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Re: The threat of secession
In Response To: Re: The threat of secession ()

1858-1861 saw the South more concerned over protecting themselves, rights, property and family than the issue of emmancipation. Had the abolitionist not acted as they did, had the federal government protected the rights of the South, had the Northern press left them alone, then maybe they could see the folly of slavery. Whomever had the idea of secession in 1860 was thinking about some other cause than protecting slavery, and what ever IT was was more important than that institution and its economic powers. As things go, someone starts an idea and losses control over it, as with succession. I doubt the instigators really thought Lincoln would invade, that secession would sweep the South, a Confederacy formed and nearly 1,000,000 people would perish. The instituion of slavery was a house of cards and all anyone needed to do was upset one.

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[The South, those states that seceded, goals was not to fight a war to keep slavery, nor end it, but do what ever it takes to gain independence. Too bad Richmond didn't see this until it was too late.]

"Negro slavery, was the mere occasion, and is not the object or end of this war" Richmond Enquirer, November 14, 1864

"....dispel this...delusion...slavery is preferred to nationality- negros to liberty- cotton to freedom." Richmond Enquirer, November 14, 1864.

"When Jefferson Davis exulted over the Confederate victory at First Manassas in 1861 and declared it a harbinger of ulitimate triumph, brigade commander Richard S. Ewell shook his head in dissent. The South, he cautioned, was only at "the beginning of a long, and, at best, doubtful struggle." But there was one measure he added, that would secure the defense of southern independence. When Davis asked what that might be, Ewell replied, "Emancipating the slaves and arming them."

In January 1861 a petition from Mississippi plantation owners to the governor asking the state government repeal the state law that forbade slaves to bear arms..."
Similar suggestions came from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas to Davis' government early in the war.

Dr. John Henry Stringfellow, who helped lead the pro-slavery forces in Kansas during the 1850s, who once promised, "continue to lynch and hang and to tar and feather, and drown every white-livered abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil", changed his mind and wrote to Jefferson Davis in February, 1865, for the "prompt abolition of slavery".

John C. Breckinridge also had supported the slave-soldier idea since early in the war, finally became Sec. of War late in the War, but too late to put to test his ideas.

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David Upton

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The threat of secession
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True issues....
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Well done!
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Thanks, Doyle! *NM*
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