Drex wrote:
Shelby Foote ,in an interview, quoted a southern prisoner as saying he was fighting because the Yanks were invading his homeland. This sounds like regionalism as opposed to nationalism, which didn;t exist then.
To quote the first three paragraphs of the Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession:
Quote:
The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former as one of the co-equal States thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.
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?
And, they go on to mention "slave" or "race" seventeen more times in a rather short document.
I think they said what the meant to say. Officially the Confederacy claimed states rights because saying Slavery would close the door on any European recognition. The common soldier wasn't stupid either. They knew saying States Rights sounded a lot better than "I want to be able to own someone".
But the real underlying cause was economics. Freed slaves were a threat to people's jobs. Negros weren't in large numbers in the North so they didn't view them as a treat. But they did view the Irish as a threat and violently resisted them at times. The Federal government freeing and dumping millions of negros into the job market was about the scariest thing around to the comman Southern. Those who directly benefited from slavery and held political power knew this and used it.