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Why the Civil War Took Place

 

 		  

"Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:"                              Matthew 12:25


Many have said, including myself that the American Civil War was a sad period of our history because it brought family against family and brother against brother. Was the war fought for slavery or states rights? Many today claim that states rights was the main reason for succession and not slavery, but what does history reveal to us?
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to succeed. In it’s secession document, South Carolina strongly proclaimed why it left the Union.


"An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad]; and those who remain have been incited by emissaries, books, and pictures to servile insurrection. . . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln] whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. . . . The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the federal government will have become their enemy."

On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede. In it’s secession document, it set forth the reasons it left the Union:

 "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.. It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves and refuses protection to that right on the high seas [i.e., banning the slave trade], in the territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. It refuses the admission of new slave states into the Union and seeks to extinguish it [slavery] by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. . . . It advocates Negro equality, socially and politically. . . . It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the states and wherever else slavery exists. . . . We must either submit to degradation and to the loss of property [i.e., slaves] worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers to secure this as well as every other species of property."

On January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede. Two days earlier, it framed it’s preliminary resolutions setting forth it’s reasons for secession, in which it acknowledged:

"All hope of preserving the Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the Slaveholding States has been finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment in the Free States."

Within two weeks Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas made the same declarations concerning slavery.
On February 9, 1861, following the secession of the seventh southern state (Texas), Jefferson Davis was elected president of the new Confederate States of America, and Alexander Stephens was to be their new vice-president.
Later on March 21, 1861, just three weeks before the outbreak of military hostilities with the South's attack against Fort Sumter, the new vice-president, Alexander Stephens, delivered a major policy speech for the new nation: “African Slavery: The Corner-Stone of the Southern Confederacy.” In that speech, Stephens first correctly acknowledged that the Founding Fathers - even those from the South - had never intended for slavery to remain in America.

"The prevailing ideas entertained by him (referring to Thomas Jefferson) and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature - that it was wrong in principle - socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent [temporary] and pass away."

Confederate Vice-President Stephens showed his true colors when he further explained how he and others felt about the antislavery ideas of the Founding Fathers:

"Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. . . . and the idea of a government built upon it. . . . Our new government [the Confederate States of America] 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 moral condition. This - our new [Confederate] government - is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."


How sad that the heads of a governing body which many claimed to hold Biblical principals would be deceived into believing evolutionary views that would deny human rights to a people whose skin was of a different color. I wonder how heads of the confederacy would feel if their color of skin was in slavery.
How many races are there? According to the Scriptures there is one, the human race. This is recorded in Acts 17:26
"And hath made of one blood (one race) all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;" This verse indicates that we are all descended from Noah and then back to Adam. On March 11, 1861, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was adopted. Given the strong support of the individual confederate states for slavery, it is not surprising that the Confederate constitution contained a number of clauses not only protecting slavery, but also making it illegal to end it.

Robert E. Lee who was first offered command of the Union Army by Lincoln, turned it down not because he was for slavery, he was against it, but because he believed his first priority was to Virginia. Stonewall Jackson held to the same view. If he fired upon Virginia, no matter how the war ended, he would be considered a traitor to his state.
After the war, Lee spent the remainder of his life encouraging the south to bury their differences and support the Union. Those who consider Lincoln a bad president, need to realize that under his authority he could have plundered the south and hung many of its leaders. Many of his cabinet were in support of it, but he decided to forgive them and let them return to the union.

Today, when we see the injustices that are taking place in our country like abortion, euthanasia and the destruction of Christian way of life, which was the foundation of our republic, we do not need to be divided by a line that was dissolved over one hundred years ago. The fight today is not divided by a territorial line. There are those in all 50 states who are committed to the present cause, not to an organization whose foundation was embedded in evolutionary philosophies that would enslave a creed of men and women. Would it not be better to spend our time focusing our energy to a kingdom to will last forever?

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."                                Matthew 6:33

 

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