"But Texas’s declaration to secede from the union said it originally joined the U.S. because it 'was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery… which her people intended should exist in all future time.'
“ 'The secession documents of the State of Texas, whose legitimacy are not in question, flatly contradicts the claim…' Johnson wrote to the State Preservation Board in August 2017. The 'plaque has no rightful place in the Texas Capitol.' "
This is a perfect example of how the Civil War has been a political football for 150 years. Back in 1959, when this plaque was put up, Texas was run by Dixiecrats with a strong political interest in spinning the Civil War as preserving states rights in the face of an oppressive Union / Republican government. Civil War Confederate nostalgia was one way that the Dems kept their white voting base in line. Now we’ve come 180 degrees and any Civil War memorial that isn’t a damnation of slavery is being erased from history. Personally, I think plaques like this should come down — they were Democrat political statements, not honoring Civil War veterans. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Plaques and statutes honoring Confederate soldiers and generals should remain.
Texas and the other states of the confederacy and the Indian nations seceded to defend slavery. They said so in their Ordinances of secession:
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/ordnces.html
The states remaining in the union initially invaded the south to preserve the union. This was not a moral invasion. At a later time (that is, with the Emancipation Proclamation), the war became a war to end slavery. Only then was the invasion moral. With regard to the U.S. Constitution, while states remained in the union, they could not be forced to end slavery. Once they left the union, any country could morally invade them to free the slaves. God help them! And God help California when it secedes in order to have open borders.
(I could give an alternate justification involving the debts of Mississippi and the other repudiation states that joined the Confederacy. But, with the international agreement of 1927, invasion for debt-collection was outlawed.)
Now, let’s move the clock forward to the present:
If the U.N. and other international agreements weren’t so effed up, the human race might be near the day when the free countries of the world are collectively so powerful that no country would dare to threaten their neighbors or violate the basic human rights of their own people. If our so-called allies weren’t a bunch of sissies, bullies like Kim and Putin and that asshole in Iran would be very afraid to upset us.
As it is, we, the U.S., are almost alone as the defender of peace and human rights in the world, and there is a limit to what we can do. Pretending to be the world’s policeman in this effed up arrangement is a formula for bankruptcy. So, as much as I am sympathetic with the causes of peace and human rights, we have to put this country and our people first, do only what is prudent elsewhere, and work to reform our trade deals, alliances and other international agreements so as to make them work.
We have tried globalism and peace through appeasement, and that doesn’t work. The good news is that Donald Trump isn’t the only advocate of nationalism in conjunction with peace through strength. We are being joined by others throughout the democratic world.
That's because it wasn't a Rebellion, and the underlying cause was not to sustain slavery.
Slavery was already sustained, and would remain sustained so long as the Union followed the law.
I figured this article would be some bullsh*t like this.