Difficult choice? Difficult choice? Really? Have you read Shelby Foote?
The "Confederates fought for some substantially good things."
Well if you read the states reasons for succeeding they never talk about "States Ratz" or tariffs, it's always that pesky slavery thing. Tell you what I looked it up so you don't have to,here are two:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union
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. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.
Sheesh, not really seeing too many good things there, Mr. Foote. If you want to read the entire declaration, do so. But every sentence in it is about slavery and nothing but slavery.
But you've got to love the part at the end where Mississippi says they have more of a cause to leave the United States than the Colonies did to break away from England. Well, they might be right, since that revolution was over taxation not SLAVERY.
Hey, let's check out Texas' Secession declaration… Maybe we'll find some of those good things the Confederacy stood for in that document.
DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861
A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal 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?
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color–a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
Nope, not seeing any good things in that document, either, Mr. Foote. Pretty hard to get past the passage where Texas is berating the Northern states for "proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law."
You'll see this ties into the Confederate Constitution later.
But the reason the South succeeded isn't about the Peculiar Institution, surely we'll be able to find some of those "substantially good things" Foote says the Confederacy stood for in Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone" speech?
"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. 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. 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 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. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Oh dear, still let's press on….
"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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Come on there must be something on tariff soon? Well if there was I didn't find it.
On Jefferson Davis "Whatever his reasons, Pierce chose well. Davis made perhaps the best War Secretary the country ever had…" Tell me how good a de facto Secretary of War Davis was in the period 1861-65?
Davis the 2nd George Washington "Rising early, he worked at home until breakfast, then went to his office, where he often stayed past midnight. He had need for all this labor, founding like Washington a new government, a new nation, except that whereas the earlier patriot had worked in a time of peace, with his war for independence safely won, Davis worked in a flurry against time, with possibly a harder war ahead. Like Washington, too, he lived without ostentation or pomp. His office was upstairs in the ugly red brick State House on a downtown corner, ‘The President' handwritten across a sheet of foolscap pasted to the door. He made himself accessible to all callers, and even at his busiest he was gracious, much as Jefferson had been."
On the Confederate Constitution "One important oversight was corrected, however. Where the founding fathers, living in a less pious age of reason, had omitted any reference to the Deity, the modern preamble invoked ‘the favor and guidance of Almighty God.'"
Oh so they South is now fighting a Holy War against those godless, pinko, commie, lefty Yankees. God bless Jefferson Davis and Joseph McCarthy!
Plus, here the kicker, Slavery is God's will (See the TX Declaration of Succession above)
"If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will be seen to amount to no more, in the end, than the average American's normal sympathy for the underdog in a fight."
Excuse me but as an Englishman was the underdog in this fight the, um, slaves?
In Ken Burns' documentary Foot says the cause of the war was "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise." Yes that pesky thing where a African-Americas are only worth 3/5 of a white man might be a block to comprise.
As for States Ratz – when northern states refused in enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming it was their right not to enforce unjust laws; it was the Southern slavocracy that complained – so you could say the Confederacy represent the Anti-States Rights position.
So if you want the whole "Lost Cause" narrative and how the war wasn't about slavery Foote is your man.
Several earlier writers point out that Foote was an author of fiction, I'd argue his civil war book should be in the same category.
adds artillery to his soft-plastic Union forces.
