", race.

It's not just "seem".
We (most people living in the west today) largely look at the world through a liberal lense that is forged over 250 years. This lense has been reevaluated and molded by liberal projects and experiments that worked and didn't work. We have reevaluated not the abstract core principles of liberalism but how they are put in practise through failure and succes. This is an ongoing excersise where the light the enlightenment through cirticism and selfreflection, sheds light on things we aren't concious off so we can become concious and become more aware of our surroundings. And one of the most traumatic experiences for the European main land, was the 2nd world war with the holocaust and the upcomming decolonisation and loosing of the power European countries had in worldly affairs.

Now... espescially after the 80s, most countries learned from Germany and pushed this traumatic experience on how human beings look at eachother and perceive "us" and "them" into their curriculum. Because even after the uncovering of the attrocities in the camps and in ex-colonies, the knee jerk reaction was: "we had nothing to do with that", and it was pushed into a taboo sphere. This has created generations (like my father) that still believe that European countries went to African colonies to do good and build hospitals and schools for the indigenous people, something that only in the last 20 years he's comming to grip with. Which was for him, also a process of shedding the old and reevaluating his ideas because of better information that is availble and can't be denied. This process, this loosing of what someone believed in, is hard espescially if you get some sense of self-satisfaction from it because it portrays your ancestries and by extension yourself (because you identify with them) in a position where you can perceive yourself as being "the good guy" comming from "good stock". And those that criticize you and want you to feel bad about yourself and your ancestors are just "bad people".

This process, I think, never really took root in most of the south. It was jus pushed away in this taboo sphere. People have a hard time talking about it. And things are really personal at times because of this identity dynamic. This doesn't have to be, but people never went through this process instead they live in a region that largely did the "glorifying romantic" stuff. The flags, the movies, novels like the ones Margaret Mitchell wrote, ... this polished lie a facade of history that people feel comfy with and like to identify with so that they too can feel like those heroes that fought for the just cause of freedom on their territory while totally forgetting that this freedom was substained with slave labor and harsh conditions for their human "property".

The lense in the 18th century, was one that is inherrited not from the enlightenment or liberalism but from the Ancien Regime and a deep devoted christian base. The reason why? Is because the enlightenment and liberalism didn't really excist yet except in the minds of those intellectuals that only perceived it as theory and never really saw it function in practise. There was just not enough background data, so it was all theoretical. Liberalism defies dogmas, so all the liberals were aware that the project they were going to start will eventually backfire on them in some way. Because at some point, their liberalism in practise might cause issues that needed to be taken care off by future genrations. But they all agreed on the abstract principles that they were going to unleash.

When you read 18th century and 19th century writers, the trauma of WW2 isn't in play yet. Neither are all the other genocides and what Michael Mann calls: "The Darkside of Democracy" and Carl Schmit criticized liberals for (that they enable an "us" vs "them" dynamic that is extremely dangerous for the nation) are all ideas that came later after we got more data on how these ideas might work in practise. So these early writers when they speak off things like: "people", "us", ... etc. What they ar talking about, was the same "us" they used during the ancien regime. An us that is primairy used for mature white man. And there are philosophers that have big discussions about this, about writers like Emanuelle Kant that to the modern reader would sound really "universal". But when you go look deeper, you'll figure out that Kant was a racist and wasn't really fond of women in political discourse. So when he talks about what "we" should do to advance society, the "we" has to be intepretated to "white men". What is "human" is also unclear. A lot of these thinkers see what is not "white" as a form of "sub-human". The examples in these old texts and manuscripts are legio. But there were also thinkers that already saw benefits in a "universal us", that talks about all human beings and not just a limited segment that they happen to belong to. This "universal us" has become way more prevalent after WW2 in our thinking... but the evolution is still ongoing.


[...] Whatever was the commercial effect on the State, that did hit the English weaving firms and their employees hard, but helped Britain to be among the first in the "Old World" at least, to abolish slavery altogether.

Sure, and the British can have it for all I care. But, I also think it's important as a sidenote that the abolishment of slavery didn't better their vieuw on people from African descent. In the late 19th century, you'll find texts by colonisers that are downright degrading to those they colonise. And that the British Empire perceived themselves as white people with a burdern to educate those poor black folk that were just unable to do anything important by themselves. Here too, you'll find the tendency to belong to a group that perceives themselves as "the good guys" while putting people in chains, oppressing them, stealing their resources and acting with harsh punishments because "they" (the sub-humans, almost animals) would otherwise just not understand. I guess it's just the "right" thing to do.

The other question is why they were against slavery... and I'm not sure if this was a pure enterprise where slavery had become a moral evil. Maybe a part of it, was perceiving slavery a thread to their capitalist enterprise. A form of competition that can't be competed with unless you do it yourself. But since there was no will to start up slavery in the british empire any longer, they pushed others to also abandon slavery so they don't have to compete with that institution. In the mean time, in the later 19th century when Africa was colonised, they had no issues forcing people to labor for free on the guise of "just punishment" because someone did something they didn't like. And the strict reglemations in the colonies made sure that there was always slave labor to recruit by using the law against those that they are colonising.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ArishMell @Kwek00

I did not write that reply beginning:

Very chilling reading. Very chilling indeed, even if you try to see it as they may have done, beyond our 21C social mores.

It has my name on it and I agree with its message, but who wrote it?

It was not me!
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 26, 2024
deadgerbil · 26-30
It's amazing how this is still a debate. Goes to show the failings of American education.
+ 6 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@deadgerbil No shit
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Ynotisay · M
@deadgerbil But is it really a debate? I don't see it. Debates typically require two valid, provable sides. That's not this.
+ 6 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
ArishMell · 70-79, M
Chilling words.

It's notable that in their desperation to treat the Africans as their untermenschen - I use that word deliberately, given its origins in a 20C regime with rather similar ideas - they even stooped to regarding themselves as following God's will. In hindsight we might well see that as anti-Christian and cowardly; but those 19C writers would not and could not have seen that.

Only one of those States had the vague courage to admit the main reason for slavery was merely commercial. The idea that the "negroes" could be employed fairly as farm labourers, not kept as slaves, would have been abhorrent to them because that would add to the business overheads - as well as denting their racial prejudices. Nothing to do with humanity, and many slave-owners were routinely extremely cruel beyond the cruelty of slavery itself.

Texas says it abandoned its
separate national existence
and joined the Confederacy to further its own slave-ownership. Mississippi claims a peculiar link between race and withstanding its regional, sub-tropical climate. A more general objection to the Federal abolitionists though appears to be of these States wanting not to lose governmental power to the USA as a whole.

For the most part though the Confederates openly supported maintaining slavery merely on an appalling idea we now call "white supremacy" - an idea that lingered in some States' apartheid laws until as recently as the 1960s.

''''

Britain had used slaves too, in her colonies rather than in Britain itself, and some of her industrialists made a lot of money from slave-trading in the 18C. However it slowly dawned on the country just how evil is slavery, and powerful efforts to end it started in the late 18C. Slavery became abolished by law by two Acts of Parliament, in 1807 then 1833; the young USA was still arguing, then fighting, over it in the 1860s .

Even so, the UK Government and Parliament has had to reinforce the 1807 and 1833 Acts as recently as 2015 against what it called "Modern Slavery", when it was discovered that immigrants, especially illegal ones, were ending up as slaves in private households and black-economy businesses - both themselves largely among the immigrant community even where the slave-owners themselves are here legally. A lot of that seems to have strong cultural backgrounds; the enslavers themselves being from societies less concerned with human rights and humane ideals. These are very difficult offences to act against, but there have been a few successful prosecutions.

The 2015 Act is against

1.Slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour

2.Human trafficking


[Source:
legislation.gov.uk
; the official web-site.

So with the UK had outlawed slavery decades previously to the above arguments in America. During the American Civil War, the huge cotton-weaving trade in the North of England supported at considerable cost to itself, the abolition by boycotting imports from the Confederate cotton-growing states.

.
It is hard to overcome social attitudes though, and many Britons still held what in hindsight are very patronising views about the real inhabitants of her colonies until well into the 20C. Similarly with the white-supremacists in parts of the USA.

We have to be careful of course - we cannot think for our 19C ancestors, nor impose our thinking on them.

We can though recognise the wrongs they did, and what was recognised as wrong at the time by the great reformers like William Wilberforce and Thomas Foxwell Buxton.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 26, 2024
ElwoodBlues · M
Thanks for doing that! Seems a good place to park this little meme too:


https://www.lovethispic.com/uploaded_images/79193-So-Youre-Against-Immigration-When-Do-You-Leave-.jpg
+ 4 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Yulianna · 22-25, F
good work posting this... i have never read this before, a clear lesson in Confederate objectives.
+ 3 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
bijouxbroussard · F
@Yulianna And they have always been available as proof that the main concern of the southerners was maintaining their economy through slave labor.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Yulianna · 22-25, F
@bijouxbroussard 🤗 yes, it is clear.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@bijouxbroussard Well, the souths economy seem to be really depent on slaves. Next to the dependency, you had the issue of "ownership" and the loss of ones possession ones that property becomes "illegale" to possess. And the other sentiment that is really clear by some of these actors, is that the white race has some "natural place" above the black race. Something that is granted by God or Nature. And because of this natural thing, it's an abhoration to go against it. ... That last sentiment is a continuous driving force in the realm of white suppremacy.

Now, if you grow up in this kind of enviorement as a white slave owner... then I understand you pick up arms. Just as I'm disgusted by this mentality and will act against it.

But, back then, people were a lot simpler. If a similair discussion happens today, at the very least the governement changing the laws, should look for compensation. How weird that might sound, it would soothen the progress, while now it has cut a wound so deep that 150 years it still causes ripples over the current political spectrum and in the part of society that lost the discussion and the war. Same goes for the people that were being freed, just saying "you are free" wasn't good enough and created social ills that are also still prevalent today.

In the abstract, you can make a small comparisson with Germany that lost the 1st world war, got bankrupted not only by the war but also by the measures imposed on it. Because of that, a segment of the population was really pissed off and felt degraded, and that discontent was captured by an angry poppulist that promised a return to the good old days. Which caused more heartship. It's only the second time that allies understood that this kind of behavior towards a defeated foe didn't really bring a lot of good. And at least to western germany (because the country got cut up) there was a lot of effort to rebuild it, rebuild it's economy, make sure the people had some kind of stability (something to hold on too) that is still benefiting Europe as a whole (even with some of the things that can be perceived as "negative" that German governement decided during the periode after the war). Another thing, that Germans did, is build up a new national identity that incorperates the horrors of what their nation did in a particulair periode of time to fellow human beings (and even citizens) living within their borders. This was an open and painfull process, that also had some negative characteristics but overwhelmingly aided future generations to understand the past in a way that they don't feel the need to white wash it and go back to living in a world where all the bad things are muffled away in favor of a national identity that people can be overly proud off but is based on a lie that supresses any real learning and maturation. All of this, didn't happen in the US (and in other places that struggle(d) with a deep devide of "us" and "them" that brought a lot of atrocities, like yugoslavia), and the wounds from years ago just stay a festering open attrocity that sometimes spews out the vilest of occurances that undermines stability that a lot of people need to lead a bit of a "normal" life.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022 · Edited: 2 yrs ago
markansas
I LIKE THIS PART
, 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,
NOW IF THAT IS NOT A LOAD OF BULLSHIT mutually beneficial my ass and the will of god..
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@markansas Welcome to the 19th century. There are more ideas like this running around at that time. And, in certain circles, these ideas persist.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
markansas
@Kwek00 one of the things i was good at in high school was history
not so sure about what schools are teaching now and it seems to be different in each state. some teach this and some teach that. now that internet can spread both mis info and good info. its hard to tell the truth and easy to believe a lie .
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@markansas History, to a degree, is a debate. But when the actors themselves left sources that are so to the point... then why doubt them?
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
QuixoticSoul · 41-45, M
It was tariffs bro.

Source: trust me.
+ 3 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@QuixoticSoul "Trust me" ... Is that a better or worst source then the "Angry Man Gazette"?
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
ChipmunkErnie · 70-79, M
Just finished the book CHOCTAW CONFEDERATES. It deals with the Native Nations in "Indian Territory" supporting and supplying troops to the Confederacy and one of the main reasons why was their use of black slaves on cotton and corn plantations. I knew that Native tribes kept slaves, but hadn't realized how some of the nations had developed a plantation slave system that mirrored the White Southern system.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Diotrephes · 70-79, M
@ChipmunkErnie Did you also know that California was a slave state? Whites could enslave Indians at will and buy them at a slave auction in Los Angeles where the federal building now stands.

How California became a slave state and stayed one for decades after the Civil War
The Slave Act stayed in effect until 1937.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-California-became-a-slave-state-and-stayed-16649499.php
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
Babylon
This is the best posts about this topic I have come across
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
bijouxbroussard · F
@Babylon Definitely. I’ve been telling right-wingers about the secession documents for years but didn’t have the energy or patience to copy them so they could be seen as they are. I’m grateful the OP did and I’m bookmarking it.
+ 3 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022 · Edited: 2 yrs ago
Babylon
@bijouxbroussard I just learned that I can bookmark posts!!

Not only has this site gotten better, I'm learning new things from everyone 😄
Thankiiiieeeesssss
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
markansas
[image/video deleted]

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/legal/docs2.html
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Diotrephes · 70-79, M
Excellent source material. Thanks for sharing.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
sarabee1995 · 26-30, F
Thanks for posting.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
checkoutanytime · M
This is precisely why rape is illegal, comon man grow up.
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@checkoutanytime It's really time that you start changing your media diet.

I'm not sure about 2020, but in 2016 the KKK supporter Donald Trump really openly.


Neither the KKK and the republican party are progressive in these times.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
checkoutanytime · M
@Kwek00 progressive = nazis. Omg duha
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
bijouxbroussard · F
Thank you so much for posting these ! I looked them up years ago as anyone with internet access can do and it’s all here, in their own words. The people who still want to claim that the civil war wasn’t primarily about slavery are simply refusing to look at the reasons given by the Southerners themselves.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
ChipmunkErnie · 70-79, M
@bijouxbroussard States' Rights WAS an issue for sure -- but mainly because the recognition of that concept meant states had the right to keep slavery legal. Interestingly, the Native American nations in what is now Oklahoma and was then "Indian Territory" who joined with the Confederacy did so not just because of their shared interest in slave-holding, but the Native Nations felt the Confederate belief in/propaganda about States' lead them to feel that the Confederacy would be more liable to respect Native sovereignty than the Federal Government had and would in the future.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
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SatyrService · M
BRAVO! I shall link to this
you have pointed it all out well
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 26, 2024
CorvusBlackthorne · 100+, M
Well.


That settles that, then.
+ 4 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
sunsporter1649 · 70-79, M
@Kwek00 What a load of bullschiff
+ 0 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
Kwek00 · 41-45, M
@sunsporter1649 Maybe it's time to start learning your history Sporter. But no worries, you are not the first immigrant that hasn't fully assimilated in the culture his parents arrived in.
+ 2 · Reply · Translate · Feb 9, 2022
bijouxbroussard · F
@CorvusBlackthorne It truly should settle things. Right here, in black & white. And nobody can dispute the sources.
+ 1 · Reply · Translate · Feb 10, 2022
 
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