What Caused America's Civil War?

One Word: Slavery

Ask this simple question: What caused the Civil War? You'll hear explanations about government overreach, economic freedom, and individual liberty, but rarely the straightforward answer: slavery.

Americans have manufactured a debate where none should exist. "States' rights," people insist, as if the issue were complicated. But states' rights to do what, exactly? The seceding states answered explicitly, repeatedly, and on paper.

Georgia's secession document is brutally direct, stating clearly in its opening paragraph: "For the last 10 years, we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding Confederate states with reference to the subject of African slavery."

Mississippi was even more blunt: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest in the world." Their reasoning included this astonishing claim: "By an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun."

They openly argued that white people couldn't withstand the heat, thus justifying slavery as divinely intended.

South Carolina, Texas, Virginia… every single seceding state left no doubt.

Texas explicitly promised the eternal "servitude of the African to the white race," while Virginia declared itself victimized by the "oppression of the Southern slaveholding states."

These weren’t hidden letters or secret meetings. These were public declarations, written by men convinced they were creating a lasting nation. They intended the world to clearly understand their cause.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens removed all ambiguity in his infamous "Cornerstone Speech" of March 1861, stating: "The Confederacy's 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."

Natural and normal condition. Let those words sink in.

These aren't obscure historical interpretations or competing academic theories. They're historical records, freely accessible online. You can read Georgia's secession ordinance in minutes. Mississippi’s takes even less time.

Yet America refuses to teach them. They don’t appear in textbooks, classrooms rarely discuss them, and thus a mythology persists, that 600,000 Americans died over tariffs, constitutional debates, or some tragic misunderstanding.

The consequences of this deliberate ignorance ripple far beyond classrooms. Every claim that the Civil War "wasn't really about slavery" perpetuates lies that fueled Jim Crow laws, justified Confederate monuments erected during the civil rights movement, and allowed politicians to dodge addressing slavery directly when confronted with America's bloodiest conflict.

The historical record leaves no room for ambiguity. The Confederates weren’t cryptic. They proudly declared their motivations, confident history would side with them.

It's time to stop pretending the Civil War was about anything but slavery, and stop pretending the Confederates were anything other than villains on the wrong side of history.

Next time someone tells you the Civil War wasn't about slavery, don't waste your breath arguing. Simply hand them Mississippi’s secession document. Or Georgia’s. Or South Carolina’s. Let the secessionists speak for themselves. Let their clear intentions showed the world exactly who they were.

The least you can do is believe them.

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Inspired by: The Roads to What Started the Civil War

Sources:

• The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

• Constitution of the Confederate States

• Confederate States of America : Documents

• What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature

• Confederate monuments and the history of lynching in the American South: An empirical examination

• TWISTED SOURCES: How Confederate propaganda ended up in the South's schoolbooks

• Debunking the myth of the Lost Cause: A lie embedded in American history - Karen L. Cox

• The Lost Cause

• Getting the Civil War Right

• Lost Cause

• Lost Cause of the Confederacy

• Abraham Lincoln - Was he a constitutionalist or a revolutionist?

• Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, Penpals

• Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln

• How Karl Marx influenced Abraham Lincoln and his position on slavery & labor

• "Corner Stone" Speech

• Alexander Stephens, The Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861

• “Cornerstone” Speech

• A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.

• Virginia: Secession in the Defense of the Defense of Slavery

• Virginia Secedes From The Union

• South Carolina Declaration of Secession (1860)

• Analysis: South Carolina Declaration of Immediate Causes; Georgia Declaration of Causes of Secession

• SECESSION OF MISSISSIPPI FROM THE FEDERAL UNION AND THE ORDINANCE OF SECESSION.

• A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union (1861)

• Mississippi Ordinance of Secession 1861