Can I ask you something? Why are you and a few others so eager to defend a "nation" (and I use that word VERY loosely) that established itself as a sworn enemy of the United States of America? I, for one, and SO glad that the Confederacy got crushed in the Civil War. United States of America, not Divided States of America.
You assume way to much here. I can only speak for myself, but I have never and never will defend the institution of slavery as "morally acceptable". I can, as a historian, appreciate the legality and importance of it economically at the time.
History must always be reviewed in the correct context. The problem that bleeding heart Liberals have when it comes to history is, more often, than not, they attempt to apply modern values and ethical standards to events which happened centuries ago. This is not a practical approach to studying history. Down this road lies propaganda and revisionism.
That being said, in regards to secession and the war, I do not "defend" the CSA as having the moral "high ground", only the CONSTITUTIONAL high ground. Right, wrong, or indifferent, the South, in 1860, had a legal right to secede, draft a constitution, elect leaders, and to occupy and defend their own property.
The Union had no Constitutional recourse, therefore, the only solution for Lincoln, was to provoke the CSA into a war. Ordering Union troops to hold their ground at Ft. Sumter (in Confederate-held S. Carolina) even after they'd been asked to leave peacefully, or turning away CSA diplomats who sought a peaceful separation, was just part of the process.
While I know that the secession was completely constitutional, and that SCOTUS could/would never have upheld treason convictions for any Confederate...................I DO believe that Secession, at the time, was not wise. Again, I in no way condone slavery, but we must look a bit deeper. Like it or not, the North (specifically New England factories) profited greatly from Southern Cotton. Many prominent, so-called "abolitionist," Congressmen were from those states. The fact is, Congress refused to lower the tariff or to consider a southern route for the trans-continental RR because the the North wanted to maintain some control over the vast revenues from Cotton exports (it is an irrefuteable FACT that Southern exports accounted for almost 70% of total US exports in the years prior to the Civil War).
Is ANYONE here willing to argue that the South's economy was not being exploited by the North and that this great economic success would not have been possible without slavery? The evidence tends to lead one to believe that the North wasn't as "anti-slavery" as we've typically been taught (at least not Northern Political leaders)
Once again, I'm not defending the "peculiar institution" nor the act of secession as morally right or good. I don't think the act of secession was a particlarly "smart" thing to do. But I CAN see it all in its proper context. I
CAN see the justifcation and the legality of it. And I
CAN empathize with Southern leaders and
sympathize with the average southerner who never owned a slave but got caught up in the whole thing just to defend his homeland from an invading force.
