Self determination. In addition, the largest contributing factor was ending the north raping them financially. This is why the north wanted to "preserve the union". They had a cash cow that they were taking advantage of and didn't want to give it up. The South had a right to chart it's own coarse and had decided to do so. They had no plans to invade the North or tell the North what to do. The North forced it's will upon the South through the provocation at Ft. Sumter and the following military invasion and 12 year occupation. Those are the facts. North good, South Bad. Yea, right.
The vast majority of the Confederate Army were everyday people who did not own slaves but they were brave and courageous enough to DEFEND their homeland against foreign invaders. That their children would wish to honor their courage on a plaque is a noble act of remembrance. The true cowards are those who would today deny them that right.
Uncle Sham: "Self determination.
In addition, the largest contributing factor was ending the north raping them financially.
This is why the north wanted to "preserve the union".
They had a cash cow that they were taking advantage of and didn't want to give it up."
Nooooo, the truth is there wasn't one Southerner in 1,000 who believed in 1860 that the North's financial "raping" was cause for secession.
The simple reason is that until secession in 1861 Southerners effectively controlled government in Washington, DC, and set policies & rates where they wanted them.
What certainly was cause for secession in 1860 was the same thing threatened in 1856 -- potential Republican election victory, especially of the presidency.
In 1856 Northern & Southern Democrats united to defeat the Republican threat and secession was tabled, until the next time.
So in 1860 secessionist Fire Eaters made d*mn certain that could not happen again -- they split apart their national Democrats, running a separate ticket of Southern Democrat candidates.
The result was minority "Black Republican" victory, thus giving Fire Eaters the excuse they wanted in 1856 but were denied.
For the 99% of Southerners, secession in 1860 had nothing to do with "financial raping" and everything to do with preventing a Republican administration hostile to the South's "peculiar institution" from taking power over them.
Uncle Sham: "The South had a right to chart it's own coarse and had decided to do so."
Only a "right" by their own, and your, declarations.
In fact no Founding Father ever supported unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, which is what happened in 1860.
Instead, all Founders supported independence from necessity as in 1776 or "disunion" from mutual consent as they did in 1788 adopting their new Constitution.
Uncle Sham: "They had no plans to invade the North or tell the North what to do."
Of course they did -- secessionists immediately began attacking & seizing Union properties, threatening Union officials, firing on Union ships and waging war in Union states!
In the Civil War's first year more battles were fought in Union states & territories than Confederate and more Confederate soldiers died in Union state battles than in Confederate states.
Even into the fall of 1864 Confederates were still fighting in Union Maryland, Kansas, West Virginia, Vermont, Kentucky & Missouri.
So all such claims that the South "just wanted to be left alone" are total, complete rubbish.
Uncle Sham: "The North forced it's will upon the South through the provocation at Ft. Sumter and the following military invasion and 12 year occupation.
Those are the facts.
North good, South Bad.
Yea, right."
Sorry, but months before the first Battle of Fort Sumter both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis publicly announced what they intended to do.
Davis said he would start war if he felt Confederate "integrity" was "assailed".
Lincoln responded that he would not "assail" Confederates and they could only have war if they themselves started it.
But Davis did not wait for Lincoln's "war fleet" to order his assaults on both Forts Sumter and Pickens in Florida.
The reason was, in his own words, "other considerations", namely Virginians had promises they would only secede in the event of war with the Union, and Virginians effectively lead secessionists in North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.
So there was simply no possible way Davis could refuse to double the size of his little "rump Confederacy" by keeping the peace at Fort Sumter in April 1861.
Uncle Sham: "The vast majority of the Confederate Army were everyday people who did not own slaves but they were brave and courageous enough to DEFEND their homeland against foreign invaders. "
Virtually 100% of Confederate leaders did own slaves and considered their "peculiar institution" the heart & soul of Confederate raison d'etre.
Among average troops, depending on their home states, at least 1/4 came from slave-owning families.
No Confederate soldier considered slavery "negotiable".
Uncle Sham: "That their children would wish to honor their courage on a plaque is a noble act of remembrance.
The true cowards are those who would today deny them that right."
But those "children" honor lies which not even Confederates themselves were shameless enough to tell at the time.
Only decades of reflection and selective "forgetting" of key facts allowed the creation of the pack of lies we know as "Lost Cause Myths".
If you mean tariffs, tariffs and excise taxes were the only tax revenue sources the Federal government had. The practical reason the Southern States had for objecting to the shift in economic activity was that they were losing the economic power they had enjoyed since before the Revolution. Instead of cotton leaving ports in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, and European goods entering those same ports, the cotton (and rice and sugar) were leaving those ports, but corn and wheat and other exports were leaving from Baltimore and Philadelphia, and New York and Boston and the European goods were coming in to those northern ports as well. The economic center of the US was shifting, and Southern economic elites were losing their advantage. Part of this was the willful refusal of those Southern economic elites, the Planter Aristocracy, to invest in the infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution; their wealth was invested in land and slaves, and they didn't want to diversify into railroads, mills, and factories. If they had, they would not have had to import as much, and so would have had to pay less in tariffs.
“They had no plans to invade the North...”
Oh, bull! The Confederacy invaded Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia (Confederate troops entered Virginia before the state referendum on Secession was held), Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico/Arizona (Territories at that time), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, even Vermont. Secessionists made no secret of their intentions to force border states like MD, KY, MO, the Southwest Territories and other territories into joining the Confederacy by military occupation, if they could, no matter what the people of those places wanted, just as they had been trying to force Kansas to become a slave state before the War.
“...or tell the North what to do.”
More BS! The Slave States had no trouble telling the Free States that they had to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, that Free States couldn't grant rights to Negroes, and one of the reasons South Carolina gave in its Declaration of Secession was that Illinois had granted free negroes the franchise.
“...the provocation at Ft. Sumter...”
The attack on Ft. Sumter was entirely the South's decision. Had they waited another couple of days, the garrison would have had to quit the place, as they were out of supplies. Some Confederate leaders were quite frank that they wanted to start a War with the US, because without a War, Secession would fade away as the passions of the election of 1860 died out, and the seceding states would drift back into the Union by sheer political and social inertia. Jefferson Davis's instructions to Gen. Beauregard, in command of the Confederate Army in Charleston, SC, seem to indicate this was one of his motives for ordering the bombardment. "Those are the facts," Facts are items of information which can be proved. Your statements are opinions, and can be argued about, and in some points refuted. It seems it is not only the Leftist/Progressives who hold that their opinions are self evident Truth, and therefore Facts.