Bad Reactions to W&L ?

Drosselmeier
Sun, 20 Aug 2006 15:44:33 +0000

I don’t think Ariesathena argued that the cause of the Civil War was all about economics. She instead disagreed that the Confederacy was all about oppression of blacks, a point with which I heartily agree. The South had several grievances against the North, and historians have debated the precise nature of these grievances. But few legitimate historians agree that slavery was “just a by product”. It was at the very center of the conflict.

“Slavery was undoubtedly THE IMMEDIATE FOMENTING CAUSE of the woeful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered–the TALLEST PINE in the political forest around whose top THE FIERCEST LIGHTNINGS were to blaze and whose trunk was destined to be shivered in the earthquake shocks of war. (Confederate General John Brown Gordon on page 19 of his REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR NEW YORK, CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS ATLANTA THE MARTIN & HOYT CO., 1904)
http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm

“Historians have long debated the causes of the Civil War. Many of them maintain that slavery was the root cause. In his second inaugural address in 1865, Lincoln said of slavery: “All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.” But most historians agree that the war had a number of causes. They note, for example, that the northern and southern states had been drifting apart because of sectional differences, dissimilarities between the two areas in culture and economy. They also point to ongoing tensions between the federal government and the states over the extent of the federal government’s powers. They mention the disorder in the American political party system of the 1850’s. Yet slavery emerges as the most serious single cause. All explanations for the causes of the war have always involved or revolved around that issue.
http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?content_spotlight/civil_war

“…abolition doctrine [is]. . . THE VERY DOCTRINE which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; found in Macpherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]

“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." (George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana Feb 11, 1861, and presented to the Texas Secession Convention on Mar 9, 1861. Found in The Journal of the Secession Covention of Texas, pp 120-123., E.W. Winkler, ed.,)
(is also mentioneded here http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=137 with references to several other documents pertaining to state secession declarations)

“…it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere – in fact that is the only question which in the least affects the result of elections. It is not less manifest that the whole North is becoming ultra anti-slavery and the whole South ultra pro-slavery. Hence very small acts of deviation from the prevailing course of conduct of either section, being so conspicuous from their rarity, will attract immense animadversion. I think then, 1st, that the only safety of the South from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union." (Georgia politician and Confederate General Henry Benning in a letter to Howell Cobb, and found in The Toombs, Stephens, Cobb Correspondence, published by the American Historical Association. It can also be found in Allan Nevins’s, The Fruits of Manifest Destiny, pages 240-241. Finally, you may read it here http://www.gdg.org/Research/Causes/causes4.html)

To pull all of this back to my point, it is clear to me, based upon the evidence left behind by leaders of the Southern Confederacy, that at least one of the chief reasons, if not the very topmost reason, the Confederacy came into existence, was the protection of slavery. Because its symbols were created to support this effort, those symbols can find no legitimate public support in America, the Land of the Free.