Happy Sedition Surrender Day

My standard answer to "It wasn't about slavery" is to link to the Texas Declaration of Secession, which takes all the way to the third paragraph to arrive at:

DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861 A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union. | TSLAC

"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. 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. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?"

Further down:


"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States."

 

South Carolina’s declaration of secession does not mention tariffs and taxes. However, it does mention slavery and Abraham Lincoln. That state’s secession convention also issued a document calling on other slaveholding states to secede and to join together in a new nation.

 

Good stuff. Thanks.

But, yeah, I definitely don't engage. 60% of their existence is arguing with people on social media about "the war wasn't about slavery" and they are good at it, and they team up and they go for the kill. The other 40% is explaining that Forrest really was a swell guy and the Ft. Pillow Massacre and his role as Grand Wizard of the KKK were just misunderstandings.

Now, if I really wanted to start a fight about Texas I'd go tell them the Alamo/Revolution was all about slavery, too!

 

Shot on the front lawn of Arlington.

 

"Malice toward none" would have lasted another 36 hours after the first report Lincoln got of former rebels carrying on armed guerrilla terrorism in KKK sheets to overthrow the outcome of the war.