Perhaps the most important states rights argument during those times.
Was about the southern states wanting to trade with whomever they wanted, without their goods being tariffed when they came into northern ports. The southern states wanted to do more trade with England, as the English paid more for our goods. The US government frowned on that.
Which does not change what Alexander Stephens himself identified as the"immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution". The North had their own grievances with the South playing fast and loose with congressional representation by identifying non voting negroes as 3/5 of a man for purposes of garnering more members of congress than they would have been entitled to had they counted their census the way the non slave owning states did.
From the Declarations of Causes For Secession
Georgia - "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."
Mississippi - "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery --
the greatest material interest of the world."
South Carolina - "A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all states North of that line have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery."
Texas - "She was received 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."
There is nothing in any of these documents from 1861 that would lead me to believe that slavery was some sort of "oh by the way" after thought in this whole process skyblue. Slavery was the cause of secession.
As for the states rights arguments - why would the CSA revolt over states rights, specifically the right to own negroes, and then deny the right of any of its constituent states to outlaw slavery? How is taking away that option being all about states rights? Here is the Confederate Constitution http://www.usconstitution.net/csa.html Read Section 9.4 "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
That was a fucking disgusting document back in 1861 and it still is.
dont get pissed at me , I wasnt alive during those days.
Neo confederate revisionism tweaks my tail a bit. I have family that fought on both sides of that war, I'm not ashamed of the ones from the South - but they were on the wrong side. No amount of "He did it too" finger pointing at Sherman or Sheridan will make slavery okay IMO. There is no way to justify the CSA without justifying slavery. Separating the CSA, or the Civil War, from slavery is akin to shaving shit off of a turd IMO. Slavery was a degenerate institution that the CSA intended to keep forever if they could.
