Anarchy Edu
· 3d
https://blossom.primal.net/34403c9e61ecada42ecc3b3e042b88d49b52e6999cbc63a4df6aac574a0d069f.jpg
In its Mississippi Declaration of Secession (adopted January 1861), the state placed slavery at the absolute center of its decision:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world... a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
In the Declaration of a Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede, the state explicitly argued that the federal government was violating its foundational racial hierarchies:
"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, which the people intended should exist in all future time."
In its Georgia Secession Declaration (adopted January 1861), the state listed its grievances against the North immediately:
"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."
The very first state to leave issued the South Carolina Declaration of Secession. It focused heavily on Northern states failing to enforce federal laws protecting slave owners, specifically referencing the Fugitive Slave Act:
"They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States."
Key word "property". I wonder what that refers to.
If you look beyond the secession documents to the leaders who designed the Confederate government, the messaging is identical. On March 21, 1861, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, gave a famous public address known as the Cornerstone Speech. In it, he stated clearly that the new nation was explicitly built upon the preservation of white supremacy and slavery:
"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