The next time someone says "The Civil War wasn't about slavery"

[SemiCharmedQuark]

throw the Declaration of Causes of Seceding state back:

Here's a snippet from Georgia:

The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. Here's Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

...

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It 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.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

...

[SemiCharmedQuark]

2. Here's South Carolina

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. And here's Texas

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

...
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States

[Pithy Cherub]

4. Dred Scott, Missouri Compromise, Cotton Gin, John Brown,

Abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison, Fredrick Douglass,Lincoln-Douglas debates et al, all have slavery in common. My response is to recite the list add cause and effect and then say are you absolutely sure you want to go down the states rights path... :evilgrin:

Thank you, Now I will add the actual seceding language

[SemiCharmedQuark]

5. And yet in GD it's almost 50/50 on whether the South was justified

[Brewman_Jax]

6. The letters of secession are here at

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/csapage.htm

The sad thing is people who're supposed to be DU'ers sound more like freepers. White supremacy is alive and well.

[GOPFighter]

7. More likely...

...that's what's being taught in schools these days. Might be a good idea for everyone to check our kid's history textbooks.

[Cheswick2.0]

8. may a white woman jump in here?

Of course it was about slavery. The argument that it was not about slavery is one of those tired old academic arguments that lots of people jumped on because it sounded smart.

The states rights that the south was worried about was the right to own slaves. They were afraid that if western states were brought into the union as non slave states that they would eventually lose a national vote and the right to own slaves would be taken away.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

9. I never thought about it like that...

but yeah, I think you're right now that I do. I think few people want to say "it was about slavery" because it seems weird to have such a huge war be about one single issue. Further, since this argument has become so ingrained in the rhetoric of those that support the Confederacy, if one says that slavery was the cause you can guarantee you will get a dirty look and a huffy reply about how it was very complicated and only an idiot would say it was about one thing.

[itzamirakul]

10. I don't mind the huffy remarks and comments

about complicated ideas and only idiots believing them. I just turn it around and say the same to them.

"Only an idiot would believe that the war was NOT about slavery when all of the documents prove that it WAS about slavery."

And from that time on I just make that same point over and over, sometimes re-wording it but over and over until I wear the person down. They never leave me thinking that they have won the argument.

[Cheswick2.0]

11. the whole southern lifestyle was built on free labor

Wealthy people in the south could not have built the lives they did without slavery. They might have built a different kind of economy like the north did.
So no matter how complicated people want to make the issue of the Civil War, it all boils down to the fact that they NEEDED to continue to own people, just like we now NEED to continue to exploit the oils supply in the Middle East.
Rich people do not want to give up the source of their wealth and power.

And poor men's sons die in battle...............