reprinted without permission
June 22, 1995
Student suggests slaveholders few in South, not cause of war
by George Copelan, Jr.
03PUB Folks, at the end of last quarter, someone wrote to me that I was honoring slavery by honoring my Confederate Past.This someone asked for no more speeches. He will get none, just facts.
1. Did the North fight to free the slave? Maybe you have come to believe that such a a [sic] motive inspired the terrible struggle, but was that the cause?
Of all the leaders of that period, who do you think was best qualified to know the true answer? I think it was Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln served in Congress with a man named Alexander Stephens of Georgia (who would later become Vice-President of the Confederacy). Two days after South Carolina left the Union, he wrote to Stephens, "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican Administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves?
"If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears."
On March 1, 1861, Lincoln became President of the U.S.. Had he changed his mind? In his inaugural address he said, "I declare that I have no intention directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists."
Just over one month later, he called for 75,000 men to come and crush us!
2. Some say that the South fought war to preserve slavery. How absurd. The best way for the South to have kept the institution of slavery was for her to remain in the Union.
Slavery was specifically allowed in the article on the U.S. Constitution, and could only have been changed by a constitution [sic] majority, which the Northern radicals could never have gotten with the Southern states involved.
3. A very interesting coincidence that I have stumbled upon is that NOT ONE SINGLE SLAVE SHIP WAS CHARTERED OUT OF A SOUTHERN PORT! NOT ONE!
All were chartered ou of northern ports with about 3/4 of them coming from just two ports, New York and Boston.
4. Had it not been for the political considerations leading to Lincoln administration's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery would have undoubtedly been regulated to its rightful place as a peripheral issue of conflict.
Bear in mind that the Proclamation undertook to free the slaves in states which were then in the possession of the legitimate Confederate government. In other words, Lincoln tried to abolish slavery where he was without power to do so. That's reaching!
5. It still amazes some to discover that out of six million whites (in the South) fewer than 400,000 owned a slave.
Onlly seven percent of the Southern population were slaveholders.
The number of practical slave-holders, those holding large numbers of slaves, varies from 2,200 to 10,000, depending on the researcher, criteria and study. However, this comes out to be around .1 percent.
Another surprise to modern readers is that more than two percent of the free black population were slaveholders. As early as 1830, there were approximately 175,000 free black, of whom 3,690 owned 12,601 other blacks!
Mind y'all that what I have tried to do in this letter is to show y'all the double-standard that history has attached to the Confederacy.
Slavery is wrong. And, rightfully so, is a condemned practice.
This letter, nor anything that I have ever written in the past three years to the _Plainsman_, has ever been in defense of slavery. My articles have been in defense of the South, her honor and her matchless legacy.
And my response from the June 29, 1995 Plainsman
To the Editor:Last week you ran a letter to the editor purporting to show that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. The author attempted this by quoting Lincoln as saying that he had no intention to end slavery in the slave states. This was true, but misleading. The controversy, and the reason that the slave states seceded, was that Lincoln would not roll over as previous (Southern) presidents had to the demands by the slave states for more slave states. This would have meant the eventual death of slavery as the South's enforced equality in the Senate was eroded. The North at first was only fighting for Union with no extra slave states. It was the South that made war over the issue of slavery.
This is obvious. The first states to secede upon Lincoln's election were all Deep South states, all with large slave populations. The ones that seceded after the firing on Fort Sumter (a fact eluding last week's author) were slave states having medium slave populations. The slave states that stayed in the Union (Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) had the lowest slave populations. Further, the most pro-Union area of the South was the Appalachian Mountain region with no slaves.
Why did Southerners take so badly to Lincoln? Try: "A house divided cannot stand--this nation cannot exist half slave and half free."--The Lincoln-Douglas debates, 1858.
The tragedy of the Civil War is that Lincoln was perfectly willing to end slavery peacefully and gradually by the same processes that freed Pennsylvania and was freeing Kentucky and Maryland. Southerners were not willing to end slavery peacefully and started shooting merely on the possibility.
And while it is true that slave holders were a small minority of Southerners, they also wielded all the power in the South. The list of prominent Southerners (Representatives, Senators, Governors, Confederate generals, etc.) who were not slaveholders could no doubt be written neatly onto a postcard. With a magic marker.
So the Confederacy really does have a matchless legacy. It is the only alleged nation ever to commit suicide in defense of slavery.
David Benjamin, 06PO
[Note: I have added html tags to these letters, but otherwise they appear as published]