Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch:
A Correspondent of the Day
accused Dr. Walter Williams of mythmaking concerning black Confederates.
I would like to point out some myths in this correspondent’s letter.
The Southern states did not “rise in rebellion against the United
States” in order to expand slavery. Quite to the contrary, in their
attempts to peacefully secede from the union of states by the same
method all states had originally acceded to it — through their
respective sovereign conventions — the Southern states willfully gave up
any opportunity of expanding slavery into the territories. In the
process, they effectively removed slavery from the United States
altogether. One would think the abolitionist North would have happily
said “goodbye and good riddance” to them, but it did not. Why not?
With the Southern states out of
the union, the North would lose its major source of cotton for its
mills, its major source of markets for its manufactures, its major
source of income from the tariff, and its control of the mouth of the
Mississippi River. The Northern economy would collapse. So President
Lincoln drove the Southern states back into the union at the point of
the bayonet. The South was simply defending itself from invasion,
conquest and coerced political allegiance — just as the 13 slave holding
Colonies had done when they seceded from the British Empire in 1776.
No one can argue that slavery is
not a coercive labor system, but many faithful slaves (some bearing
arms) accompanied their masters to war, rescued them from their wounds,
and got them safely back home.
H. V. Traywick Jr.
Richmond.
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