Of original causes
These are powerful times in which we live, and part of the power of the moment comes from the tidal wave of history that is sweeping a lot of misconceptions out with it.
One of those misconceptions: the Civil War was fought by southern states to “protect states’ rights.”
As a genealogist and family historian, The Legal Genealogist knows what the obligation of any researcher is when looking at that kind of claim.
We go to the original sources for the primary information provided by those who lived and acted in those times.
We read the words of the men who led the southern states into rebellion against the Union.
We do so because, “(w)henever possible, genealogists prefer to reason from information provided by consistently reliable participants, eyewitnesses, and reporters with no bias, potential for gain, or other motivation to distort, invent, omit, or otherwise report incorrect information.”1
We do so because “(g)enealogists do not trim, tailor, slight, or ignore potentially relevant evidence to fit a bias or preconception, to harmonize with other evidence, or for any other reason.”2
So we go to those original sources and review what they tell us.
First, when South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, it did so for reasons stated in its declaration of secession. You can read it in full online from the U.S. National Archives. It explained that “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations” to return to enslavement those who had escaped to the north, that “they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.” The election of 1860, it said, made it worse: “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”3
Mississippi was next on January 9, 1861. Its declaration can be read in full online at Internet Archive or online at the website of the American Battlefield Trust. It states: “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.”4
Georgia seceded in January 1861 and its declaration of causes was much the same. You can read it online from the U.S. National Archives or online at the website of the American Battlefield Trust. Among those reasons: “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.” It noted that those hostile to slavery “entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization. For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment…”5
Texas seceded on February 1, 1861. Its declaration, online from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission or online at the website of the American Battlefield Trust, sets out its reasons: “Texas abandoned her separate national existence and … 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.”6
Additionally, in March 1861, the vice president of the newly-formed Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, set out the reasons for secession in what is called the “Cornerstone Speech.” You can read the entire speech online at the website of the American Battlefield Trust, but the key portion is here:
Our new government is founded upon … 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. … With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place.7
In short, the only “states’ right” that was behind the secession of the southern states and the formation of the Confederacy was the “right” to enslave other people.
The original sources tell us so.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Original sources,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 8 June 2020).
SOURCES
- Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, 2d edition (Nashville, TN : Ancestry, 2019), 24, Standard 39: “Information preference.” ↩
- Ibid. at 25-26, Standard 43: “Evidence Integrity.” ↩
- “Declaration of Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, 12/1860”; DocsTeach.org (https://www.docsteach.org : accessed 8 June 2020). See also “The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States: South Carolina”; American Battlefield Trust (https://www.battlefields.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). ↩
- Mississippi Convention, An Address Setting Forth the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of Mississippi from the Federal Union (Jackson: Nississippian Book & Job Printing Office, 1861); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). See also “The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States: Mississippi”; American Battlefield Trust (https://www.battlefields.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). ↩
- “Report from the Journal of the Georgia Convention Listing Georgia’s Reasons for Leaving the Union, 1861”; DocsTeach.org (https://www.docsteach.org : accessed 8 June 2020). See also “The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States: Georgia”; American Battlefield Trust (https://www.battlefields.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). ↩
- “DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861. A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union,” Texas State Library & Archives Commission (https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ : accessed 8 June 2020). See also “The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States: Texas”; American Battlefield Trust (https://www.battlefields.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). ↩
- “Cornerstone Speech: Savannah, Georgia, March 21, 1861, by Alexander H. Stephens”; American Battlefield Trust (https://www.battlefields.org/ : accessed 8 June 2020). ↩
I knew this was part of our collective history during the Civil War era, but to read it in written form turns my stomach! Thank you for posting this!
Thanks, Judy, for providing the facts about this claim! I was on social media a few days ago and someone told me that the Democratic Party founded the KKK! I told him that the white people of the South founded it but never heard from him about my statement!
Thanks, Judy. As always, excellent research and an interesting subject.
Patrick Deady: The idea that that Democratic Party founded the KKK is one small part of the modern GOP’s effort to cling to Lincoln as their founder … but without actually embracing any of the things Lincoln believed in.
The awkward truth, however, is that the Democratic and Republican parties started reversing platforms in the late 1800s as moderate Republicans turned their backs on Radical Reconstruction. And the conversion was complete when “Dixiecrats” like Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina fled the party of FDR in the 1960s out of outrage over Civil Rights legislation championed by Democrats like Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, and Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey.
Bottom line: We have a very complicated and messy history, and it doesn’t lend itself well to Facebook memes or bumper stickers.
Thanks, Judy. An important clarification of what the reality was.
I find this blog a source of solace in complicated times, even when it presents harsh truths from the past. I would look on my ancestor’s Union army pension files with some satisfaction, though always wondering of his personal views, of which I have no record. Only recently did I find the order form his son submitted to his ‘Kleagle’, the regional procurer of Klan robes, in 1924. South Central Pennsylvania was a hotbed of KKK activity in the 1920s, and beyond. The truth is where we must base our understanding.
For more facts about the Civil War that ‘modern’ history books and lots of people ignore, listen to this very well done Podcast called Uncivil by Gimlet…it was eye-opening. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/uncivil Thank you again, Judy! Chilling how the true narrative of our past often been ignored, manipulated, or willfully forgotten.
True but there is also a misconception that slavery has been in America for 400 years. It started with a court case in 1655 for the original colonies and ended with the civil war so about 210 years. If we are going to set the record straight everything needs to be.
(a) Any comment that begins “true but…” is gonna be a problem. (b) You’re right that it isn’t 400 years of actual chattel slavery. But clearly those arriving in the White Lion and Treasurer in 1619 were not free adventurers; at best they were subjected to involuntary servitude. So your timeline needs to begin there. As far as it ending, we do have a legal end to actual chattel slavery with the passage of the 13th amendment, ratified as of December 1865. But the reality of people’s lives include wide scale “indenturing” of free children of color by former enslavers, the rise of the Klan, Jim Crow, mass incarceration and more right up to today.
Thank you, Judy!
Thank you so much for this post. I was hoping I would find something like this here. You didn’t disappoint. For me, who grew up white in the 1950’s, in the North, shedding my racial Bias has been a lifelong effort. And with your post I begin to understand what a “white wash” the term white privilege really is – a term to make it easier for white people to ignore an even uglier truth.
Again – Thank you
Thank you for presenting the documented (in their own words) reasons the southern states succeeded from the USA. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche Dubois says “I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth.” It is that attitude which has perpetuated the fractured fairy tale version of American History taught in the south.
I find it quite interesting that southerners pride themselves in being patriotic and supporting the military, but they idealize men who betrayed their country by taking up arms against the United States of America. Think of all of the monuments across the south honoring CSA officers; celebrating men who rejected their sacred oaths to “…bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully, against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”
Read the CSA’s constitution if you want to see the central place of slavery in that nation.
This is great! No more excuses and misinformation. Well said, Judy!
The man in the trenches of this war were the draftees and concripted soldiers hired by the rich to fight in their place. This soldier had No slaves ( per family letters written during the war) nor believed in slavery.
Judy,
You conflate secession with war. There was nothing in secession that compelled Lincoln to go to war. The reason for secession is not the reason for the war.
The South fought the war because the South was invaded.
The sources that should be used are those relating to the actual people who went to war.
The source documents relevant to the question of not why the South fought, but why the North fought. Look to Lincoln’s inaugural address. Look to Buchanan’s final State of the Union address. Look to Davis’ inaugural address. Look to the Whig Party political platform. Look to Lincoln’s Galena speech from 1858.
The treaty with the British Crown that ended the American Revolutionary War recognized each colony as an independent, sovereign state.
The Articles of Confederation created a union of independent, sovereign states. Each member state joined voluntarily.
Though the Articles stated the Union formed by it was perpetual, it was replaced by the Constitution a few years later. The preamble states the purpose was to form a more perfect Union. The nature of the relationship remained a union like before where each member state joined voluntarily and retained its sovereignty.
From the beginning, the New Englanders looked to dominate the politics of the Union through the federal regulation of naturalization of citizens and the use of the import tariff as an economic tool to keep out foreign competition. The Whig Party platform was a recipe for crony corruption: a central bank, a protective tariff, and federally funded program of internal improvements. Lincoln was a Whig before he was a Republican.
In 1858 Lincoln said in a speech in Galena, Ill that he would go to war to prevent the breakup of the Union. He said about disunion, “We won’t and you shan’t.”
In has last state of the union address, President Buchanan stated the U.S. government had no authority to prevent a state from leaving the union under its own free will.
In February, 1861, Jefferson Davis stated the Confederacy was founded on the same principle of self-government as that outlined in the Declaration of Independence – the consent of the governed, and the intention of the agrarian South was peace with the North. Trade with Europe for Southern produce was the heart of the South’s economy and that trade had to be as unencumbered as practically possible. The Confederate constitution prevented the tax system from being used to play economic favorites. This moral hazard of tax policy was what the Republican Party wanted.
In his February inaugural speech said he had no intention or authority to interfere with slavery, but he would invade the Confederate states in order to collect the new import tariff. Lincoln wanted the money to pay Northern iron foundries to produce rails for a railroad to California. He was a creature of the RR lobby.
In short, the Confederate States fought for independence from a government it did not want. The people of each state voted to leave. Secession was the result of that vote. The documents you cite have little to do with that. The context of those documents was to point out that the terms of the Constitution, a compact among sovereign states, had been broken by Northern states and that made the compact null and void making it a nullity for all member states.
The fundamental economic interest the South fought to protect was slavery. All of the bleating about states’ rights can’t nullify that essential truth. And when you say the south fought because of invasions of its territory, you might consider who fired the first shots in the Civil War (hint: it was not the north).
You seem to consider slavery as an end in itself. It was not. If it were not for the lucrative market for cotton, tobacco, and rice, there would have been no need for slavery. The plantation system was built on the international market for crops grown in the South. That is what that needed protecting, not slavery. Slavery did not make the South a dime without a market for its crops.
Just as Lincoln said his goal was to preserve the Union, not end slavery and Congress chimed in later, interfering with state institutions was not a war aim, it too was not an end, but a means to an end. An independent Confederacy could not have its trade taxed or suppressed by the U.S. government. The goal was to economically subjugate the Southern section. To do that, it had to be kept in the Union.
When Lincoln was told to use diplomacy to persuade the states back into the Union he asked what then would be the fate of the revenue from the tariff.
You might consider where the first shots were fired and in whose territory the shots were fired and what the fort in question was built to protect. I don’t think you need a hint.
If you believe the North fought to end slavery and the South fought to preserve it, you should read THE SECTIONAL CONTROVERSY by William Chauncey Fowler, LL. D. of New England (1862). In it he makes clear that all of the abolitionist agitation of the previous three decades was revenge for repealing the protective Tariff of Abominations. If the South was no going to protect the North’s property, the North was not going to protect the South’s slave property under the fugitive slave laws. It had little to do with any sympathy for the plight of the slave. All of the North’s moral posturing aside, the stated intent was to punish the slaveholder, not benefit the slave. The abolitionist was described at the time as a monster with moral pretenses and for good reason.
I understand fully that the first seven Cotton states seceded from the Union because of Coercive and threatening behavior of the new incoming Republican party. In the Chronicling America ‘Library of Congress’, there are over 24,000 articles detailing the new ‘Black Republicans’ of Lincoln’s party and their intent to promote Servile Insurrection, Murder, and Mayhem on the South. The index query was ‘Black Republicans’, and article after article Northern Democrats are fearful of a war being started by the almost singularly minded purpose of destroying slavery, although the primary wealth of the North was rooted in the institution of Slavery and the production of Cotton.
Celebrations occurred quickly in the Northern states as the Cotton states left the Union. But, soon as ships stopped showing up in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and they were now headed to CSA ports, alarm bells began ringing. I have over two hundred pages of transcribed newspaper articles specifically about the economic impact on the North. Remember before being sworn into office, Lincoln states that he will seize the Forts and Collect the Tariffs in Southern Ports. Remember, at this point, those Forts once leased to the Federal Government is no longer part of the Federal Government – they are with the Montgomery Government. Also, the Cotton States are now collecting Impost Duties from the International Commerce, mostly France and England. The Loss of Tariff Revenue (70% of National Annual Revenue Bill) is an Economic Disaster like a Pandemic, and the Concurrent impact on the Northern Economy is like Shutting down almost everything in the North for Several Months. We understand that Disaster, and Now from the Economics of Today – it’s easier to see how an Economic Disaster would cause Lincoln to Declare in his Inaugural: 1.) Retaking of Leased Forts, 2.) Collecting of Tariffs in the Ports of the Seceded States [Ouch! That’s Like an Act of War, Isn’t It?]
Here’s a small sampling of Newspaper Articles [Original Sources]
“The object of the Morrill tariff is to benefit the manufacturers of the North by a protective impost on foreign goods, but the actual consequence of it will be such a reduction of the revenue as will render additional loans necessary to carry on the government. It will utterly destroy the commerce of the Northern cities; and, moreover, by driving the seven Gulf States out of the Union, and the eight border States very probably after them, we have reduced, to a considerable extent, the market for our importations. Thus the effect of the two tariffs upon the North will be to reduce the revenues of the government, to destroy the foreign trade of the Atlantic cities, and to create an endless system of smuggling on the borderline between the North and South.” The New York Herald, March 12, 1861
“These, however, are of less consequence to merchants than the difference which, in the course of a few weeks, will exist in the rates of duties levied at Northern ports and at ports in the cotton States. No New York importer, who pays a revenue tax on his goods of forty or sixty percent, can compete with a Savannah or New Orleans importer who only pays fifteen or twenty percent; and it stands to reason that, when the two tariffs get into working order in opposition to each other, not only will the people of the Gulf States do all their own importing, but they will drive Northern importers out of the Western market also.” The New York Herald, March 15, 1861
“The Moniteur of February 27 represents the imperial government as highly indignant at the duties imposed on French goods by the Morrill tariff. “”Northern merchants are, already, making arrangements to import goods in Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, in order to avoid the duties of the Morrill Tariff. “ The Moniteur, Paris, France
…The fact is, that the superior advantages offered by the South, and the certainty that imported merchandise can be transmitted, by rivers and railroad, to any part of the Northwest, and the States south of Mason and Dixon’s line, at the lower rates of duty of the Montgomery tariff, will divert importations from New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, to South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, and a blow will be struck at the local prosperity of the former States, the effects of which it is impossible accurately to calculate.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated, that every effort of the Washington government to prevent the free ingress of merchandise into the Southern ports, must prove abortive. The united navies of England and France could scarcely guard such an immense line of coast. Thus, able as the South will be to import goods, and after they are landed to forward them to all parts of the continent, they will practically collect duties for the whole Union. …………New York Tribune, March 17th, 1861
It is simply absurd to suppose that any European nation would neglect the advantages which it might derive from a commercial treaty with a Power having so extended commerce within its grasp. ……….New York Tribune, March 17th, 1861
There are now some eight hundred vessels employed in the carrying trade between Europe and the ports in the seceded States. No less than one hundred and thirty-one sailed from Europe for such ports during the first twenty-five days of February. That trade will be doubled within the next year, under the combined influence of our protective tariff and the inducements offered by the South. Who does not see in this movement disaster to all our interests? ………….New York Herald, March 18th, 1861
One term for deliberately changing the topic to drive the discussion to a conclusion not relevant to the initial point is “gaslighting.” A term for continuing to fight the Civil War and trying to make it into a war of northern aggression is “silly.” The South lost. No amount of venerating Robert E. Lee is going to change history.