Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, January 18, 2024 "How Do We Know the Civil War Was About Slavery?"

January 18, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“How Do We Know the Civil War Was About Slavery?”

As noted last week, more and more Americans are not naming slavery as the principal cause of the Civil War. While this used to be common in the South, it is now the case around the country.

It is not true of professional historians of the period, though. Professional historians, by definition, base their assessments on documents from the time. Here are some pertinent ones.

“The Cornerstone Speech,” given by Alexander Stephens, VP of the brand-new Confederacy, in Savannah on March 12, 1861. He spent a big part of that speech explaining why he thought the Confederate constitution was superior to the U.S. constitution- because “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” There you have it: the VP said the Confederacy was formed, and a war was about to start, over the idea that slavery is “the proper status of the negro.” Whereas the framers of the original constitution believed in equality for all, Stephens said, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”

Only eight days earlier, at his first Inauguration, Lincoln had said, “One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”

Georgia’s declaration of secession said, “The people of Georgia… 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.”

The South Carolina declaration said, “An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations.”

The Mississippi declaration said, “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.”

The Texas declaration described their state “as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.”

I could go on and on. But let me conclude with a resolution passed in Cookeville on April 22, 1861, urging Tennessee to secede. It was written by Judge Erasmus L. Gardenhire:

"The antislavery party is the enemy of the Union and the Constitution, advocating the equality of the negro and the white races and the abolition of slavery. To accomplish this the antislavery party has been organized and now constitutes the dominant party in all the free States. And now, having possession of the Federal government in all its departments, it is attempting by conquest and coercion to carry out its damnable heresies entertained for many years toward the South and its institutions.”

But wait, you say, what about states’ rights? I say: states’ rights about what? Slavery. Nikki Haley said the federal government had stepped on “the rights and freedoms of the people.” Their rights to do what? Enslave other people.

I will wrap up this topic next time with a more detailed explanation. For now- the documents speak for themselves.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.