Response to your Jan.22nd commentary in "The Californian.com"
From: ncarolinareb@netscape.net
To: bwalton100@hotmail.com
Mr. Walton,
I will not attempt to debate your narrow minded theory that slavery was the cause of the 1861-65 war in which the Confederate States of America was attacked by the United States forces.
Most of the facts you quote are derived directly from the semi fictional book on Lincoln written by the liberal northern poet Carl Sandberg and published in 1940, nearly 80 years after the war started.
In fact most of your quotes came directly from that work and can be found nowhere prior to it’s publication.
I will have to agree that slavery was one part of the chain of events that lead to the war, however if you study the actual writings and speeches of the era leading up to the war it is clear that neither side fought the war for or against slavery.
I won’t elaborate on these as any enlightened person can find the facts if they care enough to look, instead of quoting the same old rhetoric.
Even the need for this discussion can be explained in studying the writings of the time.
Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late…
It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision…
It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties."
— Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864, writing on what would happen if the Confederacy were to be defeated.
Kenneth Ramsey,
Life Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Sacramento, Ca and Atlantic Beach, Fl
