#1 reason

Money and trade

 

#2 reason

States Rights

 

It wasn't really over slavery until it become an issue for the North to gain support.

 

While I don't see the flag as a racist symbol, I do see how others do.

It's more of a pride of rhe south thing for me.

 

The flag didn't make that guy shoot up the church

 

 

 

Does it make white people feel better when they make these claims about the Civil War having nothing to do with slavery? I guess in another week or so you all will have convinced yourselves that blacks actually wanted to be slaves.

Does it make white people feel better when they make these claims about the Civil War having nothing to do with slavery? I guess in another week or so you all will have convinced yourselves that blacks actually wanted to be slaves.

Great reply

But

While slavery played a part in the civil war it wasn't the main reason

 

So do you think the confederate flag made that guy kill the ones in the church

What was the main reason the Civil War was fought?

 

This isn't a hard question to answer. The states themselves laid out their reasoning for secession.

 

From South Carolina's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union":

 

“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. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation[….]For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. 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 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.

 

Virginia's "Secession Ordinance":

 

“The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitition were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, 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 slave-holding States.”

 

Mississippi's "A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union":

 

“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...”

 

Texas's "Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union":

 

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

 

Here's how Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, explained the purposes of their new government:

 

"The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, Mr. President, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts, its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves. 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.”

 

And how his vice-president, Alexander Stephens, put it:

 

"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 truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal."

 

This all unraveled after years of tension over slavery. Admitting new states to the Union was one of the major controversies in the years leading up to the war, where the "compromise" was that one free state and one slave state would join at a time. And what led to "Bloody Kansas" over its self-determination about allowing slavery or not.

 

The timing of the South's secession was marked by the election of Lincoln, who was regarded as a "radical abolitionist" (this is explained in South Carolina's secession statement above).

 

The South also undermined the revisionist claims that secession and war were about "states' rights" when one of their major grievances was that the Northern states were not enforcing the federal Fugitive Slave laws to their liking. They wanted the federal government to compel the Northern states to bring back their slaves, but feared that the federal government might eventually end their ability to own slaves.

 

Lastly, if, despite all of this explicit evidence, the South fought for something other than the preservation of slavery and its racial hierarchy, why did it go to such lengths to institute the Jim Crow laws that segregated its black citizens from the rest until, again, the Northern states brought it to heel almost a century later?

 

I think I make this post or some variant every year.

Great reply

But

While slavery played a part in the civil war it wasn't the main reason

 

So do you think the confederate flag made that guy kill the ones in the church

 

Of course not.

 

I do think that once it was held high above the American flag that was lowered to half mast in South Carolina out of respect for the 9 innocent people in the church that people wanted to know exactly what the hell is going on with the confederate flag being raised up higher than the American flag. And then the discussion began.......

:popcorn:

#1 reason

Money and trade

 

#2 reason

States Rights

 

It wasn't really over slavery until it become an issue for the North to gain support.

 

While I don't see the flag as a racist symbol, I do see how others do.

It's more of a pride of rhe south thing for me.

 

The flag didn't make that guy shoot up the church

 

Like the right to own people as property...

Thank you Habib. It kept me from all of that posting. :thumb:

 

Your serve Mountain Ref. :popcorn:

 

Slavery was reason for the contentions from the Compromise of 1820 on. To not see it in every excuse or debate in that era is to ignore the bedrock problem.

As for the flag being above the US flag I disagree with it but it was some dumb legislative law from what I know.

 

I think they should have just done it regardless of needing approval from the state legislative.

Apparently Amazon was instructed by the government in its action.

As for the flag being above the US flag I disagree with it but it was some dumb legislative law from what I know.

 

I think they should have just done it regardless of needing approval from the state legislative.

 

So just make up the laws as you go? :idunno:

So just make up the laws as you go? :idunno:

 

Well hell yeah Obama did it with Obamacare and bringing illegals into America. What's good for him is as good for everyone else.

Well hell yeah Obama did it with Obamacare and bringing illegals into America. What's good for him is as good for everyone else.

 

Failed that logic course didn't you?

(1) Confederate flag has to go...period.

(2) The flag had nothing to do with the shooting at all...

(3) While the flag needs to go, I am afraid of the slippery slope that this will lead to...wait til we see what else is demanded to be done away with...it is just getting started

Your honor, I would like to present to the jury that it has been republicans leading the charge to remove these racist historical artifacts from government buildings.

 

#thosedamnliberalshavefailedusagain

Failed that logic course didn't you?

 

What logic course, the same one Obama failed.