They stated opposition to states’ rights in their secession documents? Didn’t know this.
Yes. Many of the Confederate States listed their “causes for secession” as sort of a formality/justification/PR effort. South Carolina and Georgia certainly included this language, and others may have as well, although I’m not sure about those. Basically, they stated that they (as states) had the right to have slavery without having to defer to the federal government (pro-states’ rights), but also that northern states (as states) had no similar right to decide their own policies about so-called fugitive slaves (anti-states’ rights). Basically the concept of states’ rights extends to the right to own slaves, but no further, as far as the Confederates were concerned. It was an “a la carte” style of Constitutional interpretation, take what you like, discard what you don’t.
I am just trying to get at the truth.
Sorry, I’m not referring to you, so much as the professional Confederate apologists out there trying to muddy the waters for fun and profit.
It’s like calling World War II “The War of Polish Aggression” long after everyone knows Germany fired the first shots, or that the Poles were the real aggressors because they failed to surrender quickly enough after Germany laid claim to their territory.
perhaps.
There’s a really clear agenda behind the ridiculous level of re-framing and denial you see around the Civil War. The Confederacy was the aggressor and attacked the United States, that part’s indisputable.
Fort Sumter was in the south. When south seceded, they thought the area was in their country. I think they gave the north time to get out of the fort, but of course the north was going to recognize the Confederacy. To the north, Fort Sumter was in America, to the South it was in the Confederacy. Thus disagreement and fighting ensued.
If you ignore the fact that Fort Sumter was federal property and wasn’t part of South Carolina to begin with (which is often done), then that’s what leads to the “the United States failed to surrender quickly enough after the Confederacy laid claim to their territory, therefore the North was the real aggressor” argument I referred to earlier.
The problem is that once you make the jump to the Constitutional right to secession, you’re already just making shit up, so why not add more like “states have the right to just take over federal property” while you’re at it, which people do. There is only one legal way to secede from the US – call a Constitutional Convention and re-write the Constitution to create this right. But that’s an intentionally high hurdle, and the Confederates decided to invent another lower legal standard known as “I can because I say so and I have an army”.
So why did they secede when even Lincoln may not have wanted to end slavery in the first place? They saw the writing on the wall – a long-term trend that was not in their favor, and Lincoln’s election was a strong indicator of that trend. By that point, the US had held onto slavery far longer than practically any other Western nation, but worldwide and national opinions were hardening against slavery and eventually the US would catch up. They saw that there would be a time – maybe not now, but soon – when white rule was not even seen as a desirable thing, let alone possible even for the people who did see it as desirable. Wait, no, I started writing about the 2016 election again. Dangit.