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Was the Confederacy really about slavery?
By John A. Tures
Associate Professor of Political Science
LaGrange College
April 15, 2010 — By now, you’ve probably heard all about that fuss over Confederate Heritage Month declarations in Virginia and Mississippi. It may make you wonder why the Southern States seceded. Was it really about slavery, or was that more of a side issue? Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell declared April to be “Confederate History Month.” According to David Paul Kuhn with realclearpolitics.com. “The proclamation recognized the ‘sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.’ It did not mention slavery.” According to “On McDonnell’s Confederate Mistake,” Kuhn’s article, “McDonnell explained the immense omission to The Washington Post: ‘There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.’” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour defended McDonnell, having issued a similar proclamation. And Rev. Cecil Fayard, chaplain in chief for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans said “The War Between the States was fought for the same reasons that the tea party movement today is voicing their opinion. And that is that you have large government that’s not listening to the people, there’s going to be heavy taxation…And the primary cause of the war was not slavery, although slavery was interwoven into the cause, but it was not the cause for the War Between the States.” So I ran a hypothesis test to determine if states left the Union to join the Confederacy over slavery, or whether that was more of a side issue. I located the declarations of secession for four different states that were available: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. The word “slave” appears 82 times in these four state declarations. The states even refer to themselves as “Slave-Holding States.” I always thought that was a Northern term. On the other hand, the words “State’s rights,” “states’ rights” or “states rights” do not appear in any of these four secession declarations. The word “rights” appears 14 times and “right” appears 32 times, but many of these references involve “the right to own slaves.” Was it about economics? Cotton and rice don’t appear. Plantation is noted once, but it refers to a place in Rhode Island. Tariffs are never discussed. Tax is mentioned once. Nullification is not included either, though “null” appears three times, mostly to do with leaving the Union. “Econ” (as in economics, economy or any other term) is mentioned twice. And if you read the declarations, they are chock full of excuses for the necessity of slavery that would make the most political incorrect person today cringe. It seems that Governor McDonnell now realizes the importance of slavery in the Civil War. According to Kuhn “he apologized and belatedly noted that the ‘abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War.’ The proclamation was amended to include, “It is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil...’.” It sounds like he gets it. General Robert E. Lee, who said “slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil” would agree. |
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