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GOP candidate: Civil war wasn’t about slavery
The Hill ^ | June 25th, 2018 | Lisa Hagen

Posted on 06/25/2018 3:28:41 PM PDT by Mariner

Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart said that he doesn’t believe that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, arguing that it was mostly about states’ rights.

In a Monday interview with Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Stewart, who recently won the GOP nomination in the Virginia Senate race, said that not all parts of Virginia’s history are “pretty.”

But he said he doesn’t associate slavery with the war.

“I don’t at all. If you look at the history, that’s not what it meant at all, and I don’t believe that the Civil War was ultimately fought over the issue of slavery,” Stewart said.

When “Rising” co-host Krystal Ball pressed him again if the Civil War was “significantly” fought over slavery, Stewart said some of them talked about slavery, but added that most soldiers never owned slaves and “they didn’t fight to preserve the institution of slavery.”

“We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who were fighting at that time and from their perspective, they saw it as a federal intrusion of the state,” he said.

Stewart also said he doesn’t support a Richmond elementary school named after a Confederate general deciding to rename it after former President Obama.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: 2018midterms; coreystewart; dixie; va2018; virginia
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To: jeffersondem
Have you read the Constitution of the United States and its pro-slavery provisions?

What "pro-slavery provisions"? All I see is a provision to return runaway slaves and the 3/5th clause.

201 posted on 06/25/2018 6:03:38 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: jeffersondem

I am somewhat familiar with the U.S. Constitution. It was the one Obama wanted to turn into Charmin, right? I do remind people that most slavery existed under the U.S. flag. Is that your point?


202 posted on 06/25/2018 6:04:58 PM PDT by lastchance (Credo.)
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To: Mollypitcher1
Stevens’ speech is of little or no consequence as it is purely a politician’s speech.

How about these guys?

"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860

"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." - Lawrence Keitt

"The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.

"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

"I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in ... The South was my country." - John Singleton Mosby

"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." - John S. Mosby

"We have dissolved the Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel. Now, is there any man who wished to reproduce that strife among ourselves? And yet does not he, who wished the slave trade left for the action of Congress, see that he proposed to open a Pandora's box among us and to cause our political arena again to resound with this discussion. Had we left the question unsettled, we should, in my opinion, have sown broadcast the seeds of discord and death in our Constitution. I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution; we have sought by no euphony to hide its name - we have called our negroes "slaves," and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property." - Alabama Congressman Robert H. Smith

"As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black."
-- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

"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."
--Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

"SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery." --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

"This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last." -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility 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." -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

"Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina."
-- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

"This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable"
-- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

"But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions." -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

"History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity." -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

203 posted on 06/25/2018 6:06:42 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: Timmy

The statement of the HIGHEST political figure differs.


204 posted on 06/25/2018 6:06:47 PM PDT by Mollypitcher1 (I have not yet begun to fight....John Paul Jones)
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To: TBP
Some did. Some didn’t.

Who didn't?

205 posted on 06/25/2018 6:08:26 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: DoodleDawg

“Oh really? Are you sure Lincoln didn’t go to war to deliver the mail?”

Seems like I said something awhile back about “delivering the mail.”

Remind me: what did I say?


206 posted on 06/25/2018 6:09:14 PM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: babble-on

That is basically true from the perspective of TPTB.

I suspect for some individual soldiers on both sides it was about slavery.

Unfortunately, the proponents of slavery, the DemoKKKrats, have used their own past misdeeds to irreparably damage States’ Rights to further other misdeeds.


207 posted on 06/25/2018 6:09:42 PM PDT by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
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To: itsahoot
Then Tell De Sousa he is offering a 10,000 reward for anyone who can prove it. One guy took the challenge saying Grant inherited one, but truth was he was a Democrat at the time.

It took me all of five minutes on Google to find D'Souza to be wrong. I'm sure by now both his ten grand is gone and maybe, just maybe, he's found the benefits of research.

208 posted on 06/25/2018 6:11:04 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: jeffersondem
Seems like I said something awhile back about “delivering the mail.”

You say a lot of things, most of which make no sense. What did you have to say about delivering the mail?

209 posted on 06/25/2018 6:12:32 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: WashingtonSource; DoodleDawg; central_va; Nifster
"There were a lot of people in the South vehemently opposed to slavery, believe it or not."

Of course there were, especially in regions like western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Alabama, northern Texas & northern Arkansas, not to mention most of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky & Missouri.

Those people hated slavery, hated slavers and remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War.

That's one way you know for sure: the others who declared secession did so to protect their most peculiar institution.

210 posted on 06/25/2018 6:15:11 PM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: Bryanw92

Good analysis.

I believe that the North was envious of the advantage the South had with slave labor. The cotton industry was making the South very wealthy after advances in cotton production increased profits. The Cotton Gin was just one of those advances. Soon there would be automation in picking and the South could move their slave labor force into textile production and out-compete the North’s textile industry. The North wanted the slave advantage gone and used moral arguments to get public support.


211 posted on 06/25/2018 6:15:47 PM PDT by jonrick46 (Cultural Marxism is the new cult of the Left.)
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To: WashingtonSource
“Yes the elites were married to slavery.”

A reference to George Washington, Father of the Country?

Or Thomas Jefferson, Father of the Declaration of Independence?

Or James Madison, Father of the U. S. Constitution?

Or George Mason, Father of the Bill of Rights?

212 posted on 06/25/2018 6:16:08 PM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: traderrob6

You should seek out and vote for candidates that share your point of view.

But the vast majority of people who have studied history disagree.


213 posted on 06/25/2018 6:22:06 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: jeffersondem

Making up quotes? I never made that statement.


214 posted on 06/25/2018 6:25:42 PM PDT by Timmy
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To: Mr Ramsbotham

“The issue was slavery and its perpetuation.”

And the South considered that a States Rights issue.

As do so many ignorant on FR today.


215 posted on 06/25/2018 6:26:24 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: oldbill

“You need to do your homework before you go calling Stewart a fool. “

Join the ranks of fools.

You’re wrong on history, and I was the very first public supporter on Free Republic of Donald Trump for President.

Asshole.


216 posted on 06/25/2018 6:29:39 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: oldbill

See #24 and read a history book.


217 posted on 06/25/2018 6:30:46 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: TBP

“It wasn’t all about slavery.”

Any reading of history and the southern states secession declarations will show slavery to be the principal cause.

To the extent there would have been no war without it.


218 posted on 06/25/2018 6:34:30 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: rrrod

“Todd Akin, Roy Moore....”

And Corey Stewart.


219 posted on 06/25/2018 6:36:12 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Reno89519

“Hopefully Stewart drops out by the weekend so the party can come up with a viable, respectable, intelligent, and politically savvy candidate, else this seat goes to a Dem.”

Absolutely and wholly correct.

The man is not smart enough to be a Senator, and we have some really, really dumb Senators.


220 posted on 06/25/2018 6:40:07 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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