Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 10: "States' rights" to slavery

Today's offering from Edward Sebesta's site is a quote from Jefferson Davis in a message to the Confederate Congress (presumably in 1861) justifying secession. I'll only quote a brief portion here. But the statement is notable because even though he uses the classical "states rights" arguments of John Calhoun, his concern is as clear as Calhoun's. The only "states right" that truly interested either of them was the right to hold property in other human beings. Davis:

When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the colonies by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. ...

In the interest of adding perspective, I'll provide another quote that gives a picture of how completely pseudohistorical it is for the neo-Confederates to argue that slavery "had nothing to do with the Civil War" or a similar argument. (Neo-Confederates aren't the only ones who think that, because the Lost Cause version of the war was taught in Southern history books for generations.)

This is from Bertram Wyatt-Brown's The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace and War, 1760s-1880s (2001). He describes an incident in the secession convention in South Carolina, Calhoun's home state and always the most hardline of the Fire-Eater hotbeds (my emphasis):

In 1860-61, the lower South separated from the Union out of a sense of almost uncontrollable outrage. To be sure, slavery was the root cause of sectional conflict. When the South Carolina secession convention met in November 1860, fire-eater congressman Lawrence Keitt insisted that the rationale should center solely on the issues of slavery. That was, he said, "the great central point from which we are now proceeding." Other fire-eaters sought to add a wider agenda. Robert Barnwell Rhett and Maxcey Gregg, two stalwart secessionists, protested that singling out just one grievance "dishonored the memory of South Carolinians" who had opposed the Tariff of Abominations [in their losing contest with President Andrew Jackson], various internal improvement bills, and the second Bank of the United States. Keitt replied that these were no reasons for leaving the Union. Only slavery was. The dissenters were defeated. (p. 177) [my emphasis]

Tags: bertram wyatt-brown, confederate heritage month 2004, jefferson davis, lost cause, slavery