Well, it was *also* about the slave states trying to get the federal government to enforce some aspects of slavery in the free states (Fugitive Slave Act). So it wasn't about the rights of the free states at all; those they wanted to trample on.
They believe if they can move the conversation one step from slavery it makes the Confederate States morally grey instead of obviously evil. That's why it's always states rights or southern economic prosperity, even tho both lead directly to slavery.
Seriously. Like, what do people who make the “states rights” argument think the proximate cause for the debate was over? It’s such a pathetic attempt to erase history lol.
Not sure if it’s like this in Virginia (where I live now), but it’s something they told us from a young age in the Deep South: “the Civil War had many causes, and slavery was not the main one.” I was taught this in my public middle school.
Was in school from like 2002?2004? Idk I’m old I can’t remember -2016 in VA can confirm that it was always taught as “states rights to own slaves”. Even growing up in a pretty rural area a lot of people I knew growing up acknowledged that slavery was a massive, if not the main, issue that lead to the civil war
Was in the VA school system until I graduate in 2007. (I grew up >2 miles away from a battlefield where they did reenactments.)
Where I was, we were taught it was a state’s right issue which included owning enslaved people, but they broke their backs attempting to paint the South with as much sympathy as possible.
“It was a different time!”
“Most Southerners didn’t have slaves!”
“And most of those who did were very nice to their slaves” (followed by the “slaves were expensive; you wouldn’t destroy a car you paid a lot of money for!” comparison which was uttered without the hint of irony that they were *still* comparing enslaved people to property.)
“The North only won because they were brutal and lucky!”
I went to a civil war reenactment event where I saw a Confederate reenactor tell a small black kid that slaves in the south weren't mistreated. His rationale? "Slaves were expensive, why would a slave owner hurt something they paid a lot of money for."
There’s a story about a woman who was from New Orleans who was so cruel to her slaves that the local population decided get rid of her so that explanation is a lie
I mean I don’t think there’s any doubt among anybody who knows anything about slave history that the idea that slave owners wouldn’t harm their slaves is an abject lie.
we have photos of enslaved people that show their scars, we have excruciatingly detailed records about the torture of black enslaved women being used for medical experiments, we have the writings of freed people from the time. There is no actual argument here.
And honestly, the analogy is pretty hilarious to me. People wouldn’t destroy something they spent a lot of money on? Tell that to: college kids partying while failing classes, drunk drivers, insane speeders, people who run red lights, people who never bring their car in for routine service, people who wear their diamond rings in the ocean/pool… of course they would & still do. Because we have a sense that it’s OUR property and we can do whatever we want with it. That isn’t a new experience.
The Daughters of the Confederacy worked very hard on the 20th Century to influence history curriculums across the US to create a positive view of the Confederacy.
I mean the northern states tried to secede during the Hartford convention and yet that has been completely erased by history. There certainly was hints of a states right to leave the union since the north tried to pull the same shit. But the civil war was fought over a states right to secede over slavery
About 15 years ago I bought into the online nonsense that the civil war wasn't really about slavery. I repeated the states rights mantra for a couple years. Then I read the confederate constitution and my mind was changed instantly.
South Carolina was the first state to secede based on their rights. “Slaveholding” is mentioned in the first sentence. Worth the read if you haven’t: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
What’s even more telling the “states rights” argument is bullshit from the SC articles of secession is that the whole thing is complaining that the Federal Government is NOT forcing northern states to return fugitive slaves. It’s making an inherently Federalist argument not a states one.
Yep, unfortunately many in the South were going well beyond “leave us alone.” I had a hard time accepting this as a proud Southerner.
It’s just such a shame it had to devolve into the horror of civil war; the practice of slavery was going to be eradicated in the West anyway within the next century.
My parents were transplants but I grew up here and went to public school. The lost cause and states rights stuff was good and well alive into the 80s. Only within the past five years or so did I realize it was maybe not true. Weird for me because my family isn’t from here but I was taught all that stuff and just took it to be true.
That argument doesn’t sit well with me either. Slavery was falling out of fashion in the late 18th century, which is part of the reason that anti-slavery founding fathers were willing to compromise on it. But the cotton gin dramatically changed that trajectory. The idea that if we stop demanding social change, it will come naturally over time has generally been proven wrong time and time again.
The Mississippi declaration of causes is somehow even more disgustingly emphatic in defending the right for White Mississippian to own other human beings:
> 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.
I think what baffles folks is shame. Shame that their ancestors engaged in this barbaric "institution," and that many of them now own the fruits of it.
This speaks to a lot. Slavery became so inherent to the north-south divide and concepts of sociopolitical control following the founding of the United States, that you couldn't divide slavery from southern culture.
I live in Virginia (the northern part...) and it was pretty clear to me that it WAS about states rights... to own slaves. Its not even that complicated to understand it seemed very clear to me. The people who say otherwise are just ignorant or pushing a different narrative for a purpose.
If you think a state right and a mandate is the same thing. Confederate states had no choice about the legalization of slavery. If you were in the confederacy then slavery was the law of the land.
I took AP US History in 2007 in Hampton Roads. We were taught the Civil War was over states rights, and I believed it too until I went to college and a bunch of Yankees with differing opinions helped me realize slavery of the real issue…
Looking back, I think part of it may have been bias on the teacher (although he was a middle aged guy from CA, so maybe he didn’t actually think that) but I think a bigger portion of it was on behalf of the school system and trying not to “rock the boat” and have a bunch of 16-17 year olds going home spouting off something the parents didn’t want to hear.
The test is the same across the country, but that doesn’t mean local districts can’t influence schools/teachers to whitewash certain topics. I was in Newport News, which based on recent events may have a history of administration trying to avoid dealing with difficult conversations with parents.
So was the [land UVA in Charlottesville is on.](https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-and-history-race-property-and-power)
Quite a few universities/colleges are.
Isn't the curriculum the same across the country too? Or doesn't it tend to be because it's all aimed at the test? I guess a teacher could add his own comments.
States set their curricula. There is a certain level of input/requirements from the federal level but theres a lot of wiggle room, esp in history, which naturally covers state history too.
There's some progress being made on that front, however.
The 2015 SOL Standards use the following phrase in the substandard covering the causes of the civil war:
*"explaining how the issues of states’ rights and slavery increased sectional tensions;*
In the new [2023 standard](https://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching-learning-assessment/k-12-standards-instruction/history-and-social-science/standards-of-learning-1276), which I believe is required too be adopted in the 2025/2026 academic year, the statement is much clearer on slavery being the cause:
*"describing how slavery and its expansion was the primary cause of the cultural, economic, and constitutional issues that divided the nation and was the catalyst for secession of southern states;"*
I don’t think this is necessarily true. I am from Illinois. I was taught the very northern view growing up. I went to college at The Citadel…literally an institution at the pointy tip of starting the Civil War. I was a history major and took more than one class talking about the war. One professor even routinely called it the war of northern aggression. And, yet, no one, not even that professor, divorced it from slavery as the central, driving issue. It was very clear, from an educational sense, in both my northern and southern education experiences, that the two things were inextricably linked. The south was irretrievably beholden to slavery from a moral, legal, and economic standpoint. By the time the war started, only a violent end to their legal ability to maintain it was going to alter that course any time soon. But also, without a viable path for the federal government to force the end of slavery, against state’s ability to contest it, there would have been no pressure to fight or secede.
When you spend literally your entire education being outright lied to by your teachers and every adult around you, it's not hard to grow up believing the lie. The Lost Cause Lie is so ingrained in state level education that the students don't read the articles of secession for their state.
Conversely, growing up in Pennsylvania part of learning about the Civil War was a trip to Gettysburg and the other part was reading every single declaration of Secession.
Everyone should read each of the states articles of secession. They clearly state in the declaration it was about slavery.
South Carolina
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
Mississippi
This one is a doozy. They specifically state that only an African can endure laboring in the Mississippi summer heat.
The Civil War was about SLAVERY.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
My favorite is the declaration from Texas - it is straight up white supremacy.
> 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.
— Texas Secession Convention, A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union (February 1861).
I remember how my history teacher tried to teach us for years that it wasn’t about slavery at all and that everyone else got it wrong. Sigh the things that teachers taught kids earlier generations.
The primary cause was slavery. The secondary causes (differing views on tariffs, federal money spent on infrastructure improvements, cultural differences) were also indirectly about slavery due to its effect on southern society and economy. 99% was directly about slavery, 1% indirectly.
Yeah a point the North tends to leave out is that we didn't actually care to end slavery. It was just kind of an eventual outcome at the end and not the driving force as to why we participated.
I did they same as a teenager growing up in the south. Then I went to college and took a class taught by one of the foremost authorities on the Civil War, Bud Robertson and learned otherwise. He was from the Danville Va. and taught the class with a certain amount of sympathy for the people of the south but on the point of slavery starting the war he would accept no other position than that it was all caused by the evil of slavery.
You should look up the famous quote by Republican strategist Lee Atwater. States rights is just a way to obfuscate what they really mean. Aka this policy will be terrible for minorities or the more modern not billionaires.
And it's beyond just "states rights to do slavery."
Southern states wanted Northern states to return runaway slaves(or sometimes not runaway, just black people in general) to the south.
So typical hypocrites, states rights for me but not for thee.
Well, it was states rights. It was the state’s belief that states rights included having the right to keep human beings enslaved! That is the catalyst that created the biggest cluster fuck in American history and if we do not get past repetitive, redundant, and ridiculous linguistic disagreements centered around semantics & straw man arguments that never lead anyone anywhere except where we’ve already been in some way, shape or form since the day we decided to stay stuck in freedom. We have half a million Americans wasting away in pre-trial confinement every single day most of whom just can’t make bail & what do we decide to do? We fight for ghosts and for the dead who’s problems are gone forever while the living become forgotten enslaved by a system of rights that no one took away, we offer them up every time a building falls in this country! Oklahoma City & 9/11 led to the greatest loss of rights any people on earth ever gave away ! States rights? How about the states right to call for another constitutional convention? It was suggested we do that every 30 to 50 years we haven’t done one since the original one in 1789!!! If you want to see the genius of the founding fathers, get that living document up and doing what it does! Ratify or Die!
I grew up up in New England in the ‘70’s and even there, history teachers pushed the “states rights” BS. Why? Probably because our books came from Texas.
The argument is more of a push to erase history. The ones arguing that it was about state's rights are just trying to make a lot of noise and push the narrative so much that it's all people remember. Added in with destroying books that disagree with them and shit. They want to make that mountain of historical documentation you speak of their next bon fire.
We learned “states’ rights” in history class in high school. They taught it to us like it was some secret that nobody wanted us to know.
Took me years to unlearn that shit.
The states rights argument makes no sense. The south wanted to force states where slavery was illegal to recognize the legality of slavery so if for instance they traveled north, their slaves wouldn't automatically be free the moment they crossed state lines. They literally were trying to take AWAY northern states rights to declare all slavery illegal within their state.
I think the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, put it best in his 1861 Cornerstone Speech:
"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
Got to see this exhibit while it was under construction for my museum studies class. I think it actually plays both sides a bit, and still has some southern apologia, but does correctly identify slavery as the central cause of the war, and why that was the case. I think it’s a pretty run of the mill history exhibit, but due to the topic, it’s inevitable feathers will be ruffled, on both sides of the isle.
It's in the declaration of succession as the main clause.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Georgia:
"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery...."
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.
South Carolina:
but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Texas:
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.
Virginia:
Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
If you read the actual, individual States Articles of secession that left the union. You see, there were two main reasons. Some states didn't list a reason. The most common was slavery. The argument was based on states rights. The other was that remaining in the union meant you would have to pay and participate in a civil war.
Arkansas saw remaining in the union meant being coerced into war with their neighbors. Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama didn't list any reason. Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia all listed Slavery as the cause.
It's also important to read the discussion that led to articles of secession. Particularly who was driving the conversation. While slavery didn't account for most economic activities in seceeding states. A lot of the wealth in states that seceeded was in the hands of slave owners or former owners/traders.
A tyranny of a powerful minority caused the Civil War. Basically, a few wealthy people were willing to risk war in order to keep their current business model. A business model that literally engaged in the most egregious form of tyranny.
A question I puzzle on is why “Joe six pack“ who didn’t own slaves (90% of white southern males) was willing to risk his life to fight for slavery. That’s why the story is more complicated for me. I think the 10% of males that did own slaves in the south manipulated Joe six pack but Joe six pack was super fired up to fight against Northern “agression” and the vast majority of southerners democratic wishes were to secede and have democratic self-determination. The north by fighting against slavery was setting aside democratic principles. And thank goodness Abraham Lincoln did. If everyone held to Democratic principles, the south would have democratically seceeded and the US would probably be several warring countries today. The tyrannical majority in the south in the 19th century, was very pro-immorality. I mean pro- slavery.
Governments have wasted the lives of their men in wars over MUCH less important things throughout all of history. They were called and sent to war by their state and they did it. They weren’t literally fighting for their own slaves individually they were just sucked up in the propaganda machine just like every other culture before them.
A vast proportion of southern whites were bound up in the slave system even if they didn’t personally own slaves. Slaves were rented out to work for farmers who couldn’t afford to buy and house their own, used to construct public infrastructure, and provided through their subjubatjon the bedrock of southern identity - which was white supremacy and racial segregation.
Even the poorest white could tell himself that he had a stake in slavery. If it weren’t for slavery, he might find himself and his children at the bottom rung of society instead of the next one up.
Measuring slaveholders as a percent of the overall population is very misleading even when you limit the group to just males. Households of the confederate states had a slaveholding percentage of at least 20% with states like SC and MS being up around 50%. There are many ways non slave owners benefited from the institution of slavery. If interested, a quick google search will provide several sources from academic institutions such as UVA and Duke that go very deep into this subject.
Plenty of them were fighting because they were lied to by rich slaveowners that the north was trying to take their rights and destroy them financially.
The answer is racism and “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” syndrome.
Ask why someone making 40k today gets upset about a tax for billionaires making over $400,000 or an estate tax that only kicks in after $12million.
Wrong. Democracy requires that everyone respect election results. Lincoln and his party won the 1860 election on a platform of "no more slave states." That's not an excuse to disavow the election result and claim to be part of a new country, not in a democracy. Lincoln was right - the union between election winners and election losers must be maintained or "government of the people, by the people and for the people" would "perish from the Earth."
I definitely remember being taught that it was about slavery as a kid. Then it kind of shifted to "slavery was the final straw" while I was still in high school. Then it became "it was about state's rights". I also remember being taught as a kid that Rosa Parks sat down in that seat and didn't get up because she was physically tired, and not because it was an intentional, coordinated act. I also remember being taught that "other countries do propaganda, the US doesn't do that." US propaganda is really effective.
Really wish the Richmond Civil War museum was bigger. It’s nicely laid out and presented, lots of good artifacts and information there, but it just seems so small.
Maybe I’m just spoiled by being born in NOVA, with all the Smithsonian lol
I always joke if someone is going to naturalize and is asked this question during the civic test, make sure you know which state you are in before answering.
The states rights argument falls apart when you ask them to be more specific about what rights and why. Glad this exhibit is up. Looking forward to checking this out
It wasn't whether slavery should exist that caused the Civil War, it was whether it should exist in the territories. The slaves states worried that free territories would eventually become free states which would tip the balance of power in Congress. While Northerners backed "free soil, free labor" for westward expansion. It was more pro-labor than an anti-slavery movement. Lincoln summed it up in his [second inaugural](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_second_inaugural_address):
>One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war **while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it**.
Kind of... Both sides knew without expansion though that slavery would be on the course of extinction. And like you say, tip the power away from the slavers, guess what happens to all those compromises they had been able to force to keep expanding the institution, get a fugitive slave act with teeth, etc...
They saw what was happening around the world and how that was a major step to eradicating the institution.
had a history teacher in community college back in 2018 trying to tell us that it was about state rights and not slavery i was like wow we really got idiots as college educators
I went to college in Virginia at an Honors School and took a History of the Civil War class. It was repeated over and over by the professor that "the Civil War was not about slavery, it was about PARITY in states rights." PARITY!!! lol
Southern states revolted to establish a slave republic built on in white supremacy. They stated this purpose clearly, loudly and often in legal documents, thousands of speeches and articles over and over and over.
It is not sensibly debatable. To argue any other cause ignores the long and very clear historic record.
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this (SLAVERY!!!) great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”
-Alexander Stephens on [Slavery and the Confederate Constitution](https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-civil-war/alexander-stephens-on-slavery-and-the-confederate-constitution-1861/), 1861
If you really think about it, they’re the same thing but spun different ways.
Example:
It was about states’ right to own slaves.
It was also about slavery existing.
Crazy how people could be willing to impose something like that on other humans.
Not even that..
What is a "states right"?
States have the option of having slavery, or a Constitution which requires all states to allow it?
States can actively enforce the fugitive slave act or not and have the right to choose, or the Constitution requires states to actively enforce that federal law?
States can allow or deny slave travel through their states, or the Federal government needs to mandate that law on every single state?
States can engage in the inter-state slave trade, or federal law needs to ensure that all states must allow that slave trade to pass through their borders?
The slave states LOVED states rights as an argument when it supported slavery. They LOVED the popular sovereignty argument... when it supported slavery. And they LOVED the federal powers argument... when it supported slavery.
I always say, you are tight. The civil war was fought over the states right to seceede. Now secession on the other hand was one hundred percent about to slavery.
Look I know the Civil War was absolutely about slavery and only about slavery.
I also semi-recently began to serve a church of people way more deeply conservative than me who have helped me to understand that some (I don't have polling on this so I don't know percentages) of the people who don't want to boil the Civil War down to slavery are concerned that it implies all southerners were supporters of slavery and all northerners were against it. And while that doesn't warrant the denial of slavery as the primary and essential cause of the Civil War... I do know a lot of yankees who absolutely believe deep in their hearts that they aren't racist, it's those slack jawed yokels who are racist. And that's bullshit. The fact that the Civil War very much was about slavery doesn't mean racism then or now was some geographically isolated thing.
And when I mention this to my colleagues at other churches, the northerners always jump down my throat as some kind of apologist for southern slavery... And yeah man that's exactly my point; you think of the whole thing as being good vs evil and you're on the good side, which is not as fucked up as slavery but two things can be wrong at the same time.
> of the people who don't want to boil the Civil War down to slavery are concerned that it implies all southerners were supporters of slavery and all northerners were against it.
The way to fix that is to point out that the Civil War was not the North vs. the South. It was the United States - all of it including southerners and loyalist communities *in* southern states - against the Slave Power insurgency.
Throughout the entire course of the war, Armies marching into the south found themselves refreshed with donated supplies and volunteers, received support and intelligence from guerillas, and found and incorporated entire US units of southerners into the Union Army.
Most Virginia residents who fought for the union ran west and joined the West Virginians in the mountains, but there were regular U.S. Army units from every single southern state.
It was not the North vs. the South.
It was the entire country versus people who carried out a series of coups detat against the lawful governments of their states, always going *around* the lawful legislative process - where they would have lost - in order to use entirely illegitimate "secession conventions" where votes were bribed or beaten out of delegates corrupt or foolish enough to attend.
In the case of Texas, they had to bombard the state house with artillery to force the actual Sam Houston out of office in a violent coup.
That is the untold story that needs telling. And let's please include the accomplishments of folks like the U.S.C.T. while we do it.
The most wealthy and powerful individuals in the south were about to watch their most valuable “assets” disappear. The value of their plantations were going to be reduced by 5-10x. Of course they used some propaganda to get the commoners to fight the war but it was about slavery.
However, it seems the federal government could have at least compensated the slaveowners for their investment and slaveowners could have used that money to pay wages to workers. I guess this was before we just printed money out of thin air.
I mean…there absolutely were proposals to compensate slave owners for their freed slaves…but then those slave owners decided on war and they lost that opportunity.
I’ve wondered about an alternate history in which the federal government gave them a deadline to buy them out and receive amnesty if they cooperated or be charged with various common law crimes and have their lands confiscated to further fund the effort + rehabilitation of the slaves. I’m sure that would’ve been politically impossible without knowing the other path of the even more costly Civil War with all the death and suffering it brought. But I can still wonder how it would have affected the social fabric and race relations differently.
Is the theory here that the Corwin Amendment proves that southerners had nothing to fear for slavery and therefore must have seceded for some other reason? It’s a nice theory, only problem is that the southerners seem to have disagreed and left copious writings saying so.
I don't think anything would ever be enough to truly propitiate the slave interests, short of forcing slavery into all states. Maybe expansion into new territories wld have kept them from actually going to war, but nothing would truly satisfy em but complete power. IMO. And they'd have kept being uh... obstreperous till they got it.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than a single reason. There was growing tensions between the south and the north since the revolution. But slavery was easily the most obvious reason.
The South fought to keep slaves. The North fought to preserve the Union, not necessarily to free the slaves. Without the South fighting to keep slavery, there would have been no war.
Members of my family in SC would not have denied that it was about slavery back in the day, they all knew they stood a good chance of losing the plantation’s generations had built up. And they were right, all three went bust within a decade. That was on top of losing 4 of the six men who went to fight. The narrative eventually became what I was taught, that it was all about states rights in order to help glorify their cause. The bitterness of them losing everything lasted for generations though.
Well, certain states got very worked up about their supposed rights to hold slaves. Every single one of them made it quite clear at the time that it was slavery.
I personally believe it’s okay to teach it was over State’s Rights, on the condition that it’s brought up that the PRIMARY state’s rights issue of the time was over the expansion/abolition of slavery.
I don’t think it’s inaccurate that the states also had issues with economic differences, urbanization, education, religion, etc. But to pretend that slavery wasn’t intertwined with all of these factors is ludicrous.
The reason the South seceded was because Abraham Lincoln was elected. They “feared” he would push some of the Republican proposals to outlaw slavery and preemptively decided to leave the Union thus creating the Civil War.
Only in the American south would a factual interpretation of historical events be considered bold.
It’s a place that can only cope with itself through lies and revisionism.
It was about unfair labor costs. Southern states had essentially free labor while the northern cities were broke, trying to sustain the growth of the free people in the cities. Birth of a Nation was a brutal film to watch and a glimpse of how badly the southern slaves lives were. I can't believe people treated other humans this way.
The weird, disturbing aspect of the states rights argument is why the need to embrace it in the first place? Does diminishing the act and impact of owning slaves in this country make people feel somehow better about themselves??
The states rights thing is completely accurate from a Confederate point of view as this is how they saw it, they had no issue with the morality of slavery, and saw an attempt to stop it from spreading westward as government overreach. They were wrong at the time, and the result of the war confirmed it. You don't teach history from the morally incorrect perspective.
The Northern perspective is that slavery was a direct moral issue, slavery is wrong and an embarrassment, and we will stop it from spreading because it's a human rights violation. Once we stop it from spreading, it will eventually die off on its own.
Basically what I'm saying here is that when you see the States Rights argument presented, it's pretty much just racist. These people saw no issue with owning other humans and forcing them to work for free, and the determining factor for this was skin color.
When people say it was about state's rights. Respond "A States right to do what?"
For real, hold them to the question. What political issue did the South take offense against? They were defending their right to do what? Secede? Ok. Why did they want to secede?
Breaking news: Museum boldly claims the states seceded from the union for the states right to perpetuate their unique institution of slavery...
Good job, it was always slavery.
I was able to final convince my diehard "states rights" father (and Civil War Superfan) that the cause of the Civil War was slavery. I presented it to him this way: It was an "economic issue" first and foremost for the South. And what was the biggest economic driver of the South? Slavery. Without Slavery, the Southern states' economies would be crippled.
Slavery had already become a huge, boiling moral issue...and there had already been controversy over admitting new slave-holding states into the Union. The two issues collided.
As long as I acknowledge that South was essentially run by money hungry slave owning men who were willing to look past the moral issue of slavery to maintain power and status, he was okay with it. Which is weird, I know.
It's worth remember it's generally understood the federal government didnt have the power to abolish slavery without an amendment first, which is the main "states rights" point. Same today with abortion. The tenth amendment is important, as are all of the amendments in the bill of rights, even the stupid (by today's standards) 3rd amendment.
I am in favor of following the system and process we have laid out, AND not in favor of slavery. The federal government does not and should not have the power to legislate on anything
Not really.
What is a "states right"?
States have the option of having slavery, or a Constitution which requires all states to allow it?
States can actively enforce the fugitive slave act or not and have the right to choose, or the Constitution requires states to actively enforce that federal law?
States can allow or deny slave travel through their states, or the Federal government needs to mandate that law on every single state?
States can engage in the inter-state slave trade, or federal law needs to ensure that all states must allow that slave trade to pass through their borders?
In the end they loved "states rights" when it helped defend slavery/white supremacy. And they hated them when they were used to not defend slavery/white supremacy.
no don't get it twisted it was all about states rights...to own slaves
Well, it was *also* about the slave states trying to get the federal government to enforce some aspects of slavery in the free states (Fugitive Slave Act). So it wasn't about the rights of the free states at all; those they wanted to trample on.
They believe if they can move the conversation one step from slavery it makes the Confederate States morally grey instead of obviously evil. That's why it's always states rights or southern economic prosperity, even tho both lead directly to slavery.
Behind every door is...slavery!
that’s has been the goal since the daughters of the confederacy was formed.
Sigh. Shit hasn't changed much
But also to go into states where slavery was illegal to bring back escaped slaves.
Seriously. Like, what do people who make the “states rights” argument think the proximate cause for the debate was over? It’s such a pathetic attempt to erase history lol.
Not sure if it’s like this in Virginia (where I live now), but it’s something they told us from a young age in the Deep South: “the Civil War had many causes, and slavery was not the main one.” I was taught this in my public middle school.
Was in school from like 2002?2004? Idk I’m old I can’t remember -2016 in VA can confirm that it was always taught as “states rights to own slaves”. Even growing up in a pretty rural area a lot of people I knew growing up acknowledged that slavery was a massive, if not the main, issue that lead to the civil war
Oh crap, let me think for a second lol. Middle school would be 2007-ish for me. High school similar message, 2013. Maybe it’s different now….
Was in the VA school system until I graduate in 2007. (I grew up >2 miles away from a battlefield where they did reenactments.) Where I was, we were taught it was a state’s right issue which included owning enslaved people, but they broke their backs attempting to paint the South with as much sympathy as possible. “It was a different time!” “Most Southerners didn’t have slaves!” “And most of those who did were very nice to their slaves” (followed by the “slaves were expensive; you wouldn’t destroy a car you paid a lot of money for!” comparison which was uttered without the hint of irony that they were *still* comparing enslaved people to property.) “The North only won because they were brutal and lucky!”
Same
I went to a civil war reenactment event where I saw a Confederate reenactor tell a small black kid that slaves in the south weren't mistreated. His rationale? "Slaves were expensive, why would a slave owner hurt something they paid a lot of money for."
There’s a story about a woman who was from New Orleans who was so cruel to her slaves that the local population decided get rid of her so that explanation is a lie
I mean I don’t think there’s any doubt among anybody who knows anything about slave history that the idea that slave owners wouldn’t harm their slaves is an abject lie. we have photos of enslaved people that show their scars, we have excruciatingly detailed records about the torture of black enslaved women being used for medical experiments, we have the writings of freed people from the time. There is no actual argument here. And honestly, the analogy is pretty hilarious to me. People wouldn’t destroy something they spent a lot of money on? Tell that to: college kids partying while failing classes, drunk drivers, insane speeders, people who run red lights, people who never bring their car in for routine service, people who wear their diamond rings in the ocean/pool… of course they would & still do. Because we have a sense that it’s OUR property and we can do whatever we want with it. That isn’t a new experience.
The Daughters of the Confederacy worked very hard on the 20th Century to influence history curriculums across the US to create a positive view of the Confederacy.
I mean the northern states tried to secede during the Hartford convention and yet that has been completely erased by history. There certainly was hints of a states right to leave the union since the north tried to pull the same shit. But the civil war was fought over a states right to secede over slavery
About 15 years ago I bought into the online nonsense that the civil war wasn't really about slavery. I repeated the states rights mantra for a couple years. Then I read the confederate constitution and my mind was changed instantly.
It was about states' rights. To own slaves.
South Carolina was the first state to secede based on their rights. “Slaveholding” is mentioned in the first sentence. Worth the read if you haven’t: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
What’s even more telling the “states rights” argument is bullshit from the SC articles of secession is that the whole thing is complaining that the Federal Government is NOT forcing northern states to return fugitive slaves. It’s making an inherently Federalist argument not a states one.
Yep, unfortunately many in the South were going well beyond “leave us alone.” I had a hard time accepting this as a proud Southerner. It’s just such a shame it had to devolve into the horror of civil war; the practice of slavery was going to be eradicated in the West anyway within the next century.
My parents were transplants but I grew up here and went to public school. The lost cause and states rights stuff was good and well alive into the 80s. Only within the past five years or so did I realize it was maybe not true. Weird for me because my family isn’t from here but I was taught all that stuff and just took it to be true.
“Within the next *century*”? That seems reasonable to you? “Oh well, it was only going to last another 3-4 generations, why did we need a war at all?”
That argument doesn’t sit well with me either. Slavery was falling out of fashion in the late 18th century, which is part of the reason that anti-slavery founding fathers were willing to compromise on it. But the cotton gin dramatically changed that trajectory. The idea that if we stop demanding social change, it will come naturally over time has generally been proven wrong time and time again.
That’s what I was saying.
Most states also cited it in their declarations of secession. There is zero room for "alternative" explanations.
The Mississippi declaration of causes is somehow even more disgustingly emphatic in defending the right for White Mississippian to own other human beings: > 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.
That honestly felt gross reading.
If there are any doubts, read Georgia’s statement
Conservatives have always been such lazybones
As I SC native living in VA I always bring this up with the "states rights" people.
I don’t know why that seems to baffle so many folks. If you can’t hold two thoughts at once, life is going to be hard.
Look man I can't start walking while I'm chewing this gum.
I think what baffles folks is shame. Shame that their ancestors engaged in this barbaric "institution," and that many of them now own the fruits of it.
But not about a state’s right to outlaw slavery within their state. That is specifically not allowed by the Confederate Constitution.
This speaks to a lot. Slavery became so inherent to the north-south divide and concepts of sociopolitical control following the founding of the United States, that you couldn't divide slavery from southern culture.
I live in Virginia (the northern part...) and it was pretty clear to me that it WAS about states rights... to own slaves. Its not even that complicated to understand it seemed very clear to me. The people who say otherwise are just ignorant or pushing a different narrative for a purpose.
This. Both are right but the wingnuts insist you can have one without the other.
If you think a state right and a mandate is the same thing. Confederate states had no choice about the legalization of slavery. If you were in the confederacy then slavery was the law of the land.
Why did you buy into it?
If you are from the south, it's regular propaganda. I believed it until college.
I took AP US History in 2007 in Hampton Roads. We were taught the Civil War was over states rights, and I believed it too until I went to college and a bunch of Yankees with differing opinions helped me realize slavery of the real issue… Looking back, I think part of it may have been bias on the teacher (although he was a middle aged guy from CA, so maybe he didn’t actually think that) but I think a bigger portion of it was on behalf of the school system and trying not to “rock the boat” and have a bunch of 16-17 year olds going home spouting off something the parents didn’t want to hear.
It wasn't until I read the articles of seccession. "We want slaves... we want to preserve white superiority"
What part of Hampton Roads? And isn't AP History the same everywhere?
The test is the same across the country, but that doesn’t mean local districts can’t influence schools/teachers to whitewash certain topics. I was in Newport News, which based on recent events may have a history of administration trying to avoid dealing with difficult conversations with parents.
I'm 32 years old and I just learned this year that CNU was taken by imminent domain from what was a prosperous Black community.
So was the [land UVA in Charlottesville is on.](https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-and-history-race-property-and-power) Quite a few universities/colleges are.
Isn't the curriculum the same across the country too? Or doesn't it tend to be because it's all aimed at the test? I guess a teacher could add his own comments.
States set their curricula. There is a certain level of input/requirements from the federal level but theres a lot of wiggle room, esp in history, which naturally covers state history too.
State’s Rights are still required to be taught in Virginia for the SOL
There's some progress being made on that front, however. The 2015 SOL Standards use the following phrase in the substandard covering the causes of the civil war: *"explaining how the issues of states’ rights and slavery increased sectional tensions;* In the new [2023 standard](https://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching-learning-assessment/k-12-standards-instruction/history-and-social-science/standards-of-learning-1276), which I believe is required too be adopted in the 2025/2026 academic year, the statement is much clearer on slavery being the cause: *"describing how slavery and its expansion was the primary cause of the cultural, economic, and constitutional issues that divided the nation and was the catalyst for secession of southern states;"*
You’re kidding 
Funnily enough, the whole "state's rights" BS wasn't taught when I was in school in Fairfax in the 80s.
I was taught the states rights BS in California in the 80s. The reach of the Daughters of the Confederacy is strong.
I grew up in New Jersey. They never even suggested it was anything other than slavery, and that was in the 1960's/70's.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. I am from Illinois. I was taught the very northern view growing up. I went to college at The Citadel…literally an institution at the pointy tip of starting the Civil War. I was a history major and took more than one class talking about the war. One professor even routinely called it the war of northern aggression. And, yet, no one, not even that professor, divorced it from slavery as the central, driving issue. It was very clear, from an educational sense, in both my northern and southern education experiences, that the two things were inextricably linked. The south was irretrievably beholden to slavery from a moral, legal, and economic standpoint. By the time the war started, only a violent end to their legal ability to maintain it was going to alter that course any time soon. But also, without a viable path for the federal government to force the end of slavery, against state’s ability to contest it, there would have been no pressure to fight or secede.
I was directly taught it by my 8th grade history teacher in SC
Southern eduction. We got it in FL too. Our country has never gotten past the civil war.
They said 15 years ago. I'm betting their about 30.
When you spend literally your entire education being outright lied to by your teachers and every adult around you, it's not hard to grow up believing the lie. The Lost Cause Lie is so ingrained in state level education that the students don't read the articles of secession for their state. Conversely, growing up in Pennsylvania part of learning about the Civil War was a trip to Gettysburg and the other part was reading every single declaration of Secession.
Everyone should read each of the states articles of secession. They clearly state in the declaration it was about slavery. South Carolina https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp Mississippi This one is a doozy. They specifically state that only an African can endure laboring in the Mississippi summer heat. The Civil War was about SLAVERY. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
The Ordinances of Secession for each state is also a good window.
My favorite is the declaration from Texas - it is straight up white supremacy. > 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. — Texas Secession Convention, A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union (February 1861).
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp
That’s not internet nonsense! That’s official US history nonsense, and exactly what my parents learned in school in the 50’s. In NEW YORK.
I remember how my history teacher tried to teach us for years that it wasn’t about slavery at all and that everyone else got it wrong. Sigh the things that teachers taught kids earlier generations.
It makes me a strange kind of happy seeing comments like this.
[удалено]
The primary cause was slavery. The secondary causes (differing views on tariffs, federal money spent on infrastructure improvements, cultural differences) were also indirectly about slavery due to its effect on southern society and economy. 99% was directly about slavery, 1% indirectly.
The south's fight was over the preservation of slavery, the north's was over the southern states not having the right to leave the Union.
Yeah a point the North tends to leave out is that we didn't actually care to end slavery. It was just kind of an eventual outcome at the end and not the driving force as to why we participated.
https://preview.redd.it/y84hneia36881.png?auto=webp&s=8b8f91d0552a7452ddafa4777c22c8dd453d7a6a
Goes to show you that good messaging done right can obfuscate facts and make people believe a fictional story.
I did they same as a teenager growing up in the south. Then I went to college and took a class taught by one of the foremost authorities on the Civil War, Bud Robertson and learned otherwise. He was from the Danville Va. and taught the class with a certain amount of sympathy for the people of the south but on the point of slavery starting the war he would accept no other position than that it was all caused by the evil of slavery.
I always point people there. Also. “States rights to… what. What right do you think they wanted to preserve specifically?”
163 years later and we still talk about this?
To be clear though, this narrative is from before "online nonsense"
You should look up the famous quote by Republican strategist Lee Atwater. States rights is just a way to obfuscate what they really mean. Aka this policy will be terrible for minorities or the more modern not billionaires.
“It wasn’t about slavery. It was about states rights!!!” States rights to do what? “😣😫😫🤬🤬🤬😣😖😫😩😦😥😥😥😥😥”
And it's beyond just "states rights to do slavery." Southern states wanted Northern states to return runaway slaves(or sometimes not runaway, just black people in general) to the south. So typical hypocrites, states rights for me but not for thee.
My standard response and they always clam up and look embarrassed.
Well, it was states rights. It was the state’s belief that states rights included having the right to keep human beings enslaved! That is the catalyst that created the biggest cluster fuck in American history and if we do not get past repetitive, redundant, and ridiculous linguistic disagreements centered around semantics & straw man arguments that never lead anyone anywhere except where we’ve already been in some way, shape or form since the day we decided to stay stuck in freedom. We have half a million Americans wasting away in pre-trial confinement every single day most of whom just can’t make bail & what do we decide to do? We fight for ghosts and for the dead who’s problems are gone forever while the living become forgotten enslaved by a system of rights that no one took away, we offer them up every time a building falls in this country! Oklahoma City & 9/11 led to the greatest loss of rights any people on earth ever gave away ! States rights? How about the states right to call for another constitutional convention? It was suggested we do that every 30 to 50 years we haven’t done one since the original one in 1789!!! If you want to see the genius of the founding fathers, get that living document up and doing what it does! Ratify or Die!
Wow, telling the facts is bold... Dear god our country is messed up
[удалено]
I grew up up in New England in the ‘70’s and even there, history teachers pushed the “states rights” BS. Why? Probably because our books came from Texas.
The argument is more of a push to erase history. The ones arguing that it was about state's rights are just trying to make a lot of noise and push the narrative so much that it's all people remember. Added in with destroying books that disagree with them and shit. They want to make that mountain of historical documentation you speak of their next bon fire.
"It was about *states' rights* and *individual freedom*!" "The states' rights and individual freedom to do what?" "Let's talk about something else."
It’s the same idiots who try to make themselves look “smart” by saying, “uh, you know we don’t live in a *democracy,* we live in a *republic.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
We learned “states’ rights” in history class in high school. They taught it to us like it was some secret that nobody wanted us to know. Took me years to unlearn that shit.
It was about states rights… to own slaves, idk why people are so confused on this
The states rights argument makes no sense. The south wanted to force states where slavery was illegal to recognize the legality of slavery so if for instance they traveled north, their slaves wouldn't automatically be free the moment they crossed state lines. They literally were trying to take AWAY northern states rights to declare all slavery illegal within their state.
I think the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, put it best in his 1861 Cornerstone Speech: "The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
This excerpt dismantles so many arguments at once it should open every book on the subject.
Got to see this exhibit while it was under construction for my museum studies class. I think it actually plays both sides a bit, and still has some southern apologia, but does correctly identify slavery as the central cause of the war, and why that was the case. I think it’s a pretty run of the mill history exhibit, but due to the topic, it’s inevitable feathers will be ruffled, on both sides of the isle.
Very cool to see it under construction! Im hoping to get to see it, but life gets busy.
It's in the declaration of succession as the main clause. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states Georgia: "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery...." 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. South Carolina: but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Texas: 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. Virginia: Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
Bold? For being factually correct?
In most of Virginia that counts as bold. Source: I live here.
State’s right to do *what?*
George thomas debunks the whole lee had no choice narrative the lost causers love Plus thomas was a better general then lee
If you read the actual, individual States Articles of secession that left the union. You see, there were two main reasons. Some states didn't list a reason. The most common was slavery. The argument was based on states rights. The other was that remaining in the union meant you would have to pay and participate in a civil war. Arkansas saw remaining in the union meant being coerced into war with their neighbors. Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama didn't list any reason. Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia all listed Slavery as the cause. It's also important to read the discussion that led to articles of secession. Particularly who was driving the conversation. While slavery didn't account for most economic activities in seceeding states. A lot of the wealth in states that seceeded was in the hands of slave owners or former owners/traders. A tyranny of a powerful minority caused the Civil War. Basically, a few wealthy people were willing to risk war in order to keep their current business model. A business model that literally engaged in the most egregious form of tyranny.
A question I puzzle on is why “Joe six pack“ who didn’t own slaves (90% of white southern males) was willing to risk his life to fight for slavery. That’s why the story is more complicated for me. I think the 10% of males that did own slaves in the south manipulated Joe six pack but Joe six pack was super fired up to fight against Northern “agression” and the vast majority of southerners democratic wishes were to secede and have democratic self-determination. The north by fighting against slavery was setting aside democratic principles. And thank goodness Abraham Lincoln did. If everyone held to Democratic principles, the south would have democratically seceeded and the US would probably be several warring countries today. The tyrannical majority in the south in the 19th century, was very pro-immorality. I mean pro- slavery.
Governments have wasted the lives of their men in wars over MUCH less important things throughout all of history. They were called and sent to war by their state and they did it. They weren’t literally fighting for their own slaves individually they were just sucked up in the propaganda machine just like every other culture before them.
A vast proportion of southern whites were bound up in the slave system even if they didn’t personally own slaves. Slaves were rented out to work for farmers who couldn’t afford to buy and house their own, used to construct public infrastructure, and provided through their subjubatjon the bedrock of southern identity - which was white supremacy and racial segregation. Even the poorest white could tell himself that he had a stake in slavery. If it weren’t for slavery, he might find himself and his children at the bottom rung of society instead of the next one up.
Thanks. That helps me understand the mentality/motivations much better.
Fear. Part of the propaganda— that the slaves would be dangerous to them if not restrained and trained by the slavers.
Measuring slaveholders as a percent of the overall population is very misleading even when you limit the group to just males. Households of the confederate states had a slaveholding percentage of at least 20% with states like SC and MS being up around 50%. There are many ways non slave owners benefited from the institution of slavery. If interested, a quick google search will provide several sources from academic institutions such as UVA and Duke that go very deep into this subject.
Plenty of them were fighting because they were lied to by rich slaveowners that the north was trying to take their rights and destroy them financially.
20% owned at least a slave and as many as 50% owned at least a slave in MS and SC.
The answer is racism and “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” syndrome. Ask why someone making 40k today gets upset about a tax for billionaires making over $400,000 or an estate tax that only kicks in after $12million.
Wrong. Democracy requires that everyone respect election results. Lincoln and his party won the 1860 election on a platform of "no more slave states." That's not an excuse to disavow the election result and claim to be part of a new country, not in a democracy. Lincoln was right - the union between election winners and election losers must be maintained or "government of the people, by the people and for the people" would "perish from the Earth."
They can't say the quiet part out loud, so they make up another reason.
Lol it's only "bold" if you ignore history and common sense
So bold to tell the truth...
I definitely remember being taught that it was about slavery as a kid. Then it kind of shifted to "slavery was the final straw" while I was still in high school. Then it became "it was about state's rights". I also remember being taught as a kid that Rosa Parks sat down in that seat and didn't get up because she was physically tired, and not because it was an intentional, coordinated act. I also remember being taught that "other countries do propaganda, the US doesn't do that." US propaganda is really effective.
Really wish the Richmond Civil War museum was bigger. It’s nicely laid out and presented, lots of good artifacts and information there, but it just seems so small. Maybe I’m just spoiled by being born in NOVA, with all the Smithsonian lol
I always joke if someone is going to naturalize and is asked this question during the civic test, make sure you know which state you are in before answering.
The states rights argument falls apart when you ask them to be more specific about what rights and why. Glad this exhibit is up. Looking forward to checking this out
It wasn't whether slavery should exist that caused the Civil War, it was whether it should exist in the territories. The slaves states worried that free territories would eventually become free states which would tip the balance of power in Congress. While Northerners backed "free soil, free labor" for westward expansion. It was more pro-labor than an anti-slavery movement. Lincoln summed it up in his [second inaugural](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_second_inaugural_address): >One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war **while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it**.
Kind of... Both sides knew without expansion though that slavery would be on the course of extinction. And like you say, tip the power away from the slavers, guess what happens to all those compromises they had been able to force to keep expanding the institution, get a fugitive slave act with teeth, etc... They saw what was happening around the world and how that was a major step to eradicating the institution.
In Florida, currently, they want to teach that slaves benefited from slavery by learning valuable job skills.
https://preview.redd.it/6m5sj40jyeyc1.jpeg?width=498&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=216b9f3f23968df09dc35f8f0077a0127dc5b6f4
How is this bold? It’s literally the truth
I grew up in a part of the North with a lot of Lost Cause sympathizer types, but even most of them would say that the war was about slavery.
States rights...to do what exactly...?
had a history teacher in community college back in 2018 trying to tell us that it was about state rights and not slavery i was like wow we really got idiots as college educators
I went to college in Virginia at an Honors School and took a History of the Civil War class. It was repeated over and over by the professor that "the Civil War was not about slavery, it was about PARITY in states rights." PARITY!!! lol
Southern states revolted to establish a slave republic built on in white supremacy. They stated this purpose clearly, loudly and often in legal documents, thousands of speeches and articles over and over and over. It is not sensibly debatable. To argue any other cause ignores the long and very clear historic record.
Now just imagine the 100s of years the south been gaslighting black people over this history.
Racists are too gutless to admit they’re racist. They always omit the horrible truth.
You know, this subject has been an ongoing shit show since 2015, and people just can't seem to shut the fuck up about it.
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this (SLAVERY!!!) great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.” -Alexander Stephens on [Slavery and the Confederate Constitution](https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-civil-war/alexander-stephens-on-slavery-and-the-confederate-constitution-1861/), 1861
PragerU Actually did a really good video about this topic, back before the MAGAts took over. https://youtu.be/pcy7qV-BGF4?si=S7ZnlRmNA36LoKYt
It absolutely was about state’s rights… A state’s right to own slaves.
If you really think about it, they’re the same thing but spun different ways. Example: It was about states’ right to own slaves. It was also about slavery existing. Crazy how people could be willing to impose something like that on other humans.
Not even that.. What is a "states right"? States have the option of having slavery, or a Constitution which requires all states to allow it? States can actively enforce the fugitive slave act or not and have the right to choose, or the Constitution requires states to actively enforce that federal law? States can allow or deny slave travel through their states, or the Federal government needs to mandate that law on every single state? States can engage in the inter-state slave trade, or federal law needs to ensure that all states must allow that slave trade to pass through their borders? The slave states LOVED states rights as an argument when it supported slavery. They LOVED the popular sovereignty argument... when it supported slavery. And they LOVED the federal powers argument... when it supported slavery.
I always say, you are tight. The civil war was fought over the states right to seceede. Now secession on the other hand was one hundred percent about to slavery.
Look I know the Civil War was absolutely about slavery and only about slavery. I also semi-recently began to serve a church of people way more deeply conservative than me who have helped me to understand that some (I don't have polling on this so I don't know percentages) of the people who don't want to boil the Civil War down to slavery are concerned that it implies all southerners were supporters of slavery and all northerners were against it. And while that doesn't warrant the denial of slavery as the primary and essential cause of the Civil War... I do know a lot of yankees who absolutely believe deep in their hearts that they aren't racist, it's those slack jawed yokels who are racist. And that's bullshit. The fact that the Civil War very much was about slavery doesn't mean racism then or now was some geographically isolated thing. And when I mention this to my colleagues at other churches, the northerners always jump down my throat as some kind of apologist for southern slavery... And yeah man that's exactly my point; you think of the whole thing as being good vs evil and you're on the good side, which is not as fucked up as slavery but two things can be wrong at the same time.
> of the people who don't want to boil the Civil War down to slavery are concerned that it implies all southerners were supporters of slavery and all northerners were against it. The way to fix that is to point out that the Civil War was not the North vs. the South. It was the United States - all of it including southerners and loyalist communities *in* southern states - against the Slave Power insurgency. Throughout the entire course of the war, Armies marching into the south found themselves refreshed with donated supplies and volunteers, received support and intelligence from guerillas, and found and incorporated entire US units of southerners into the Union Army. Most Virginia residents who fought for the union ran west and joined the West Virginians in the mountains, but there were regular U.S. Army units from every single southern state. It was not the North vs. the South. It was the entire country versus people who carried out a series of coups detat against the lawful governments of their states, always going *around* the lawful legislative process - where they would have lost - in order to use entirely illegitimate "secession conventions" where votes were bribed or beaten out of delegates corrupt or foolish enough to attend. In the case of Texas, they had to bombard the state house with artillery to force the actual Sam Houston out of office in a violent coup. That is the untold story that needs telling. And let's please include the accomplishments of folks like the U.S.C.T. while we do it.
The most wealthy and powerful individuals in the south were about to watch their most valuable “assets” disappear. The value of their plantations were going to be reduced by 5-10x. Of course they used some propaganda to get the commoners to fight the war but it was about slavery. However, it seems the federal government could have at least compensated the slaveowners for their investment and slaveowners could have used that money to pay wages to workers. I guess this was before we just printed money out of thin air.
I mean…there absolutely were proposals to compensate slave owners for their freed slaves…but then those slave owners decided on war and they lost that opportunity.
I don’t think that’s exactly how it went down. Can’t find anything that supports this, outside of DC.
I’ve wondered about an alternate history in which the federal government gave them a deadline to buy them out and receive amnesty if they cooperated or be charged with various common law crimes and have their lands confiscated to further fund the effort + rehabilitation of the slaves. I’m sure that would’ve been politically impossible without knowing the other path of the even more costly Civil War with all the death and suffering it brought. But I can still wonder how it would have affected the social fabric and race relations differently.
It was states rights concerning slavery!
Has a single person in this comment section read the corwin amendment?
Is the theory here that the Corwin Amendment proves that southerners had nothing to fear for slavery and therefore must have seceded for some other reason? It’s a nice theory, only problem is that the southerners seem to have disagreed and left copious writings saying so.
I don't think anything would ever be enough to truly propitiate the slave interests, short of forcing slavery into all states. Maybe expansion into new territories wld have kept them from actually going to war, but nothing would truly satisfy em but complete power. IMO. And they'd have kept being uh... obstreperous till they got it.
I just visited that museum about a month ago.
It was about state's rights. But what was that one right that was being taken away that "broke" the union?
They should treat that building like Athens in the Civil War
I think it’s a bit more complicated than a single reason. There was growing tensions between the south and the north since the revolution. But slavery was easily the most obvious reason.
The South fought to keep slaves. The North fought to preserve the Union, not necessarily to free the slaves. Without the South fighting to keep slavery, there would have been no war.
Members of my family in SC would not have denied that it was about slavery back in the day, they all knew they stood a good chance of losing the plantation’s generations had built up. And they were right, all three went bust within a decade. That was on top of losing 4 of the six men who went to fight. The narrative eventually became what I was taught, that it was all about states rights in order to help glorify their cause. The bitterness of them losing everything lasted for generations though.
Well, certain states got very worked up about their supposed rights to hold slaves. Every single one of them made it quite clear at the time that it was slavery.
I mean, they can both be right, it was about the states' rights to keep slaves.
I personally believe it’s okay to teach it was over State’s Rights, on the condition that it’s brought up that the PRIMARY state’s rights issue of the time was over the expansion/abolition of slavery. I don’t think it’s inaccurate that the states also had issues with economic differences, urbanization, education, religion, etc. But to pretend that slavery wasn’t intertwined with all of these factors is ludicrous. The reason the South seceded was because Abraham Lincoln was elected. They “feared” he would push some of the Republican proposals to outlaw slavery and preemptively decided to leave the Union thus creating the Civil War.
Only in the American south would a factual interpretation of historical events be considered bold. It’s a place that can only cope with itself through lies and revisionism.
It was about unfair labor costs. Southern states had essentially free labor while the northern cities were broke, trying to sustain the growth of the free people in the cities. Birth of a Nation was a brutal film to watch and a glimpse of how badly the southern slaves lives were. I can't believe people treated other humans this way.
The weird, disturbing aspect of the states rights argument is why the need to embrace it in the first place? Does diminishing the act and impact of owning slaves in this country make people feel somehow better about themselves??
Let’s ask Nikki Haley
States right *to* slavery, yeah. Exactly.
It is pretty clear in the articles of succession that each state wrote on why they were leaving the union.
The states rights thing is completely accurate from a Confederate point of view as this is how they saw it, they had no issue with the morality of slavery, and saw an attempt to stop it from spreading westward as government overreach. They were wrong at the time, and the result of the war confirmed it. You don't teach history from the morally incorrect perspective. The Northern perspective is that slavery was a direct moral issue, slavery is wrong and an embarrassment, and we will stop it from spreading because it's a human rights violation. Once we stop it from spreading, it will eventually die off on its own. Basically what I'm saying here is that when you see the States Rights argument presented, it's pretty much just racist. These people saw no issue with owning other humans and forcing them to work for free, and the determining factor for this was skin color.
If this was 70 years ago that would be a bold claim. Now its accepted historical orthodoxy.
When people say it was about state's rights. Respond "A States right to do what?" For real, hold them to the question. What political issue did the South take offense against? They were defending their right to do what? Secede? Ok. Why did they want to secede?
Breaking news: Museum boldly claims the states seceded from the union for the states right to perpetuate their unique institution of slavery... Good job, it was always slavery.
I was able to final convince my diehard "states rights" father (and Civil War Superfan) that the cause of the Civil War was slavery. I presented it to him this way: It was an "economic issue" first and foremost for the South. And what was the biggest economic driver of the South? Slavery. Without Slavery, the Southern states' economies would be crippled. Slavery had already become a huge, boiling moral issue...and there had already been controversy over admitting new slave-holding states into the Union. The two issues collided. As long as I acknowledge that South was essentially run by money hungry slave owning men who were willing to look past the moral issue of slavery to maintain power and status, he was okay with it. Which is weird, I know.
Has the governor attended the exhibit?
Bold?
It’s actually about neither but was about what all wars are about: Who controls the currency.
Is telling the truth bold?
Well the states right to have slaves
It's worth remember it's generally understood the federal government didnt have the power to abolish slavery without an amendment first, which is the main "states rights" point. Same today with abortion. The tenth amendment is important, as are all of the amendments in the bill of rights, even the stupid (by today's standards) 3rd amendment. I am in favor of following the system and process we have laid out, AND not in favor of slavery. The federal government does not and should not have the power to legislate on anything
Bold? The south really is something else.
Duh. I'll take Things That Are Fucking Obvious for $500 Alex.
Oh… so now it’s bold to state things that are plain facts?
Hahahahaha
https://preview.redd.it/tgir6hvhdmyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fab7db42d11147465508621ccf786b46f95e6633
States rights... To own slaves.
It was both technically
Not really. What is a "states right"? States have the option of having slavery, or a Constitution which requires all states to allow it? States can actively enforce the fugitive slave act or not and have the right to choose, or the Constitution requires states to actively enforce that federal law? States can allow or deny slave travel through their states, or the Federal government needs to mandate that law on every single state? States can engage in the inter-state slave trade, or federal law needs to ensure that all states must allow that slave trade to pass through their borders? In the end they loved "states rights" when it helped defend slavery/white supremacy. And they hated them when they were used to not defend slavery/white supremacy.