A review of When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) by Charles Adams
Did the South go to war for sport?
Not being a professional historian, my historical toolbox is not large. But one tool has often gotten me to the heart of past events. That tool is to ask:
What is the most incongruous thing in these events?
The most incongruous thing in the debate over the causes of the War
Between the States is that, if the South wanted to preserve slavery, as
the many (sic) declarations of causes for secession clearly admit, then why on earth was it willing to go to war to do so? The
Corwin Amendment, which would have established slavery irrevocably,
which would have been America’s 13th Amendment, had been given to them
before a shot was fired. A Northern Congress, absent of all the Southern
states, had proposed it; Lincoln had personally promoted it; and five
states – not one of them Southern – had ratified it. Why would the
Southern declarations champion slavery as a cause for secession and as a
casus belli when there was absolutely no need? And if the
South seceded for other reasons, why did it not state those reasons to
the exclusion of a principle which was not at issue whatsoever, and
which was likely to alienate European support? Did the South go to war
for sport?
More @ The Abbeville Institute
Just to show how poorly our schools teach history, I have never heard of this and I grew up in the South in the 50s and 60s! I never believed the CW was about slavery since none of the soldiers (who gave their lives for the cause) owned any! Thanks for this newfound knowledge!
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