Think of secession and civil war like an ugly separation and divorce process in family court. Both parties try to justify their actions, demonize the other party and absolve themselves of any wrong-doing. They try to force friends to take sides. Arguments become more elaborate and convoluted over time. Soon it becomes darn near impossible for outsiders to determine what really happened.

To uncover the conflict's real origins, best sources are letters, notes and testimony dated before the separation. That's why Southern newspapers published immediately before the war are so interesting. Whenever the topic of secession is raised, no one questions the right of secession and few expect that secession would produce a civil war. It's mentioned like divorce -- an extreme solution that everyone acknowleges but hopes will never happen. During the election campaign of 1860, no one in Alabama (or Mississippi, I suspect) wanted to be labeled a secessionist, any more than a current-day politicians wants to be called a racist.

Here are parts of an editorial titled "The Times and Our Duty" from the Tuscaloosa Independent of Dec. 17, 1860:

We are at a very singular period in our national history, and it behooves every man to enquire soberly what personal and public duty demands of him in view of the present inflammable condition of the public mind.

We value Southern Rights as much as any man. We are Southern born, and feel the impulse keenly, perhaps as any, to go as far as the farthest, when it is right to do so, in defense of Southern honor. At all events we are prepared to go as we believe some of those will do who prate so loudly of blood and thunder. But let reflecting men ask themselves: In what danger are we?

Why do ourselves the wrong to exhibit these nervous apprehensions when our position is one of invincible strength? And why do our slave population the injustice to question their fidelity (for these excitable acts must impress them with this feeling) when they are our safeguard in themselves?

We rely upon these slaves, and upon the strength and invincibility of Southern rights, and upon the power of the constitution, and upon the rationality and conservatism of people everywhere in the nation. Because of our great interest, based too upon the institution of slavery, we of the South in this Union, are girded about with a strength which cannot be overcome.

We believe that there is a faction of treasonable abolition fanatics at the North who operate for the excitement of Revolution and a dissolution of the Union; and there is another faction, equally as traitorous to the Constitution, at the South, who also operate for the excitement of revolution and a dissolution of the Union.

The country is tossed in commotion and conservatism appears to be lost in this seething cauldron. We are on the eve of a Presidential election, too, when such excitements are most favored and most intense....
in view of the demands of our posterity upon us, will conservative patriots of the country be gulled into false attitudes and fatal positions by these unprincipled demagogues and traitorous factions? We have an abiding faith in the common sense and patriotism of the people, and these things are in conflict with common sense.

By all accounts, people in every county turned out in unprecendented numbers to hear the right to hold property in slaves debated. Arguments in favor of this proposition (and no one opposed it) were framed in terms of upholding the Constitution. Issues raised many years after the war by E. P. Alexander and many other are simply not on the radar screen in 1860. If it was possible to get Alexander's testimony on the conflict in 1860, I would bet the ranch that he would tell us something different than he did in his later years.

Without a careful study of their writings, I'm not accusing Alexander and other Confederate veterans of being dishonest on this issue. However, I do believe that people tend to explain past conflicts in a way that may not reflect accurately on what really happened. For example, consider General Longstreet's three different versions of what really happened at Gettysburg.

As a Southern partisan I would've picked different ground on which to fight. But we weren't looking for a fight. Southerners weren't interested in maintaining slavery north of the Ohio or undermining Northern society. Up until Harper's Ferry, Southern interest in expanding and arming our militia had been minimal. Others forced this conflict upon us, and we chose to defend our rights rather than submit.