Civil War was all about slavery

              

Gordon L. Weil

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley tried to dodge admitting that the Civil War was about slavery.

Yet her state was the first state of the Confederacy to secede, acting months before Abraham Lincoln took office.

The state argued that the Union was based on agreement among states that slavery could continue and that non-slave states would send escapees back South when captured. But the North was reneging on that agreement and wanted to end slavery.

Lincoln had promised that he would not act to end slavery where it existed, whatever his own views. In fact, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment containing that promise, which was ratified only by his home state of Illinois. The southern states chose to secede.

Many in the South, having lost the Civil War, came to believe in the Lost Cause. They claimed to have wanted only to have preserved states’ rights and been simply overpowered by the Union. Slavery was pushed into the background. This was the position advanced by Haley, which might have helped her in some Republican primaries but not in a general election.

This is an excerpt from the South Carolina Declaration of December 1860, which in turn has a link to the complete document.