Yes, it’s exactly that black and white. The southern states explicitly cited slavery as their reason for secession, it wasn’t some afterthought or side benefit.
You can read their letters here: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
“Not so black and white?” Friend (derogatory), it’s literally one of the two black and white things we all agreed on until like 10 years ago
It’s not so black and white.
…
It’s only 3/5ths black and white
this statement along with people telling me to “make up my own mind about the causes”… is infuriating.
the civil war WAS about southern states rights…to determine which human beings they could enslave and how many. any other reason given is incomplete, not truthful and completely misses the point.
Whenever I see it I link them to the The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.
Then I tell them ctrl+f “slave” has 84 results. Then I ctrl+f whatever they asserted the slave war was about, and it always gets less (if any) results.
That’s a really interesting read. I’ve taken excerpts from each state’s declarations, in case anyone wants a state by state breakdown of their justification for secession
Georgia: “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.”
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world”
South Carolina: “The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.”
Texas: “She [Texas] 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: "…and the 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.”
It was such a a shock moving to North Carolina and realizing this shit is real.
If the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that the civil war never ended.
Many of today’s Republicans would be perfectly happy to bring back slavery, but just like they wouldn’t cop to Project 2025, they just don’t feel that the overton window has shifted quite enough yet to be comfortable admitting it.
That’s literally exactly what has happened. This is the US without reconstruction. Lincoln might have actually done something but Johnson, the piece of shit racist that he was, basically shrugged off the war and pretended everything was all better. The south, full of hateful racist traitors, has been a festering rotting cancerous wound on the nation since then.
One of the most fascinating statistics is that a majority of white people have voted against the Democratic presidential nominee in every federal election since the Democrats supported the civil rights act on 1964. The fact the majority of the majority racial demographic were like whoa hold on let’s hit the brakes here in response to the idea that black people are people is pretty revealing of some deep seated internal issues in a nation that was founded on a race based caste system.
I say race based caste system because the American/Western brand of chattel slavery practiced via the Atlantic slave trade is very different compared to slavery historically in other parts of the world. Partus sequitur ventrem meant that children born to slaves inherited the status of slave with the goal of establishing black people as a permenant underclass of livestock to remain in a state of perpetual bonded labor eternally.
This is why the story of the Haitian revolution is so powerful. Slaves expelled their slavers (the French) not once but twice and upon establishing a republic put in their constitution Slavery is forever abolished. This was decades before Britain or the US abolished slavery.
That’s not true; Partus sequitur ventrem was common in many societies with slavery since ancient times. The Wikipedia article gives pre-islamic Egypt as well as Korea starting in the 11th century as examples, but is very thin on this and extremely America-centric. But also in the Ottoman empire, children of slaves were slaves themselves.
It has existed in other societies (without the same level of institutionalization or rigidity) but slavery elsewhere generally 1) Was not strictly race based and 2) had legally recognized pathways out of captivity. Generally slavery was tied to a debt that needed to be repaid or captivity during war and rather than an inherited bonded status. There are numerous stories of slaves being freed and rising to positions of prominence within society in other cultures. European enslavers genuinely believed that nonwhite, particularly black people, did not have a soul / were not fully human, which led to this level of dehumanization. When it comes to scale, impact and just profound inhumanity the European Atlantic slave trade is in a class of its own.
Ottoman slave law did not adopt a comparable hereditary rule. Ottoman jurisprudence treated slavery as a personal condition that could be inherited from either parent, but the practice varied regionally and often depended on the master’s discretion. Children of enslaved mothers could be freed, sold, or retained at the owner’s pleasure, and manumission was relatively common. Moreover, the Ottoman slave market relied heavily on the capture and purchase of individuals rather than on large‑scale, plantation‑driven reproduction; the economy did not depend on a permanent, generational slave workforce.
I would disagree that it was common in most other societies with slavery. Even in those where it was used, it was not instituted as a “generational slave workforce” intended to power a revenue engine like the plantation economies (while giving nothing back to the people/slaves that made that wealth possible).
It seems to me, as an outsider, that the union should have never accepted the surrender of the Confederates, and instead, kept going until every last racist was shot and killed.
But, two things about that… Even after being “freed”, people of color were still second class citizens, at best, and segregation continued for many years beyond the end of the war. So the problem didn’t just magically go away when the slaves were freed. There were plenty of racist pieces of shit that were happy to see the blacks isolated into their own space, far away from them …
So I’m not sure killing all of the Confederates would have made a huge difference.
The war didn’t end, they just stopped saying certain things out loud. They also were far from the only racists in the country.
I’m so disappointed that there was so much progress with Obama, and he was such a good president (by comparison)… It seemed like the USA was on the way to a golden era of acceptance and equality for all… Then this shit happened. It’s like the racists were so pent up and they finally felt so oppressed by all the DEI that they hulked out and they’re trying to take over, and undo the “damage” (as they see it) to the country over the last ~160 years since the civil war ended.
But WTF do I know? I’m just some guy who doesn’t even live in the USA.
I agree with you.
Keep in mind that as the American civil war was winding down President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and so his Vice President, Andrew Johnson rose to power.
Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Johnson became president. Johnson’s Reconstruction policies were lenient compared to those of the Radical Republicans. This dispute represented the conflict that many War Democrats faced, in that they supported the Union but did not wish to severely punish former Confederates or strongly protect the rights of former slaves. In the 1868 lead up to the first post-Civil War presidential election, President Johnson was a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination; however, he finished second in the 22 ballots cast at the Democratic Convention, and lost the nomination to former New York Governor Horatio Seymour, a former Copperhead.[4] Lincoln appointed other War Democrats to high civil and military offices. Some joined the Republican Party, while others remained Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Democrat
(Note: keep in mind that the “democrats” and “republicans” political alignment flipped around the time of the New Deal, so during the time of the Civil War, it was the Republicans (like Lincoln) that represented the northern Union states, while the Democrats represented the southern Confederate states. “War Democrats” (like Johnson) were democrats who supported the Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System)
And now for a bit of Civil War conspiracy theory…
The events of the [Lincoln] assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards with Johnson’s private secretary, William A. Browning. The message on it was: “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.”[121] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson
Make of that what you will!
It’s wild to me how persistent the lost cause mythology is considering the articles of succession from the traitor states are all out there in the open to be read by anyone at any time. I suppose that requires literacy and an understanding of what a primary source is. Easier to get some bullshit regurgitated into your mouth like a baby bird.
Exactly. “it’s not so black and white” when the motivations behind it all were indeed, printed in black and white and very much about black and white people at that.
That’s just like your opinion, man. Fake news, as thought by someone who hasn’t read any of the primary source documents publicly available.
Tbh, its hard to ignore the bullshit getting regurgitated when you are still literally a child. I heard about the “war of northern aggression” in elementary school when we covered the civil war.
They are literally grooming our children into this.
Exactly! For anyone curious, here’s 2 minutes of clicking on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Declaration_of_Secession#Synopsis
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
It was a hundred percent about slavery, the entire time, and any “states’ rights” or “heritage” stuff is propaganda that white supremacists have put out to try to recruit more white supremacists to their cause of white supremacy
“War of Northern Aggression”, it was aggression against slavery
“War of Northern Aggression”, it was aggression against slavery
On top of that, the confederacy started it when South Carolina militias opened fire on Fort Sumter. They initiated the war they could not win just to preserve slavery. There was no northern aggression.
And the South was absolutely AGAINST states rights. The South wanted Southern laws enforced in northern states, and their conversate constitution made slavery mandatory for all member states.
Even in CA, we had a Texan middle school teacher who drilled into our heads like a mantra that the Civil War was about disagreements over States’ rights/tariffs/etc.
What a loser. I had a high school teacher from North Carolina that would jokingly call it the war of northern aggression, but she was smart enough to point out to us why that notion was bullshit before playing heel.
Traitors flying the Confederate flag on their house whining about “muh heritage” when I practice my heritage (its tearing down their flags, burning their houses, and confiscating all their property):
The only confederate flag that ever mattered was the white one they waved at the end of the War for Continuation of Slavery.
“the war that was so easy to put down it was shorter than high school.”
The racists’ “Heritage” was shorter than Obama’s presidency and happened 8 score years ago.
Hell,2 Broke Girls lasted 50% longer than the Confederacy
“State’s right to do what, exactly?”
Usually shuts them up.
I call it the “Slaveholders Rebellion”.
Funny, that’s what we call the American war of independence.
Any historians here? Does the Northern states of the past have any correlation to the blue states of today and vice versa?
Correlation, but not perfect. Largely because most of the Union stayed, so you get states like North Dakota that was part of a Union territory but a red state. That and Appalachia (e.g. West Virginia, Ohio) swung pretty hard from the union cause to the confederates thanks to coal baron propaganda and the erosion of union power in the post Regan era. The confederate states are almost all red though, with the only current exception being Virginia and varying degrees of hope for near future conversions in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas
The ‘little dicks’ part was unnecessary.
You can make a great argument against the Confederate flag without resorting to toxic masculinity.
