FOUR CLAIMS ABOUT THE CONFEDERACY AND THE CIVIL WAR

THE CONFEDERACY, THE UNION, AND THE CIVIL WAR: A LOOK AT FOUR CLAIMS ABOUT THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Fourth Edition

A few years ago some members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans drafted a statement to be placed on a proposed monument at a Confederate grave site in a Texas cemetery. The statement contained four claims regarding the Confederacy, the Union, and the Civil War. The purpose of this article is to examine those claims. The text of the statement is as follows:

The Confederate dead died for states rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The people of the South, animated by the spirit of 1776, to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal compact in 1861. The North resorted to coercion. The South, against overwhelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted.

There are four principal claims made in this statement:

1. That Confederate soldiers fought for states rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
2. That the people of the South seceded in order to preserve their rights.
3. That the North (i.e., the Union) resorted to coercion.
4. That the South fought against overwhelming odds.

Before I begin to discuss these claims, I would like to briefly introduce myself so as to give the reader some idea of where I'm coming from when I approach the subject of the Civil War. I'm not a Southerner by upbringing. I spent nearly all of my childhood in the North and in the West, and I have spent the majority of my adult life outside the South. Until a few years ago, I always considered myself to be a "Northerner" and a "Yankee." Politically, I'm an independent who has long favored programs to help minorities and the poor. One of the web pages that I maintain is dedicated to educating the public about the terrible abuses that African Americans have suffered in our nation, especially prior to the 1970s.