Why did the men of the Confederate South fight to the death to defend their legal right to enslave black folk?

Question

Why did the men of the Confederate South fight to the death to defend their legal right to enslave black folk?

Answer 1

The Civil War was fundamentally a religious war. Confederate soldiers  fought with fanatical resolute devotion that can only be inspired by deeply held religious conviction. Slavery in the South was not merely an economic phenomenon. Old Southern society was profoundly rooted in Biblical doctrine and Christian faith. Southern preachers commonly cited Bible text and it's endorsement of slavery. The inferiority of blacks is supposedly affirmed in Old Testament scripture including the curse of Ham. Southerners fought under the unshakable religious conviction that they had the God-given right and obligation to defend their property and way of life; to the death. White men of the antebellum South were 100% convinced that black slaves were no different from chickens, goats, cattle, horses or pigs. Abolition meant revocation of the Southern man's inalienable right to ownership of his black livestock.

Answer 2

There were many issues boiling at the time between the industrial north and the agricultural south.

Also, most of the slave traders were Yankees or Knickerbockers like the Roosevelt, the Faniuels and the Cabots.  James Roosevelt was on O'Reilly a few years back and acknowledged what people in the South have always known.  FDR"s grandfather was a slave merchant.  Actually the Roosevelt family fortune was founded on slave trading.  The branch Theodore and Eleanor belonged to got out of it earlier than FDR's branch did.

If I remember correctly, 3 pieces of legislation were proposed to reimburse the Southern Planter to free their slaves. The first 2 the government was going to do it and naturally they were defeated. The last one was going to provide some economic consideration from those slave trading families to the Southern Planter to free their slaves.  It looked like it was going to pass but failed due to the fact that some legislators were in the pocket of those families.

People in the South have always said the Southerner who owned slaves had to free them(and they should have) but the ones that made a fortune like the Cabots, the Faniuels and the Roosevelts kept their fortune.

Msgr. Owen Campion had denied for many years the role persons in the North played in slavery.  He was bested in a debate a few years back when he was asked, "Have you checked the record."  He shook his head, "No."

Now, Msgr. Campion agrees that reconstruction should have  been both north and south but the Southern Planter should not have received economic consideration form those who sold them the slaves.  Instead he said those who made a fortune from trafficing in human beings should have had to provide economic consideration to the black people when they were freed.  I agree with him there.

So slavery was a shame on both North and South.

However, the U.S. wasn't the only one involved.

The Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the Dutch all played a big role in the slave trade.

Also toward the end of the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution a new type of slavery came into being, particularly in Europe, when homeless orphans were put in workhouses.  These poor children were white.

Answer 3

Times were different back then. American inherited slavery from the British whom themselves learned it from the Portuguese. The South was mostly a agricultural society. If you needed shoes they were made on the plantation, if you needed clothes, they were also made on the plantation. Africans were viewed as sub-humans. They lived in villages, slept in huts in Africa but as slaves in the Americas (to include the Islands of Cuba, Jamaica, ect) they "lived better" and do more good. When the Civil War broke out it was because Northern (Union) forces wanted to end slavery. This was a defect in the formation in our country from the beginning. All men are created equal.

The South wanted to secede from the union. They felt that they entered the union peacefully and they should be able to exit peacefully. The Union thought otherwise. The Southerners were not fighting to "keep slaves" persay, they were fighting to preserve their way of life, which happened to include slaves. Slavery was happening when our country was founded. The American Flag flew over the slave fields for 78 years before the Civil War, and people have a problem with the rebel flag that flew over a battle field for 4 years?  

Answer 4

Most men fighting for the Confederacy were not interested in fighting for slavery despite what has been erroneously taught in school since well after the war ended and abolitionists were able to change the reasons why both sides had fighting the war.

The first thing you must understand is that the majority of the population of the South did not own even a single slave and were to poor to even purchase slaves. In fact while slavery made those who owned slaves more likely to be rich (remember that not every who owned a slave really was rich), it also meant the loss of jobs forcing folks to look elsewhere. Think about the size of a plantation and the number of slaves employed. Since slaves were, sadly due to their forced servitude, free labor there was no interest on the part of the plantation owners to actually have to pay folks to tend their fields. It was cheaper to pay a handful of overseers to watch the slaves in the field than it was to pay an entire labor force.

Now with that in mind, why would most Southerners be willing to fight just so a few could continue to own slaves and get rich? The simple answer is that they weren't interested in fighting for slavery. But just like their ancestors who felt their rights were being infringed upon and so fought the Revolution for their freedom, most Confederate soldiers were interested in fighting for their rights and thusly their freedom.

Oh and what about the Northerners, the Union troops school textbooks would have us believe were all abolisionists looking to free the slaves. Uh, no. Most Northerners had the same opinion concerning slaves as most Southerners. "Why should I fight for slavery?" Of course the difference is that Union troops were supposed to be fighting to free the slaves, not keep them enslaved. But the simple truth is most Union troops weren't intrested in freeing slaves. And when the war started what most men joined up for was to preserve the union.

In fact throughout the war that's what the Northern troops were more intrested in. Even the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't about making the war an effort to free the slaves. Actually look at it, Lincoln was very shrewd when he wrote it. Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia (which became a state in the middle of the war), Kentucky, and Missouri. These were the border states, the Union states that had slavery. Kentucky and Missouri had already tried secedeing from the Union, but through pro-Union governments were kept a part of it (and through pro-Confederate governments were also a part of the Confederacy). Lincoln knew when he wrote the Emancipation that to let it be a document to free the slaves that he could have a serious problem on his hand with these states. So the Emancipation only "freed" the slaves in those states in open rebellion against the federal government. In otherwords, it only targeted Confederate states, which were effectively a seperate nation during the war. Meaning that the real purpose of the Emancipation was to have the Confederacy break the law by having slaves while rebeling against the government. Thus Union troops were enforcing the law.

Answer 5

Most Confederate soldier didn't own slaves. While some may have fought to preserve slavery, most fought because they felt their land hand been invaded. Southerns at that time had a very strong tie to the land. The land in the south was mostly agriculture and much of that was big one crop agriculture (cotton, tobacco, etc.) which did use slave labor. So I guess you could say they fought to preserve slavery, but I think in their minds and hearts they were fighting to preserve their land.

Answer 6

Because they were, at thier core, cowards.

Answer 7

It has been proved through slave schedules/census from 1850 and 1860, among other methods, that less than 10% of the soldiers in the Confederate Army owned slaves or came from slave holding families. There were many issues involved in the Civil War, slavery was merely one. Sectional rivalry had been a problem for decades by the time South Carolina succeeded from the Union. What history teachers fail to mention today is the economic side of ending slavery.  

Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery, although he inherited several from his father, he freed them.  

Many of the men who joined the army to fight for the south thought they were fighting for their homeland, which was being attacked.

The notion that Lincoln fought the war to free the slaves is a politically correct myth of recent invention. He said "If I could free all of the slaves and preserve the Union, I would do that. If I could free some of the slaves and preserve the Union, I would do that. If I could free none of the slaves and preserve the Union, I would do that."

Some of my own ancestors joined only after their home state, Georgia, was being burned by Sherman's Army during it's famous march to the sea.

Answer 8

Adding more irony to your question, most Southerners didn't even own slaves.  

A) EVERYEONE, I don't care who you are, likes to have someone that they're better off than.  Just look at any racial humor, or jocks mocking "nerds" or "nerds" scoffing at "dumb" jocks.  So, even the poorest white person in the CSA could say, "At least I'm not a slave and never will be..."

B)  More importantly, the CSA fought to protect the Constitution, while Lincoln and the North ignored or twisted it.  For instance, where in the Constitution does it say a State may not secede..?  Nowhere, but it does say that any power not specifically outlined is allowed to the states.

C)  Even though the CSA "fired the first shot" at Sumter, it was and is widely known that Lincoln provoked that shot.  

D)  Half the Southern sates were VERY radical and seceded first (Alabama, et al).  The second wave of moderate states (Virginia, North Carolina, et al) did not secede till AFTER the Baltimore massacre.  Lincoln intentionally marched Union soldiers through a Southern town, thereby "invading" it, and, just like in Boston, unarmed citizens were shot down by troops in uniform.

E)  Lincoln had pro-secessionist legislators in Kentucky and Maryland illegally seized and held, "keeping" those two states in the Union, though they both form "orphan" regiments that fought for the South.

D)  The first battle of the war, Manassas (or Bull Run if you're a Yankee), was the North invading the South.

If all that didn't give a Southern cause to fight, I don't know what would've.

Answer 9

The Civil War wasn't all about slaves. It was a big deal, obviously, but at the core of everything was the issue of "states' rights." The Southern States did not want national unity because they wanted to be able to make decisions on certain things for themselves, like slavery. They felt that the Northerners didn't "understand" the need for slaves because they were more industrialized.

Obviously, it's a good thing that slavery ended and that came from the North's victory, but it wasn't what the war was all about.