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To: central_va
Your mantra is that my ancestors died for slavery

I don't believe I've ever said that, and if I did I apologize.

Here is what I do believe:

Over the course of the 20 years previous to 1860, almost every national institution, including most churches, split apart over the issue of slavery. The last to come apart explicitly over this issue was the Democrat Party, in the summer of 1860. I find it difficult to believe that when the country itself came apart, it had nothing to do with the same issue.

I am perfectly willing to agree other issues were involved, from states' rights to tariffs. It is notable that these issues received little discussion as primary causes at the start of the war, but were suddenly hauled out after the loss of the war discredited slavery.

But is is important to distinguish between the root cause of the disagreement and ancillary ones. Secession was in many ways like a divorce. Few people have ever divorced to prove they had the right to do so, the equivalent of a states' rights argument. People divorce because they are really mad at the other person. States secede because they are really angry.

The relevant issue is not the right to divorce or secede, it is why the anger exists. In the case of the South in 1860, they were very tired of being told they were morally in the wrong. This is an utterly understandable human reaction, especially when what you are being told you are wrong about is something you cannot change without massive disruption of your society. But, unfortunately, they were in the wrong.

The immediate cause of the war, to be sure, was not secession. It was the refusal of Lincoln and Unionists to accept secession as legitimate. IMO most southerners fought primarily not to defend the institution of slavery, but to protect their homes, just as most Union soldiers fought primarily to preserve the Union, not to destroy slavery.

But those who schemed and plotted to bring secession about, the Fire-Eaters were different. They quite explicitly and openly proclaimed their desire to create a great slave empire by conquest to the south. They pushed secession through in defense of slavery.

No slavery, there would never have been any secession. No secession, no war. It's really quite simple.

84 posted on 01/11/2011 10:59:40 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan
If you will let me put my tinfoil hat on:

< tinfoil > I personally believe that a severe states rights conflict is a lot closer than we think. If it were to go down along the red-blue demarcation, a lot of you cold state FREEPERS are gonna run South as fast as you can. I will welcome you, but call you a hypocrite(with a smile of course). Like I said i could be full of crap, but who knows. I do hope I am wrong but I see no other solution to our philosophical differences.< /tinfoil >

91 posted on 01/11/2011 11:17:41 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.)
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