“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” — Abraham Lincoln, 3/14/1861 First Inaugural Speech

“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue . The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.” –H.L. Mencken

The predicament in which both the Government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over….If the manufacturer at Manchester [England] can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage…If the importations of the counrty are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons, to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the lost of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many huindred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers…Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty-free. The process is perfectly simple… The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North…We now see clearly whither we are tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question—one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated powers of the State or Federal government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad…..We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched. —New York Times March 30, 1861

The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing….It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No—we MUST NOT “let the South go.” —-Union Democrat , Manchester, NH, February 19, 1861

From a story entitled: “What shall be done for a revenue?”

That either revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad….If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe…..Allow rail road iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railroads would be supplied from the southern ports. —New York Evening Post March 12, 1861

“We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms.”
President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A. – 29 April 1861

“All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth.”
Robert E. Lee

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864

“Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand.”
General Robert E. Lee, August 1870 to Governor Stockdale of Texas

“The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”
London Spectator in reference to the Emancipation Proclamation

“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”
Charles Dickens, 1862

“It is stated in books and papers that Southern children read and study that all the blood shedding and destruction of property of that conflict was because the South rebelled without cause against the best government the world ever saw; that although Southern soldiers were heroes in the field, skillfully massed and led, they and their leaders were rebels and traitors who fought to overthrow the Union, and to preserve human slavery, and that their defeat was necessary for free government and the welfare of the human family. As a Confederate soldier and as a citizen of Virginia, I deny the charge, and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels; we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes.”
Colonel Richard Henry Lee, C.S.A.

“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
Major General John B. Gordon, from his book, Causes of the Civil War.

Another dispute over slavery, that was not about a moral objection to slavery, but about sectarian political and economic domination was the extension of slavery as legal in the western territories. The Industrialists in the North, did not want competition from wealthy slave owners, they wished to use that territory as bait to lure poor immigrants from Europe to work in their factories….(and they figured out that slave labor was much more expensive than exploiting poor immigrant labor as they had no expensive investment to worry about…no health and sheltering to worry about).

Furthermore, the tarriff was extremely unfair to the Southerners who were funding the Federal Government which spent the money in the North. Something like 75 percent of the Federal government was funded by 4 states in the South, SC, GA, Miss, and Alabama. The tariff protected the industrialists in the North from competition, and also gave them preferred access to Southern raw and agricultural materials.

Furthermore with regards to slavery, the Emancipation Utlimatum was further proof that the war wasnt about slavery…and this after the Constitutional Amendment profferred just before the war.

Why were slaves only accorded 3/5th of a person status by the North?

As to your quotations….its clear that slaves and slavery were indeed valuable to the South and its economics. As if that needs stating.

Furthermore, white supremacy was unquestioned by the VAST MAJORITY of white Americans during the time. Slavery existed in the Union states still, even during the war. Furthermore, Northern States that had abolished slavery, did not given former black slaves freedom and citizenship to participate in society and democracy….they drove blacks off, and indeed allowed slave owners to sell their slaves out of state before the illegality went into effect.

Here is Lincoln…

Superior and Inferior
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. — Abe Lincoln Illinois 1958

The Neo Confederate slur is unappreciated, Andrew. Its meant to silence open discussion and debate. Its like yelling anti Semite, or Islamophobe.

What else did I want to say?

Oh yes, The Lost Cause historical version of the Civil War was the generally accepted version for nearly half a century. Its not revisionist history. The Evil Slavers version of history was promoted to support a political agenda, that of giving Black Americans a reason to be pro American…that the US fought for their liberation…..its myth making at its finest. The US Civil War was not a war of liberation, it was an imperialist war of political and economic subjugation.

If they mean slavery, then yes.

The Confederacy was fought to defend slavery, not states rights as neo-confederates like to try and white wash.

Confederate William Harris, commissioner to the state of Georgia from Mississippi, said in a speech to the Georgia General Assembly

“She [Mississippi] had rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile [pyre], than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.”

Stephen Hale, Alabama’s commissioner to the state of Kentucky, writing to Governor Beriah Magoffin of that state, writes

“African Slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property– worth, according to recent estimates, not less than four thousand millions of dollars; forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their operatives with bread.”

VP of the Confederacy Aleander Stephens in 1861

“….our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. 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 and moral truth.”

They were simply continuing what John C Calhoun had said was the core faith of the Antebellum South,

“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.”

You might particularly enjoy this article.

The Cost of Union

We know what America is today, and has been in the last century. And we can look at what America was in the generation of the founders, and we can read their vision for it. And we can see the wrenching turn in the nation’s destiny that stands between us and them.

By the mid-1800s the North was boosting its population and aggressively asserting state power in the interest of its own industrial capitalism. The South was not. The two sections were diverging, and it was the North that had evolved a new culture since 1787, one that sought to control the national destiny.

Before the seats vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen were cold, the economic order of the United States had been turned on its head: the tariff had taken off on an upward trajectory that would leave even industrialists breathless. The nation’s resources were thrown open to private profit; and the whole banking and monetary system was revamped to suit investors and creditors. A tax scheme was created that weighed against the small consumers, the North’s factories (and even its army) were thrown open to immigrant contract labor, and the federal government was using the U.S. military to put down labor strikes. Congress and the President gave another 100 million acres to various railroads, free of charge.

After the war, Reconstruction had far more to do with reordering the South as a section and reducing it to the status of a financial-industrial colony than with black people. Fear, vengeance, love of union, and interest in civil rights may have played a part in Reconstruction, but it seems clear, especially after the 1876 election, that what the South suffered had much more to do with the establishment of permanent Republican party control, tariff protection, and rigging the nation’s financial arrangements to suit bankers, creditors, and New England industrialists.

In the 1870s, when the North debated within itself topics like the black vote and delaying the readmission of Southern states, the argument in favor was frankly presented as being good for the tariff and government bonds and New England “ideas of business, industry, money-making, spindles and looms.”

Midwestern farmers, the same men who swelled Sherman’s army that broke the South, bore the brunt of the new order and soon found themselves being herded into the same colonial status the South had resisted, in vain. By the time William Jennings Bryan and others rose up to defend them, in rhetoric reminiscent of John C. Calhoun, it was too late. The country had been turned over to foreclosing banks and greedy railroads so thoroughly that Missourians were ready by 1880 to make a hero of a murderous ex-Confederate named Jesse James.

After the war, state legislatures trying to protect their people against predatory trusts and capitalists were thwarted by the Supreme Court, which swept away state laws to regulate corporations (230 in 1886 alone), using the argument that corporations were “persons,” and thus protected by the due process clause of the 14th amendment. Between 1890 and 1910, of all the 14th amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court, 19 dealt with black people, and 228 with corporations.

That’s what America bought with four years of hell and 10 years of civil enslavement of the South. Even in New York City in the 1850s a respectable fortune was a few hundred thousand dollars. In the next generation, of “Robber Barons,” of big fortunes and big depressions, men like Rockefeller and Carnegie were able to amass countless millions. The culture that gave birth to Washington and Jefferson was branded as backwards and immoral. The sectional balance cherished in the vision of Madison and Hamilton was swept away in the name of greed.

continued…

http://www.etymonline.com/cw/intro.htm

Do you understand why your argument is faulty?

But bigots who prefer ignorance and mythology which reinforces their bigotries, are a dime a dozen, I suppose.

What did Lincoln do that Jefferson Davis(the president of the CSA) did not do?

The Confederacy suspended habeas corpus in 1862, the city of Richmond had a passport system in place where you could not leave or come in without military permission, hotels and railroads throughout the South provide lists of all guests and passengers to military authorities, Davis tried to close the Richmond Whig newspaper because it was unfriendly to him.

In August 1861, the Confederate Congress passed a law that anybody who was not a southern born citizen had forty days to swear a loyalty oath or leave the Confederacy with only the shirt on their back, all property was to be confiscated. Any body caught reading Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune was subjected to be killed in states like Texas and Arkansas.

Nearly all of the industry in the South was nationalized by the government. The Nitre and Mining Bureau had power over all coal, iron, lead etc-. The Confederate Quatermaster Bureau nationalized clothing, shoe and wagon factories.

The Confederacy nationalized its foreign commerce, thus any imported good not ‘essential’ to the war effort was banned.

You get the point. All the stuff that people howl about the Union and Lincoln, the South and Jefferson davis were as equally as bad or if not worse.

I suggest you read, ‘Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men’ by Jeffrey Hummel

And thanks to David All for outing him on Lincoln, with that piece of knowledge, combined with all of the other nonsense, i’m sure I never have to pay the slightest bit of attention to the goof any more.