As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a lot of ignorant and wild statements are being made. There are the usual suspects: the mainstream media; the NAACP and Yankee biased historians like Bob Sutton, head of the National Park Service. This was apparent in an AP news story that appeared yesterday.
First, nonsense from the NAACP:
"It's almost like celebrating the Holocaust," said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "Our rights were taken away and we were treated as less than human beings. To relive that in a celebratory way I don't think is right."
Apparently Simelton is unaware that blacks' "rights" were taken away by other blacks in Africa, who first made them slaves; then sold them to Yankee slave traders who sold them to the South (and for every one sold to the South, the Yankees sold 19 more to Cuba, Brazil and the West Indies). Celebrating secession and the formation of the Confederate States of America is NOT the same thing as celebrating slavery -- any more than celebrating the 4th of July is celebrating slavery (as most of the Founding Fathers were slave owners or traders).
Second, some common sense from a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans:
Mark Simpson, commander of the South Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, acknowledged that an event such as the Dec. 20 Secession Gala in Charleston is seen by some Americans as politically incorrect. But "to us it's part of our nature and our culture and our heritage."
"Slavery was a very big issue. Anyone who denies that has his head in a hole somewhere," said Simpson, a Spartanburg businessman who counts 32 ancestors who fought for the South. "But slavery was not the single nor primary cause, and that's where the line gets drawn."
Simpson said the primary cause was states' rights — the purported right of states to nullify federal laws and freely leave the Union they voluntarily joined.
Simpson is absolutely correct. Slavery had a strong influence on the Southern states decision to secede, because they felt they had no other choice (that will be covered more fully in a later post). The abolitionists demanded immediate and uncompensated emancipation and supported terrorism against the South, which would have devastated both the slave owner and the slave. But it wasn't slavery that started the Civil War, it was Lincoln's invasion of the Southern states. No invasion, no war -- and by his own statements (discussed later herein), he invaded to enforce the Union, not to free the slaves.
Now some simpleton nonsense from the head historian of the National Park Service:
"Slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War, period," said Bob Sutton, chief historian for the National Park Service. "Yes, politics was important. Yes, economics were important. Yes, social issues were important. But when you get to the core of why all these things were important, it was slavery."
Sutton is highly biased. The principal cause of the Civil War was the Northern invasion of the South, PERIOD. The North had NO MORALLY RESPONSIBLE plan to end slavery, no plan for emancipation, no plan to assimilate former slaves into Northern society. Without such a plan, the Northern pretense at virtue falls flat on its face.
Sutton continues to embarrass himself with these remarks:
A few weeks before the first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens called slavery "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
But as the war progressed, the Confederate government shifted its rationale to states' rights because Davis knew neither England nor other third powers would support the South in a war to preserve slavery, Sutton said.
Sutton has reversed history here! It was the exact opposite of what he pretends to be true: Lincoln at first stated categorically that the war was NOT about slavery; he even continued enforcing the fugitive slave law. He wrote to the governor of South Carolina, insisting that the abolition of slavery was not his aim! Lincoln
wrote to Horace Greeley the following denial:.
If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.
It was Lincoln who later changed the "reason" for the war, in order to dissuade the British from recognizing the Confederate government, not the opposite, as Sutton dishonestly suggests.
Read the whole sordid piece
at this link.
