I would like to begin a discussion of The American Civil War with an excerpt from the Richmond Examiner in 1862.
It would be wise to attempt to understand what it was that motivated the south to secede from the United States so quickly after the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The following excerpt is scary and difficult to mentally digest, but to get a grasp upon what the causes of the war were we need to see it in their light and judge it on their terms. Only then can we see the hatred that existed towards the north and its federal institutions. It is based upon racism of the worst kind, not only of the negro race but of all freedom loving people. I have long believed that the root cause of all wars is based upon the belief that we are cleaner than those people. It builds up into a hatred that we find difficult to understand. During the war General Robert E. Lee did not refer to the northern armies as an army but as “those people over there”. At the surrender at Appomattox Lee was indignant that General Grant had a negro secretary writing out the terms of surrender, that is until Grant told him that the secretary was a Seneca Indian.
It should take you about 10 minutes to read this article from the Richmond Examiner:
SOUTHERN HATRED OF FREE INSTITUTIONS.
Though last, not least, the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture, and of the present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated-this as the rock upon which the old Union would split. He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But, whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood, and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African race was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent, and pass away.
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