Here is an accurate accounting of the Confederacy's purposes and intentions and shatters the myth that the Civil War was "really about state rights." Even if we concede it was (a condition contrary to fact, to make a point), what "rights" precisely were being fought over?
"It’s a self-delusion some use to justify neo-Confederate pride: stars-and-bars bumper stickers, or
remnants of Confederate iconography woven into some of today’s state flags. “It’s about Southern pride,” they insist. “It’s about heritage”—forgetting, intentionally perhaps, that slavery and its decade-spanning echoes are very much a part of the collective American heritage. Confederate denialism, in the form of states’ rights advocacy, permits sentimentalists to keep their questionable imagery without having to address its unsavory associations.
Just how pervasive are these Confederate mythologies?
An informal survey conducted in 2011 by James W. Loewen, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, found that 55% to 75% of American teachers—“regardless of region or race”—cite states’ rights as the chief reason for Southern secession. This attitude is also reflected in
a Pew Research Center poll from that same year, which found that nearly half (48%) of all Americans agreed: the Civil War was fought over states’ rights. Only 38% of those surveyed attribute the conflict to slavery.
So-called states’ rights
No one seems to be able to agree on which specific Southern rights were in danger, but that’s really beside the point. The fact is, Southern states seceded
in spite of states’ rights, and the Confederacy’s founding documents offer plenty of proof.
In its constitution, Confederate leaders explicitly provided for the federal protection of slaveholding:
“In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”
It’s a provision that clashes jarringly with neo-Confederate mythos—how could the South secede to preserve states’ rights if its own constitution mandated legal, federally protected slavery across state borders?
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. On Dec. 24, 1860, its government issued a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” In it, South Carolinian leaders aired objections to laws in Northern states—specifically, those that sprung from the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), in which the US Supreme Court ruled that state authorities could not be forced to help return fugitive slaves to the South. Ensuing individual state legislation in New England would double down on that very ruling, expressly forbidding state officials from enforcing the federal
Fugitive Slave Acts, or the use of state jails to detain fugitive slaves.
In effect, South Carolina seceded because the federal government would not overturn abolitionist policies in Northern states. South Carolina seceded because the federal government would not violate a state’s right to abstain from slavery and its concomitant policies.
Taxes and tariffs
Another strain of Confederate apologia asserts secession inspired by high taxes, in the form of heavy tariffs. Once again, the neo-Confederates are wrong, and South Carolinian history proves it. The state first raised the threat of secession in 1831 and 1833, events known collectively as the Nullification Crisis. South Carolina declared the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional, and therefore null within state borders. No other state government backed the move, president Jackson threatened force, and South Carolina abandoned the idea.
No matter! A Virginian slaveholder wrote a new tariff in 1857, which was passed and generally well-received by Southern members of Congress as it stipulated a record-low rate. Thus, at the time of war, Southerners had no real reason to complain (with regards to tariffs): a plantation owner in Louisiana could export his cotton to Europe at the lowest tariff rate instituted since 1816.
Counting states, taking sides
It isn’t entirely inaccurate, however, to say that the war was fought over money. Most human conflicts are, in some way. In this case, the money issue centered around potential losses Southern titans of agribusiness would experience if slavery was abolished at the federal level. Federally mandated emancipation would require a majority of free states in the US Senate—something Southern lawmakers fought tooth-and-nail to impede.
As a result, the number of free and slave-states was kept equal until 1846, when the count reached 15 and 14, respectively. This imbalance exacerbated tensions between North and South significantly, reducing Southern leaders to a culture of extreme paranoia. Secession, in this sense, was very much a preemptive move.
The Southern aristocracy feared the impending election of Abraham Lincoln would ultimately bring about nationwide emancipation. He and his supporters were known, after all, as “black Republicans,” a term purposefully designed to conjure an image of radical abolitionism."
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