Appeal to Ridicule. The evil of slavery would have ended in the Confederacy regardless.

As my friend 4Liberty wrote earlier:

"In actual fact, slavery was only a symptom of the problem---it was the fact that the Northern states were attempting to circumvent the Constitution in an effort to end slavery and impose tariffs favorable to Northern industry over Southern agricultural products.

As a Boston attorney of the era noted, that 400,000 Southern men fought for an institution that did them no benefit is a contradiction that ought to fool nobody, but evidently does.

The basic fact is, there didn't even have to be a fight. If the people in the Northern states simply wanted to end slavery in the United States, the Southern states did them a favor by seceding. For TWO reasons.

1) As they were no longer part of the US, slavery no longer existed in the US.

2) The Confederacy couldn't have lasted long as a slave-holding nation, as any slave crossing the borders could no longer legally be recovered and returned, encouraging a massive effort to leave by the slaves.

Economics would also have dictated that the Confederacy couldn't have been maintained in the fashion it was. The US, consisting of only the Northern states (including the Midwest and California), could have erected any tariffs they wished, making it more difficult for the Southern states to economically survive as it had before; largely due to the fact that the Confederacy had much less industry, and needed the North's industrial products---the Constitution forbade the state governments from erecting trade barriers against each other, or using tariffs to give favor to local industries, which would be possible because the Confederacy had made itself (with it's secession) a foreign nation.

Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was determined to "preserve the union." He said and wrote that if leaving the institution of slavery intact would accomplish this "I would do it." His orders to the commander at the under-construction Fort Sumter (in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina) forbade him to withdraw the troops from the fort, though Lincoln knew this would be an act of war (it's having armed troops and fortifications on foreign soil), and the Confederates would have every right to expel these troops, by force if necessary. By all international conventions, it was the North who precipitated that fight by failing to withdraw it's troops.

Our Declaration of Independence declares (justifiably) that a government derives it's just powers from the consent of the governed. The Southern states declared that they no longer consented to be ruled by the Constitution of the United States. The reason that they declared their secession was pretty clear. The end of slavery would come about sooner or later, but the Northern states were attempting to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and impose emancipation on the Southern states. Note here, for all the talk of slavery in the articles of secession passed by the Southern state legislatures, what they bristled at was the attempt to forcibly impose the will of outsiders on them. When the US Supreme Court upheld various acts that (while morally unpalatable) upheld the "rights" of slave owners, the Northern states ignored the rulings and thumbed their nose at the the court. This act, while many use the unjust institution of slavery as the excuse, amounted to an open declaration that the agreed upon Constitution would not be upheld, and as anyone who's had any dealings in contractual agreements would tell you, if any part of it isn't upheld, it releases the other party from it's terms. By this act of ignoring court rulings and thumbing their collective nose at the court, the Southern states were released from abiding by the terms of the US Constitution, and declared openly that they were not bound by them any longer.

This open declaration of secession by the 11 states that became the Confederacy also removed from them any taint of treason. Treason requires more than just a citizen making a violent act of war against the government or people of the US. It requires a treacherous act of violence or betrayal. Benedict Arnold was a traitor in every sense of the word. He plotted to surrender West Point to the British while still professing his loyalty to the cause of American secession. Just as the 13 British colonies did 90 years earlier, the Southern states openly declared that they were no longer part of a union by their own choice.

We here in America like to profess our belief in self-determination when some province or overseas colony or territory or the like declares themselves "free" of their former union, yet many on this forum would deny this notion to the Southern states of nearly 150 years ago simply because they were (and would become again) part of our own nation. If self-determination means anything, these states and the people that fought for them, should be granted the respect that self-determination demands. By our own standards, that Lincoln ordered the Southern states to remain within the Union by forcible means would be an act of imperialism (note here: by Lincoln, not by the soldiers who fought on his orders) against the right of self-determination by the Confederacy."

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer