Slavery is a propaganda tool used to distract from the unconstitutional invasion, slaughter, and rape of the South. It is uncomfortable for the North to admit that Lincoln was wrong. You cannot save the Constitution by violating it. You cannot fight for the Republic by destroying it. The South seceded in an attempt to preserve freedom; the way our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Because slavery is a moral evil it would have eventually disappeared from the South also. Many prominent Southerners despised slavery and with good men like Lee, Jackson, and Cleburne I have no doubt it would have ended.

J. Taylor Ellyson

Some people have argued that while the North did not fight to free the slaves the South fought to keep them. This is absurd. If these had been the motives of the sections there would have been no war. An accommodation would have been reached. In fact just such an attempt was made by the North. The North offered to enshrine slavery to prevent secession. The South refused because it was not fighting to keep slavery.

Another argument is based the effects of the war. Thankfully chattel slavery ended. But the freemen were soon reduced to a subservient status. Which was more or less the status born by them in the North and West. Thus the purported (by some) reason the North fought was not achieved. But one northern war aim was certainly achieved and bettered. The North’s economic exploitation of the South increased. Not only did the tariffs remain in place for generations afterward but other economic injustices were erected; such as differential rail rates, strip cutting of southern forests, carpetbagger theft of land for “back taxes”, etc.

Lastly this slavery argument is a red herring. I know of no modern day Confederate who wishes to enslave anyone. Chattel slavery is a long dead issue. Today’s Confederates do not support secession because of ancient wrongs. We are secessionists because of modern wrongs and the only way to obtain freedom and keep a distinct culture alive is to be apart from a people who hate us and seek only to dominate us. America is a obscene culture of death that lacks any legitimacy. It appears to be finally reaping what it has sown and I’m glad of it. On that Judgment Day of judgment days I would far rather have to answer for the sins of the South than America’s.

UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES OF THE UNCIVIL WAR

A Brief Explanation of the Impact of the Morrill Tariff
By Mike Scruggs for the Tribune Papers

Most Americans believe the U. S. “Civil War” was over slavery. They have to an enormous degree been miseducated. The means and timing of handling the slavery issue were at issue, although not in the overly simplified moral sense that lives in postwar and modern propaganda. But had there been no Morrill Tariff there might never have been a war. The conflict that cost of the lives of 650,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and perhaps as many as 50,000 Southern civilians and impoverished many millions for generations might never have been.
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=087

Tariffs, Not slavery
by: Jack McMillan, Ph.D.

Contrary to what is now taught, slavery was not the primary issue. Sorry, Julian, Jesse, and victims of public indoctrination everywhere, but here are the inconvenient facts.

The American educational system continues perpetuating a myth regarding the War for Southern Independence [often mistakenly called 'The Civil War,' a misnomer.] Teachers using government-mandated, Northern-produced texts inform students the conflict centered solely on slavery, with Abraham Lincoln ‘The Great Emancipator’ sending Union troops to ‘make men free.’ Nothing could be more untrue. We realize the wisdom in the adages that history-books are written by the victors and that truth is war’s first casualty. Like other complex human activities, wars often have a number of underlying causes. In this article, I shall provide the reader with an overview of the primary causi belli of the War for Southern Independence, the issue of tariffs.
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=003

FACTS THAT SUPPORT THE SOUTHERN VIEW OF THE CIVIL WAR

By: Michael T. Griffith

Most books on the Civil War are biased in favor of the Northern view of the conflict. However, in many of these books the careful reader can find a number of facts that support the Southern view of the war. In this article I will document the following facts from mainstream history books:

* Abraham Lincoln knew that an attempt to resupply Fort Sumter could provoke a hostile response from the Confederacy.

* The Confederate states seceded in a democratic, peaceful manner, and most Southerners supported secession. (This refutes the notion expressed by some writers that Southern elitists pulled the South out of the Union against the will of most Southerners.)

* Confederate forces treated Northern citizens and property considerably better than Union forces treated Southern citizens and property.

* Slavery was not the only factor that led the states of the Deep South to secede.
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=010

An Inconvenient History-War for Southern Independence-Part 1

by Republicae
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

“If I have a superstition, sir, which governs my mind and holds it captive, it is a superstitious reverence for the Union. If one can inherit a sentiment, I may be said to have inherited this from my revolutionary father.” Jeff Davis

I am quite sure that this article may stir the hornets to flight nevertheless; it is a subject that is gradually coming to light in this country after decades of revisionist history promoted by the victor of the conflict.
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=115

An Inconvenient History-War for Southern Independence-Part 2

by Republicae
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Slavery was an evil institution in this country, both in the North and the South however, we fail to understand the real issues concerning the War Between the States. My suggestion is that you read: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis-1881, or War of the Rebellion: Official Government Records of the Union and Confederate Armies-1884, or the Slave Chronicles (a true shocker) compiled from interviews of last living former slaves during the Great Depression. Another is: The Southern States of the American Union by J.L.M. Curry-1894. Read a booklet written by a Slave named Harrison Berry in 1861 called: Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave, an amazing little book that completely contradicts and flies in the face of the accepted history of the South, the Union and Slavery. Read the 1864 report called: The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana it will make you sick.
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=116

Facts About Slavery And The War For Southern Independence

No other place of origin evokes such strong reactions and prejudices as the word “Southern”. It is all the more amazing when one considers the manner in which the early Republic was shaped and dominated by Southerners. Jefferson was the intellectual and spiritual architect of the Declaration and as the third President acquired the vast Louisiana Territory staking an early claim as far as the Pacific. Washington’s feats after he defeated the British at Yorktown include the first two terms as President, declining a third and an offer to be “King”. James Madison and Patrick Henry crafted a Constitution which has proved the most enduring and practical political document in the world. In fact, five of our first seven Presidents were Southern and it was James Knox Polk in the 1840’s who assured the U.S. would be a permanent transcontinental nation.
http://dixieoutfitters.com/p/slavery-facts?ol=no&pi=2670&ri=2669

Letter from J.L.M. Curry of Alabama to Gov. Hicks of Maryland
“SIR: The Governor of the sovereign State of Alabama has appointed me a commissioner to the sovereign State of Maryland “to consult and advise” with the Governor and Legislature thereof “as to what is best to be done to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the slave-holding States,” menaced and endangered by recent political events.”

“Recognizing the common interests and destiny of all the States holding property in the labor of Africans, and “anxiously desiring their co-operation in a struggle which perils all they hold most dear,” Alabama pledged herself to a “cordial participation in any and every effort which, in her judgment, will protect the common safety, advance the common interest, and serve the common cause.”…”

“To Your Excellency or so intelligent a body as the Legislature of Maryland it would be superfluous to enter into an elaborate statement of the policy and purposes of the party which, by the recent election, will soon have the control of the General Government. The bare fact that the party is sectional and hostile to the South is a full justification for the precautionary steps taken by Alabama to provide for the escape of her citizens from the peril and dishonor of submission to its rule. Superadded to the sectional hostility the fanaticism of a sentiment which has become a controlling political force, giving ascendancy in every Northern State, and the avowed purpose, as disclosed in party creeds, declarations of editors, and utterances of representative men, of securing the diminution of slavery in the States and placing it in the course of ultimate extinction, and the South would merit the punishment of the simple if she passed on and provided no security against the imminent danger.”

“When Mr. Lincoln is inaugurated it will not be simply a change of administration–the installation of a new President–but a reversal of the former practice and policy of the Government, so thorough as to amount to a revolution. Cover over its offensiveness with the most artful disguises, and the fact stands out in its terrible reality that the Government, within the amplitude of its jurisdiction, real or assumed, becomes foreign to the South, and is not to recognize the right of the Southern citizen to property in the labor of African slaves.”

Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
“At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, African slavery existed in twelve of the thirteen States. Slaves are recognized as property, and as a basis of political power, by the Federal Compact, and special provisions are made by that instrument for their protection as property. Under the influences of climate, and other causes, slavery has been banished from the Northern States, the slaves themselves have been sent to the Southern States, and there sold, and their price gone into the pockets of their former owners at the North. And in the meantime, African Slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property– worth, according to recent estimates, not less than four thousand millions of dollars; forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their operatives with bread.”

“An institution with which is bound up, not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people, but their very existence as a political community.”

“As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.”

“Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions– nothing less than an open declaration of war– for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.”