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I mean... she's right. (thelemmy.club)
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[-] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I fully agree but AFAIK the Civil War was about states' rights. (Edit: To be clear, it was the right of states to not enforce slavery.) Correct me if I'm wrong but the sequence of events was something like this:

Several slavery-averse states passed laws that would automatically free any slave who entered them. The states who were reliant on slave labor argued that states should not have the right to pass such laws. Their complaint failed and the laws were upheld. The slave states decided that they didn't want to be part of a country that didn't protect their ownership of people and seceded.

So states' rights would've been the underlying reason, just not in the way Confederate apologists think it was.

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

To be clear, it was the right of states to not enforce slavery

Yeah, no that's backwards. If anything, it was about the right of states to enforce slavery.

[-] yakko@feddit.uk 8 points 8 hours ago

Recommend reading the articles of confederation. They aren't shy about it, they state explicitly that preserving slavery is their chief concern in secession.

Funny if you flip it and reverse it, the logic doesn't hold up. If states rights are so important, why couldn't states pass laws of emancipation? Now the union is the one that cares so much about states rights! That can't be right, they weren't the ones trying to secede. See?

[-] rainwall@piefed.social 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

And by explicit, he means explicit. They state their new nation is about slavery at least 4 separate times in a relatively short document, with black chattel slavery named as a requirement of any confederate state that was foundational, and could not at any point be outlawed. Their states had no "states rights" when it came to slavery.

The confederate States foundation was not a rejection of the US that happened to include legalizing slavery, it was was a rejection of the Union in order to forever legalize slavery specifically, as its primary aim, and they were not at any point shy about that fact in founding their slaver nation.

[-] yakko@feddit.uk 3 points 5 hours ago

And they succeeded in this with the 13th amendment.

[-] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

I was thinking about the sequence of events that led to the secession, not the justification for it. Of course looking at how the Conferedates justified the secession is another valid perspective that paints a much different picture. So you're definitely right in that regard.

And yes, we're both thinking about how the states' rights that were being disrespected were northern states' rights. That's just something modern slavery apologists don't want to admit because then their side wouldn't be the plucky underdogs rising up against oppression. I'm going to edit my earlier comment to make this clearer.

this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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