Confederate Memorial Day Speech by Dr. Cecil Williamson at the Alabama State Capitol - Part 2 (The War Between the States was NOT Fought for Slavery)

OUR CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS: WHY AND FOR WHAT THEY FOUGHT AND FELL

(An Address given at the Alabama Division United Daughters of the Confederacy Confederate

Memorial Day Celebration in Montgomery, Alabama April 27, 2015)

That was the 1960’s version of how and why the war began. Move forward now fifty years

to 2015. What story is the National Park Service telling today at Ft. Sumter? I had the

opportunity last month to visit Charleston, see Ft. Sumter and the beautiful new visitor center

where you board the boats to go out to the Fort. From the time you walk into the visitor center

until the time you visit the fort and leave the visitor center, the National Park Service is telling

one and only one prostituted reason for the war: slavery-slavery-slavery! Murals, displays,

interactive recordings, brochures: this war was about the South fighting to maintain slavery and

the reason Confederate soldiers served and fell was to preserve slavery while noble Lincoln and

the union were fighting to free the slaves.

 

It is intellectually dishonest to study everything Lincoln said about blacks before 1861 and

still believe that on April 12, 1861, he was starting a war to free the slaves. In 1818, Lincoln’s

Illinois had joined the Union as a free state; however, slavery continued there and free blacks

were oppressed by state laws known as the Black Codes, which remained in effect from 1819 until

1865. Under Illinois law, blacks

*could not vote

*could not bring suit against whites

*could not testify in court against whites

*could not serve in the militia

*could not own arms

*had to carry on their persons at all times a Certificate of Freedom or be

presumed to be a slave

 

In all of his time in Illinois, in the Illinois legislature and as President, Abraham Lincoln

never attempted to repeal the Black Codes in Illinois. In fact, they were not repealed until the

war ended in 1865. It is beyond dispute that Lincoln did not begin the war with the intent to

free slaves.

 

The greatest evil in America today is not racism but ignorance. People who think 880,000

southerners were willing to fight and possibly die so that 4-8 percent of the people in the south

could continue to own slaves are not only unbelievably illogical to believe that absurdity but

abysmally ignorance of the myriads of differences between the South and the North in 1860

regarding tariffs, taxes, states rights, even religion and especially their differing views of the

United States Constitution, which led to the war.

 

Had I been a Southerner in 1860 and my purpose was to maintain slavery I would have

stayed in the Union forever. From the drawing up to the adoption of the Constitution slavery

was unquestionably legal.

 

The founding fathers knew that if the Constitution outlawed slavery, it would never have

been adopted by the 13 states. Why? Because in 1789 in every one of the 13 states except

Massachusetts, slavery was legal. The first federal census of 1790 showed slaves in every state and

that there were nearly as many slaves in New York as there were in Georgia.

 

How was slavery abolished in six additional Northern states between 1790 and 1860? By the

acts of the duly elected legislatures of those States. By and within the sovereign States, not by

any action, coercion or military force from the federal government. Everyone understand that

slavery was legal under the Constitution. The abolition or maintaining of slavery was left to the

individual states. All to say, that even Lincoln himself, as he plainly said more than once, did not

think the federal government had any power to abolish slavery within the states.

 

Only when a noble reason was needed for beginning a war which costs 600,000 lives and

maimed a million more and created animosities which have not healed until this day did “freeing

the slaves” become the noble and politically correct cause of the war. By saying that the South

fought to maintain slavery, are you not saying that the North fought to free the slaves? And if

you say the north fought to free the slaves, have you ever read the Emancipation Proclamation,

and if you have how can you say the Lincoln and the north fought to free slaves? Lincoln’s

Emancipation Proclamation freed not one-not one-slave in the vast territory Lincoln controlled!

I believe it is an undeniable fact that our Confederate ancestors neither fought nor fell

to maintain slavery. The last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery was Brazil in

1888. Every other major Christian civilized country in the world ended slavery without a bloody

war. I do not doubt that slavery would soon have ended in the South under the economic

realities of agricultural modernization and moral suasion.

 

But slavery is not the reason our ancestors fell and it certainly is not the reason we honor

them on this memorial day. The fell fighting for the just cause of constitutional liberty. They fell

fighting for southern independence .They fell because the South was invaded. It is a truism that

had not 2,200,000 Yankees invaded the South, there would never have been a war. Had Lincoln

not sent more than 2 million men into the South to invade our land, burn our homes, steal our

property and kill members of our families, there would not have been a war.