madwriter

I don't know if this is because of the Trayvon Martin case or it's just one of those cyclical things, but I've noticed another rise in Internet comment chatter about the Civil War and whether or not the South seceded because of slavery or "states' rights". I've always been of the opinion that it was primarily over slavery and the South's slave economy, and often when people have argued against this I've posted links to things like period newspapers and state secession declarations that said outright that they were breaking from the U.S.A. over slavery.

This doesn't always get through to them. OK, fine. Would you believe Jefferson Davis himself? Because he also said it outright, in his explanatory April 29, 1861 address to the Confederate Congress.

States' rights? Primarily the legal justification for secession, not the cause. Aggressive northern dominance of the national economy? He does slip that in once towards the beginning: "The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests."

But "agriculture" here, of course, means slave-based economy. Davis points out that the northern soil and climate was more conducive to industry than slaves, and that those "burdens on commerce" were targeting Southern "property". Because darn it all, "When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the colonies by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law."

And when the North started trampling states' rights in earnest, according to Davis, they were going after rights of Southern landowners to hold onto their human "property". Particularly the property that hoofed it to the North: "...The dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property."

And darn it again, but those pesky abolitionists got a whole major political party (the Republicans) behind them. "Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars."

The final straw for the South, then, was how "This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States."

Davis then goes on to extol the virtues of slavery in great detail. How slaves helped clear the wilderness. How much Southern farmers rely on their slaves. How, God bless their souls, bringing those poor heathens from Africa helped civilize them. And above all, slavery is necessary to the very survival of civilization itself! "...And the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man."

Davis wraps up all those arguments with one final pointed conclusion: "With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."

That is to say, secession. In short, the North is imperiling slavery, therefore the South must break from the Union and form its own country.

Apparently Davis thought that the South's secession was the only sure way to save the civilized universe. He obviously makes the case that it was necessary to save slavery.

So yes, throw me some more arguments about how the South's breakaway had nothing to do with slavery. But I won't listen to any arguments that don't cite Civil War-era sources.

--Danny Adams, great-great-great grandson of a Confederate officer who also served briefly as an aide to Jefferson Davis