The author of the letter “A Civil War history lesson” (Jan. 9, TribLive) needs to take another look at the history books. I am so tired of hearing that the basis of the Civil War was the economy or state rights and not slavery. It takes less than 10 minutes to Google the articles of secession for all 11 of the Confederate states. They all state that the reason for breaking from the Union was their “state right” to continue slavery or their “peculiar institution,” a euphemism for slavery, as the basis for their economy.
The entire economy of the Confederates states was built on the unpaid labor that slavery provided. Mississippi was the richest state in the Union before the Civil War. Cotton was not the only major crop. Louisiana exported sugar cane. South Carolina exported rice. Virginia had depleted much of the soil because of their early reliance on tobacco, so, in the decades prior to the Civil War, their major product became slaves who were sold to the Deep South since they could no longer be brought into the U.S. from Africa.
Stop rewriting Confederate history to whitewash the importance of slavery to the Southern economy!
Elizabeth Veronica Weaver
Hempfield