I often read blogs, articles, news “reports” and the like – where the commentator refers to the current 10th Amendment Movement with a comment like Hugh Holub in the Tucson Citizen:
“The Civil War was about the right of states to allow slavery. The Union won and slavery was outlawed.”
Obviously, the southern states wanted slavery, but in reading the original “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” – one would find the ideas of nullification and states rights vs centralization to be the leading issue:
an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. [Emphasis Added]
Or how about Mississippi:
“[the North] has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.”
From this it seems quite obvious to me that the Civil War WAS about nullification and states rights – the northern states were utilizing them and the slavers in the South wanted central power to force their way on the whole country.
Totally opposite of how the mainstream mouthpieces would have us believe.
No, Delwyn,
I think the point of the article is "Totally opposite of how the mainstream mouthpieces would have us believe."
I wholeheartedly agree with the very reasonable conclusion of the author because the slavery was a legitimate constitutional institution which was sabotaged by the north states. And the federal government happened to collude with their unconstitutional activity.
It is NOT a discussion about merits or demerits of the slavery as an institution but about a case of the federal government colluding with some groups to undermine the constitution. It just happened to be a morally reprehensible constitutional institution. And the groups were anti-slavery proponents.
In a way the Confederate States were not seceding from the union but expelling the north states and the federal government as a kind of a nullification for their anti-constitutional activity.
Nowadays we have a very similar situation when the federal government is in collusion with some internationalist groups to enslave all people of the USA. Only now the case of the federal government is not that morally immaculate.
I think the parallel is very interesting and instructive.
By the way I am not suggesting that I really believe that the major reason for the Civil War was a slavery issue. But I do believe that then the federal government was just using the morally defensible cause to promote its own agenda.
Let me see if I understand you clearly. "The Confederate States of America was will to spill blood and treasure, not to preserve slavery, and the income derived from the stolen labor of those slaves, but over words on a document? I guess I need to smoke what you have been smoking, because my common sense is still operating a little too well. I suppose that the struggle in the 1960's was just part 2 in the battle to preserve state sovereignty, and, like part 1, had nothing to do with keeping human beings in a state of perpetual servitude.
Has it every occurred to you that those words might actually have real meaning inside the person's own head? I guess if they randomly jotting down symbols and words then you can say they are 'words on a document' but they are not random scribblings but coherent ideas. Those ideas obviously existed in the minds of the people who wrote them down. Clearly, the south felt that the fugitive slave wasn't being enforced. Whatever made them think that is debatable but it was what they wrote down.
Do you have any other stupid ideas I can chew up?