From the History Books: Facts that Support the Southern View of the Civil War

From the History Books: Facts that Support the Southern View of the Civil War

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Fourth Edition

Most books on the Civil War are biased in favor of the Northern view of the conflict. However, in many of these books the careful reader can find a number of facts that support the Southern view of the war. In this article I will document the following facts from mainstream history books:

* Abraham Lincoln knew that an attempt to resupply Fort Sumter could provoke a hostile response from the Confederacy.

* The Confederate states seceded in a democratic, peaceful manner, and most Southerners supported secession. (This refutes the notion expressed by some writers that Southern elitists pulled the South out of the Union against the will of most Southerners.)

* Confederate forces treated Northern citizens and property considerably better than Union forces treated Southern citizens and property.

* Slavery was not the only factor that led the states of the Deep South to secede.

* Lincoln, in his first address to the country as president, threatened to invade the Confederate states if they didn't pay federal tariffs or if they didn't allow the federal government to occupy and maintain federal forts in Confederate territory.

* President James Buchanan, Lincoln's predecessor in the White House, blamed the secession crisis primarily on the North.

* Lincoln held racist views, and he believed that freed slaves should be colonized outside the country. (It's only fair to point out that nearly all Americans in that era held racist views.)

* The North had very little moral authority to criticize the South over slavery and race relations.

* Lincoln did not start the war in order to free the slaves.

* Lincoln only began to consider issuing an emancipation proclamation when the Union's war effort continued to falter and when he feared the Republican Radicals in Congress would withhold military supplies from Union forces.

* Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only as a war measure that was designed to weaken the Confederacy, and the proclamation only applied to slaves who were located in Confederate territory, not to slaves in Union territory.

* The same Congress that imposed the harsh rule of Reconstruction on the South after the war also supported racist policies toward the American Indians.

* Lincoln and other Republicans blocked a widely popular compromise plan that may very well have prevented war, and they refused to allow the people to vote on it in a national referendum.

* Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, suspended civil liberties less often than did Lincoln.

* The South did not want war and tried to establish peaceful relations with the North.

* Most Southerners did not believe secession would lead to war.

* The South did not always control the federal government in the three decades leading up to the Civil War. (This is an important point because some critics of the South contend that the South seceded partly over losing the control that it had supposedly held over the federal government for decades.)

* Only a fraction of Southerners owned slaves.

* The Confederate constitution was very similar to the U.S. Constitution and in fact contained several improvements, and it also banned the overseas slave trade and permitted the entrance of free states into the Confederacy.

* Some Confederate leaders criticized slavery and believed blacks should be treated with respect.

* Some Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were ready and willing to abolish slavery in order to preserve Southern independence.