Contemporaneous Explanations
Wikisource has the original text of "The Barbarism of Slavery"From Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens's "Cornerstone Speech", Savannah, March 21, 1861:
| “ | (Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its 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. | ” |
In July 1863, as decisive campaigns were fought at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Republican senator Charles Sumner re-dedicated his speech The Barbarism of Slavery and said that desire to preserve slavery was the sole cause of the war:
| “ | here are two apparent rudiments to this war. One is Slavery and the other is State Rights. But the latter is only a cover for the former. If Slavery were out of the way there would be no trouble from State Rights.
The war, then, is for Slavery, and nothing else. It is an insane attempt to vindicate by arms the lordship which had been already asserted in debate. With mad-cap audacity it seeks to install this Barbarism as the truest Civilization. Slavery is declared to be the "corner-stone" of the new edifice. |
” |
Lincoln's war goals were reactions to the war, as opposed to causes. Abraham Lincoln explained the nationalist goal as the preservation of the Union on August 22, 1862, one month before his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation:
| “ | I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." ... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. | ” |
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address that slavery was the cause of the War:
| “ | One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Origins Of The American Civil War
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