Clouds Gather---(1860)
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The Old South
Southern Peace & Plenty
America, Land of the Free?
From the book "The History of Greene County, Georgia" By Rice and Williams-----Copyright 1961
After 1853 the rift between the North and South began to widen. Really from 1832 on to 1861 was a long period of a cold war. The North wished to buy cheap and sell high, they became envious of the wealth and prestige of the South and the New England clique in press and pulpit were not content to mind their own business but must attempt to reform their neighbors, so they started a campaign of villification and misrepresentation against the South which finally exploded into a clash of arms, unleashing a horror of four years of bloodshed and destruction. The cost of a small part of this would have paid for the value of the slaves many times to say nothing of the wanton destruction and the pensions incurred for 100 years.
According to the laws of the United States, the slaves were property as much as real estate. Remember that the Southerners neither stole or captured these slaves, bear in mind that they bought them from the Northern slave importers and paid large sums of money for them.
Of course slavery was an ugly blot on American history and many slaves were owned here and so we deserve our share of the blame. The Southerners however did not think it right that the North, which had grown rich by the traffic, should undertake to free them by force, without paying their owners one cent of the purchase money.
There were fanatics in the North who were unwilling to work out a plan to gradually free the slaves without bringing ruin to the South. The fire-eaters preached hatred of the Southern people and slavery, they encouraged the millions of slaves to rise against their masters and burn and murder at will. This prospect brought terror in the South as with one third of the people, slaves, an uprising would have been terrible.
This, with other acts of unfriendly section, led the Southerners to leave the Union to form their own government, one which would give protection to their homes and families. Propaganda helped bring about the Civil War as much as anything else. Yes, the Southerners were haughty and proud and a little disposed to consider the institution of slavery a pertinent topic to be discussed only among themselves. It was a question that might have, with calm deliberation, been amicably settled by statesmen, but the agitation was begun and carried too far by rabid preachers and agitators and when an attempt was made in the eleventh hour to avert the impending catastrophe, too much passion had been aroused on both sides for a settlement to be possible.
The war was a clash between two divergent civilizations and rival economics. Northern powers seeking to exploit the South as a colony, which they did for ten years after the South conceded to defeat.
"In the early years Georgia had fobidden slavery and had looked on it as an evil, but she held to States rights to deal with it in her own boundries. To the South it was a matter of honor, dignity and equality in the Union and the safety of her citizens. As the North and the South arrayed themselves against each other they lost their reason, they no longer sought to understand each other. They even parted their Christian union and sought God in opposite directions. The Union was divided in politics, religion, and every feeling of regard, even families were divided".---------(History of Ga.---E.M. Coulter)
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