(07-21-2014 10:26 AM)jh Wrote:  

(07-21-2014 05:47 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(07-20-2014 11:17 PM)jh Wrote:  

(07-18-2014 03:20 PM)South Carolina Duke Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 04:19 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  U.S. Civil War.

Correction....to have a "civil war", that would require two parties fighting for the same government.
The War of Northern Aggression or the War Between the States was a war consisting of the South fighting for independence, their second war of independence against an oppressive government!

Ummm. . .
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundati...il-war.htm
And when the reason many of the confederate states seceded was explicitly to protect their right to continue slavery, you don't get to play the oppressive government card.

Slavery was a part of it...but...only a part of it. Unfortunately government schooling left out the others and we have generations of mind dumb Americans that think otherwise. Winners get to write history.

Slavery was the biggest part of it. Look at the articles of secession that the states put out at the time. Or even the article about the Virginia Convention in the Sons of the South link.

Quote:An amendment declaring "that in the event of proposed amendments to the Constitution being rejected by the Non-Slaveholding States Virginia will secede, was voted down 67--58."

That wasn't written by the winners, and that wasn't written after the fact. That's how Virginians were framing the divide in discussions about whether or not they should join the Confederacy.

Let's look at Texas.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp

Quote: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?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States. . . .

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

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. . . .

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States. . . .

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

Now these are just excerpts, and the most inflammatory ones at that, so please go and read the whole thing. But I don't see any way to conclude that Texas did not secede over slavery.

That being said, it still doesn't make them traitors. Nor does the fact that they did not get majority approval make them tyrants - the Constitution did not have majority approval either. It does mean that they formed their own nation for a very evil purpose, however.

Considering that only rich, land owning, white men were the ones who called the shots and given the right to vote, women were not given the vote, and non-whites were defined as less than human, that's not even debatable.