"CHARLESTON, APRIL 12 - The ball has been opened at last, and war has been inaugurated. The batteries on Sullivan's Island, Morris Island, and other points, opened on Fort Sumter at 4 o'clock this morning. Fort Sumter returned the fire, and a brisk cannonading has been kept up."
-- Philadelphia Inquirer, 1861
One hundred and fifty years ago today, Civil War hostilities commenced with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter. By the time of Lee's surrender at Appomattox four years later, over 600,000 people had died in the war. Today, despite the gallant battle re-enactments by Civil War buffs in gray and blue costumes, the war and especially its shameful cause remain the darkest stain on American history.
I've blogged about it before, but it's worth repeating the cause of the war, as spelled out by the people of the day, in their own declarations of secession, and not the causes chosen by revisionist historians and the apologists for secession ever since. One principle dominates those original declarations of secession and it's not states' rights. It's the defense of slavery. States' rights, when it's mentioned at all, is used in defense of slavery, the ultimate casus belli.
Here are links to my articles on the subject from earlier this year:
- South Carolina's Shameful Sesquicentennial.
- Texas's attitude towards the "debasing doctrine of equality".
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