[katana]

Frankly, this address is one of the most convoluted statements I've ever read. I do not deny that the southern states had and should have had the right to determine their own futures outside the Union, but if this represents the way Jefferson Davis wrote and spoke, then even by the flowery standards of 19th century oratory, he was an incredible windbag.

Furthermore, the central issue of the dispute between the northern and southern states was not preservation of slavery in the south. Only a minority of radicals in the north were actually pushing for complete abolition. Instead, the issue was whether slavery would be literally forced on the new territories and soon-to-be states in the west. The majority of people in those areas did not want slavery, and industry and labor in the north saw slavery as unfair and immoral competition. Equal accession of slave and free states was forced on the expanding United States in order maintain an even division of slave vs. free state representation in the Senate, and thereby maintain a level of power which their small population would otherwise not support, until Kansas and Nebraska upset that balance.

Secession, war, and eventual defeat stemmed from the desire of the slave holders to expand and spread their "peculiar institution". Appeals to the higher principles of "States' Rights" and "Freedom" were a thin cover for the fact that once the south could no longer get its way on the forcible extension of slavery, they decided to quit the Union altogether.

Whether they had the right to do so is a separate question. But I refuse attribute a high moral purpose to people who felt it was not only correct to hold humans as chattle but desirable to forcibly spread that practice to places where it was not wanted.

PS: The first shots of that war were fired by the south. Try shooting some artillery at Fort Bragg or Fort Campbell today and see how the Federal government reacts.

[Aric2000]

Oh, come on, Slavery was a minor issue if at all for the civil war. To the victors go the writing of history. Lincoln took on the call for the abolishment of slavery AFTER the war had already started to give him the moral high for his illegal and unconstitutional war.

Slavery WAS NOT a major issue, and this is provable by the fact that a number of slaveholding states stayed in the union, if, as you say the war was about slavery, then those states would have joined the confederacy.

And also, for your information, the emancipation proclamation freed NO SLAVES, NOT ONE!! Lincoln stated that those slaves held in the south, which he had ZERO authority over were free, but those slaves that were held in the north were to remain slaves. SO get off you slave high horse, it's a red herring. The civil war was about states rights, and that's ALL.... read it and tell me that isn't what it says.