OPINION: It's Not Easy Being a White Democrat in Mississippi

Actually, ETCM, I've been looking for over 20 years. The Declarations of Causes of Secession issued by four (4) states are on my hard drive. I've read all 13 Articles of Secession, as well, several times, and much other documentation (including much from the union). All of this relates to secession. Slavery was one reason (among any) for secession. In fact, it was the primary reason. But secession is not war, and the causes/reasons for each are different.

Incidentally, the states of the upper South did not secede to preserve slavery, but because Lincoln tried to coerce them into sending troops to invade the seceded states.

God, not you, declares what is evil and I find nothing in his word declaring slavery as evil.

Slavery existed throughout the world and throughout human history, until the industrial revolution made it obsolete.

The civil war was fought over secession -- whether a state could secede from the union. Look at Lincoln's call for volunteers; not a word, nary a syllable about slaves, slavery or freeing. It was about "preserving the union" which to the industrialists of the north must have sounded like "keeping the cotton flowing northward unimpeded by some new national border."

The union was mindlessly infuriated by Southern secession and sent a force of barbarians wearing military uniforms into the South to kill Southerners. Southern soldiers fought back, fought to defend their homes, families and communities from that barbaric force. Wait... don't tell me. You hate Southerners so much you think Southern soldiers didn't really CARE about their wives, kids, parents who were menaced by a savage invader ... you think all they really cared about was their rich neighbor getting to keep his slaves.

Near the end of the war, when push came to shove, Confederates demonstrated that they put political independence from D.C. above keeping slaves. See the CSA's national debate about freeing slaves to fight for the Confederacy (which would have been the death knell of slavery) and Duncan Kenner's mission to England. It occurred too late in the war to do any good, but it is a historical fact that proves Confederates valued political independence above slavery-forever.

Southern soldiers weren't willing to kill and die to preserve the right to keep slaves. I don't think you've studied this enough. You have an indoctrinated view of Southerners, especially the 5% who owned slaves.

My bottom line is that nothing -- not secession, not preserving the union, not freeing slaves, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the Southern people.

There may have been a people somewhere on the planet with the moral authority to make war on the Confederacy, for slavery or anything else. But. It. Wasn't. The. United. States.

Actually, ETCM, YOU are the one assigning bizarre inferences to clearly worded statements. To my clearly worded statement, "First part of your comment is true. The second part isn’t true," you assigned the implication that I had not read the Declarations of Causes of Secession (which you mistakenly called declarations of secession); that I did not know they referenced slavery, etc.

You assume that I was ingrained with "states rights" (I do not believe either secession or the war was about states rights).

You assume I find it difficult to come to terms with slavery and the support of it in the South. I don't. I simply understand that God is not limited in what He can do and His bringing about good things from evil things is happened more times than human beings can know about. Bringing slaves to Christ was one of the greatest things to come from a bad situation.

Southern soldiers did not fight and die to defend the institution of slavery. I have looked, probably much more than you have. I know. You virtue signal.

"Slavery was one reason (among any) for secession. In fact, it was the primary reason. But..."

I'm glad you can concede that at least. However, that's a long "but". We all realize the war was a tragic, complex and barbaric. Your "but" is ridiculously one sided in its villainization. And trying to separate the reason for secession from the reason for war is dubious. The south was willing to not only secede, but to fight a war to preserve their "way of life".

Who is expressing hate? Not I. "mindlessly infuriated", "barbarians wearing military uniforms", and "God, not you, declares what is evil and I find nothing in his word declaring slavery as evil." OK Nellie, I understand you a little better now... Have a nice life.

I don't concede anything. (Concede -- admit that something is true or valid after first denying or resisting it.) I've never denied that secession was primarily about slavery. You do like to subtly pass judgment, dontacha?

"But" in my post is followed by "..secession is not war, and the causes/reasons for each are different." What is ridiculously one sided about that? There is no villainization in it. You are assigning something after "but" that I did put there.

The South fought because it was invaded. There would have been no war but for that. They fought to survive.

Yes, mindlessly infuriated. Yes, barbarians wearing military uniforms. That refers to their behavior. They shot pet dogs for fun, stole what food they could carry and destroyed the rest so the people would have no food, burned houses, barns, stored food, stored crops, crops in the field, even farming implements so no more food could be grown; they slit the throats of livestock, threw the carcasses in wells and streams to contaminate drinking water and cause disease in the civilian population at a time when there was no medicine because Lincoln, the great humanitarian, had BLOCKADED it; stabled horses in church sanctuaries and chopped up pews for firewood just for spite, and dug up corpses looking for valuables.

People speak of Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia, where Yankee POWs died of starvation and disease, and imply it was done from some innate Southern cruelty. The fact was, Southern soldiers and civilians themselves suffered privation and disease from the lack of food and medicine. The situation at Camp Sumter was exacerbated by the Union's refusal to exchange prisoners. Contrast this with Northern POW camps, where funds for food, blankets, and barracks were plentiful but purposely withheld, and where prisoners were deliberately tortured. One of the worst was Point Lookout in Maryland. At Elmira, New York ("Hellmira"), prisoners were fed potato peels and water fouled with sewage, and prison officials built viewing stands where townspeople could pay a few pennies and look down into the prison yard and entertain themselves watching Southern soldiers suffer.

Remember that winters in the North were brutally cold. Consider Camp Douglas in Chicago, where the Union refused to build barracks for overflow prisoners, who were then housed in tents in the Illinois winter, where guards fired guns through the barracks and tents throughout the night to deprive prisoners of sleep, where POWs were made to sit bare-bottomed on blocks of ice, and where they were made to sit astride a thin board high off the ground with weights tied to their ankles. America's penchant for torturing prisoners of war didn't begin with Abu Ghraib.

And that barely scratches the surface of what the barbarians did.

That is barbaric, Mr. ETCM.

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Hdqrs. Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field, Rome, Ga., October 29, 1864 Brigadier-General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga.:

Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?

W.T. Sherman, Major-General, Commanding.

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Calhoun, October 30, 1864

Major-General Sherman: My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned. Watkins is not here, but I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable, if necessary.

E.M. McCook, Brigadier-General

That is barbaric, Mr. ETCM.

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Maybe you'd like to read about the destruction of Southern towns that were mostly burned by the yankee army which are listed in the government's own Official Records? Most of which had no military presence or significance? On second thought, since that would take a l-o-o-o-o-ng time, I'll just give a list of some of them: Osceola, Missouri, burned to the ground, September 24, 1861 Dayton, Missouri, burned, January 1 to 3, 1862 Columbus, Missouri, burned, reported on January 13, 1862 Bentonville, Arkansas, partly burned, February 23, 1862 Winton, North Carolina, burned, reported on February 21, 1862 Bluffton, South Carolina, burned, reported June 6, 1863 Bledsoe's Landing, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862 Hamblin's, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862 Donaldsonville, Louisiana, partly burned, August 10, 1862

And then there was the sack and pillage of Athens, Alabama, on June 30, 1862, by Colonel Turchin's men, who committed rapes and other atrocities on the inhabitants. Turchin was subsequently court-martialed and put out of the military. What happened next? Turchin was rewarded by lincoln, was promoted to Brigadier General and put back in the military.

Athens, Alabama, partly burned, August 30, 1862 Randolph, Tennessee, burned, September 26, 1862 Elm Grove and Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, October 18, 1862 Napoleon, Arkansas, partly burned, January 17, 1863 Mound City, Arkansas, partly burned, January 13, 1863 Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, February 21, 1863 Eunice, Arkansas, burned, June 14, 1863 Gaines Landing, Arkansas, burned, June 15, 1863 Sibley, Missouri, burned June 28, 1863 Hernando, Mississippi, partly burned, April 21, 1863 Austin, Mississippi, burned, May 23, 1863 Columbus, Tennessee, burned, reported February 10, 1864 Meridian, Mississippi, destroyed, February 3 to March 6, 1864 Washington, North Carolina, sacked and burned, April 20, 1864 Alexandria, Louisiana as May 13, 1864 Hallowell's Landing, Alabama, burned, reported May 14, 1864 Newtown, Virginia, ordered to be burned, ordered May 30, 1864 Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia, burned, June 12, 1864 Rome, Georgia, partly burned, November 11, 1864 Atlanta, Georgia, burned, November 15, 1864 Camden Point, Missouri, burned, July 14, 1864 Kendal's Grist-Mill, Arkansas, burned, September 3, 1864 Shenandoah Valley, devastated, reported October 1, 1864 by sheridan Griswoldville, Georgia, burned, November 21, 1864 Somerville, Alabama, burned, January 17, 1865 McPhersonville, South Carolina, burned, January 30, 1865 Barnwell, South Carolina, burned, reported February 9, 1865 Columbia, South Carolina, burned, reported February 17, 1865 Winnsborough, South Carolina, pillaged and partly burned, February 21, 1865 Tuscaloosa, Alabama, burned, April 4, 1865

And, of course, this list does not include the hundreds upon hundreds of private homes which were listed as being plundered and burned by the yankees.

That is barbaric, Mr. ETCM.

Why don't you trip through the Official Records -- they're online -- and compile a list, even a partial list, of union towns burned by Confederates.

Oh, and if you've got a problem with God being the one to declare good and evil, take it up with Him.

Nice work

Race baiter retreated