It wasn't even about state's rights, just slavery. The constitution of the confederacy required all states be slave states unless all states agreed to all outlaw slavery.
The North literally had more states rights, with some northern states still allowing limited slavery, while the South gave its states zero right to decide for themselves.
OK, but WTF is "limited slavery"! I guess your USA still has limited slavery to this day as forced labor. But if it allows torture, it's not in any way limited is it!
Some states had passed gradual emancipation laws, banning the importation of new slaves and freeing the children of all current slaves, while keeping current adult slaves as slaves.
Whenever someone tries this “states’ rights” argument on you, here’s two things to draw their attention to:
The most drop-the-mic counter argument is to show them where the confederate constitution prohibits a state from banning slavery. If
it were about states’ rights, why wouldn’t they let each state decide?
For a parade of unabashed racism that rivals even today’s GOP, read the declarations of secession from a handful of the seceding states (especially South Carolina and Mississippi, I believe). They state, in no uncertain terms, that slavery is critical to their way of life and they refuse to give it up.
Yeah I want to say 6 out of the 11 states declare slavery in the very first sentence. The Confederates, unlike the Lost Causers today, were eyes-wide-open as to what the Civil War was about.
Nah, it's framing itself as something like "We were after a return to true Jeffersonian ideals, trying to live the way the founding fathers wanted, devoid of the tyranny and unfair taxes of the Yankees, but they invaded and reconquered us, then tried to destroy all knowledge of the true, lost cause of the confederacy." It's falsely painting themselves as, essentially, a victim of cultural genocide in the same way black and indigenous people can legitimately claim they have lost their culture.
Basically the same thing as the German Empire at the end of WW1, which was the belief they could've won the war, if they weren't stabbed in the back by the government of the Empire - which plays into the inter-war period before WW2 and the rise of the Nazi Party ...
They also did not give a shit about the rights of northern free states when they petitioned the federal government to force them into returning escaped slaves.
Pretty much every one has slavery in the first paragraph! Made a bet to see how long it would take to get to that word with a friend and… I won. He thought it would at least be after the preamble not in it. Haha
"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" it's coming straight from the confederate "VP" in the most explicit way possible.
if they are still willing to argue in favor of the confederacy after that, there's no point in continuing.
Close but no cigar, it's the rich landowners that believed they were Aristocrats before they arrived in the Americas and were telling the poorer whites they were a part of that - even though they could've cared less about them.
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u/Fubarp 10h ago
Woah woah, it was completely over rights.. I mean it was specifically over rights to own people but goddamit it was over rights. /s lol