Thread by @BryanDawsonUSA

1) Why did the South secede?

Conservatives whitewash Civil War history, saying it was about “states’ rights” & not slavery. Here’s a thread to help you make up your own mind and to share. Not my words - the words of the Confederate authors.

#StumpARepublican #AskAConfederate

2) “Our new government’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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.”

Alexander Stephens has no place in the US Capitol.

3) Why did Georgia secede?

The prohibition of slavery… hostility to it, the equality of the black & white races… were boldly proclaimed by its leaders & applauded by its followers… The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle.”

#AskAConfederate

4) Why did South Carolina secede?

“The President of the United States - hostile to slavery - has declared "Government cannot endure permanently
half slave, half free," & that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.” #CivilWar

5) Why did Mississippi secede?

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the world’s greatest material interest. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest & most important portions of commerce on earth.”

#AskAConfederate

6) Why did Texas Secede?

Texas “was received with the institution of negro slavery - the servitude of the African to the white race - a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, & should exist in all future time”

#AskAConfederate

7) Why did Florida Secede?

The Union is ruled by those "driven by fanatical madness that defies opposition" who’d "destroy every vestige of property in slaves. At the South, slavery is the element of all value, & its destruction destroys all that is property."

#AskAConfederate

8) Why did Louisiana Secede?

“Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery. The people of the slaveholding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.”

#AskAConfederate

9) Why did Arkansas Secede?

Hugh Thomason presented a resolution to the Secession Convention opening with a denunciation of the rise "of a party in the North which has as its principles hostility to the institution of African slavery."

#AskAConfederate
studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/why…

10) Why did North Carolina Secede?

“Conservative men of the North have within their reach facts enough to establish… that the negro, in the condition of slavery, is not a proper object for sympathy, and is, in fact, benefited by his subjection”

#AskAConfederate

11) The next lie they tell, is that only a few, wealthy families owned slaves. According to the 1860 census, taken just before the Civil War, ~32% of white families in the soon-to-be Confederate states owned slaves. The South was fighting to preserve slavery & their “investment.”

12) Why did Tennessee Secede?

Governor Isham Harris said secession’s cause was “long continued agitation of the slavery question.” “If you think you have rights & are the superiors of the black man then vote for the men who will not sell you out to the Yankee.”

#AskAConfederate

13) Why did Alabama Secede?

Secession Convention Delegate  G.T. Yelverton, made it painfully clear: “The question of Slavery is the rock upon which the Old Government split: it is the cause of secession.”

Robert Hardy Smith referred to “the negro quarrel.”

#AskAConfederate

14) Why did Virginia Secede?

“The great question which is now uprooting this Government to its foundation – the great question which underlies all our deliberations, is the question of African slavery.” - Thomas F. Goode to the Virginia Secession Convention.

#AskAConfederate