re: Richmond fell to the U.S. Army 161 years ago today...

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Then there was the pesky moral dilemma.

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Then there was the pesky moral dilemma.

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I'm sure the plight of Africans was heavy on the minds of the 1860's Massachusetts men who marched from Boston to die on Southern soil.

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I think the results kinda answer that question huh

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That’s one way to look at decretive will.

You've got to be trolling or completely ignorant if the historical record.

Virgil Kane is the name
And I served on the Danville train
'Till Stoneman's cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again

In the winter of '65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It's a time I remember, oh so well

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Slavery was never the reason. Lincoln didn’t even want to stop it

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People need to read The Real Lincoln. I had a friend from Michigan read it and he described it as eye opening.

I think slavery went back just a lil further than 161 years ago.

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The emancipation proclamation wasn’t signed until several months after the civil war started

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Ft. Sumter - April 12, 1861
Emancipation Proclamation - January 1, 1863

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If true, cite them.

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Sure.

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

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In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest 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.

…The hostility to this institution…has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain. It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

…Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.

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Virginia

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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 Constitution 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

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Alabama

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Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security [...]

And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,

Be it resolved by the people of Alabama in Convention assembled, That the people of the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, be and are hereby invited to meet the people of the State of Alabama, by their Delegates, in Convention, on the 4th day of February, A.D., 1861, at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of consulting with each other as to the most effectual mode of securing concerted and harmonious action in whatever measures may be deemed most desirable for our common peace and security.

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It is amazing to me that this continuous lie was told about why the civil war even happened.

Slavery was never the reason. Lincoln didn’t even want to stop it. He even wrote that he didn’t believe it was his right to stop it.

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Lincoln was anti-slavery but he wasn't an abolitionist. He was seen as a moderate on the issue which is why he was able to get the Republican nomination in Springfield in the summer of 1860 over more staunch anti-slavery politicians like William Seward. Despite this, however, Lincoln was firmly against the further expansion of slavery. This was enough to freak out those in the South because it was their view that if slavery stopped expanding it would eventually die in Congress as free states would sooner or later outnumber slave states.

It is true that Lincoln did not believe himself to have the power or the authority to end slavery unilaterally, which is why he pushed for the 13th Amendment to be ratified rather than just settling for the Emancipation Proclamation. He figured (correctly) that the Courts would dismantle the Proclamation once hostilities ended due to it being 100% unconstitutional. However, the major aim of the Emancipation Proclamation was to keep Europe out of the conflict. In that it most definitely succeeded.

Georgia's explanation is even better. Their legislature passed a declaration of why they did it. Literally. LINK

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The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation.
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Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it (slavery) to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.

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Then, they published a list of terms for reconciliation. page 17 See if you can find one point that references the tariff, cotton profits, ag taxes (whatever tf those are?), or states rights (as a overarching concept...of course they reference their right to enslave). I concede that point 9 isn't about slavery directly, but it's still about White supremacy.

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That inasmuch as Georgia is resolved not to abide permanently in this Union without satisfactory guaranties of future security, the following propositions are respectfully suggested for the consideration of her Southern Confederates as the substance of what she regards indispensable amendments to the Constitution of the United States, to wit:

1. That Congress shall have no power to abolish or prohibit slavery in the Territories or any place under their exclusive jurisdiction.
2. Each State shall be bound to surrender fugitive slaves, and if any fugitive slave shall be forcibly taken or enticed from the possession of any officer legally charged therewith for the purpose of rendition, the United States shall pay the owner the value of such slave, and the county in which such rescue or enticement may occur shall be liable to the United States for the amount so paid, to be recovered by suit in the Federal courts.
3. It shall be a penal offense, definable by Congress and punishable in the Federal courts, for any person to rescue or entice, or to encourage, aid, or assist others to rescue or entice, any fugitive slave from any officer legally charged with the custody thereof for the purpose of rendition.
4. Whatever is recognized as property (such as, I dunno, slaves) by the Constitution of the United States shall be held to be property in the Territories of the United States and in all places over which Congress has exclusive jurisdiction, and all kinds of property shall be entitled to like and equal protection therein by the several departments of the General Government.
5. New States formed out of territory now belonging to the United States, or which may be hereafter acquired, shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as the people thereof may determine at the time of admission.
6. Congress shall have no power to prohibit or interfere with the slave-trade between the States, nor to prohibit citizens of the United States passing through or temporarily sojourning in the District of Columbia from having with them their slaves and carrying them away, but it shall be the duty of Congress to provide by law for the punishment of all persons who may interfere with this right in the same way as is provided for in the foregoing third proposition.
7. No State shall pass any law to prohibit the citizens of any other State travelling, or temporarily sojourning therein, from carrying their slaves and returning with them; and it shall be a penal offence, definable by Congress, and punishable by the Federal Courts, for any person to entice away, or harbor, or attempt to entice away or harbor, the slave or slaves of such citizen so travelling, or temporarily sojourning.
8. The obligation to surrender fugitives from justice (e.g. slaves) as provided for under the Constitution of the United States extends, and shall be held to extend as well to fugitives charged with offences connected with or committed against slavery or slave property as to any other class of offences, and for the purposes of this proposition, whatever is defined to be a criminal offence in one State shall be deemed and held a criminal offence in every other State.
9. The Supreme Court having decided that negroes are not citizens of the United States, no person of African descent shall be permitted to vote for Federal Officers, nor to hold any office or appointment under the government of the United States.

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