I want to dispell a misconception that keeps getting spread as a gotcha. It was never about states rights. No not even states right to slavery. It was about the preservations AND expansion of slavery. States did not and were not allowed to ban slavery. Read the consitution of the confederacy. It is almost a copy and paste of the US constitution but with minor changes that both empower and disempower the executive branch, but also banning the outlaw of slavery among one or two other slavery stuff. If it was about states rights to slavery, they would allow their states to ban it cause it would be their right to choose. But it was never that, they wanted slavery to expand. Even if you add the caveate of slavery to the “states right” myth, you are still perpetuating the myth. Just a less savory version of the myth.
The only way it was about states rights was how it was about establishing slavery as a right that could not be infringed.
We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority.
-Jefferson Davis,
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the n**** 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.
-Alexander Stephens,
Hard to dispute when it comes straight from the president and vice president’s mouth. Hard to believe anyone would pretend it was about anything else.
I want to dispell a misconception that keeps getting spread as a gotcha. It was never about states rights. No not even states right to slavery. It was about the preservations AND expansion of slavery. States did not and were not allowed to ban slavery. Read the consitution of the confederacy. It is almost a copy and paste of the US constitution but with minor changes that both empower and disempower the executive branch, but also banning the outlaw of slavery among one or two other slavery stuff. If it was about states rights to slavery, they would allow their states to ban it cause it would be their right to choose. But it was never that, they wanted slavery to expand. Even if you add the caveate of slavery to the “states right” myth, you are still perpetuating the myth. Just a less savory version of the myth.
The only way it was about states rights was how it was about establishing slavery as a right that could not be infringed.
Not that I disagree, but is that just an aside, or did I miss an implication in the screenshot?
An aside, directed at the comments
Is the states rights issue when mentioned in any letters of secession, I wonder? Kinda doubt it…
But slavery is explicitly named as an issue in every single one, so yeah…
-Jefferson Davis,
-Alexander Stephens,
Hard to dispute when it comes straight from the president and vice president’s mouth. Hard to believe anyone would pretend it was about anything else.
Oh.
Fuck