In the matter of slavery, we have seen many speeches citing slavery as an important issue to the South. For most of the 1800's leading up to the Civil War, slavery was an important issue that came up repeatedly. There was an eternal struggle in the US Senate to keep either side, Free or Slave, from gaining greater representation (every state, regardless of population size, has two senators), so new states entered into the Union in pairs, one free and one slave, within a year of each other. Before Missouri, the Mason-Dixon line determined whether a new state would be slave or free, but the 1820 Missouri Comprise complicated that. The politics leading up to the Nebraska-Kansas Act really are complicated.
My family history ties in with Kansas. In 1854, the Kansas Territory was opened up to white settlement. The Nebraska-Kansas Act allowed that a vote by the territory's population would determine whether the new state would be slave or free. As a result, pro- and anti-slavery organizations in the North and in the South recruited settlers for the Kansas Territory. For the North, there was the
New England Immigrant Aid Society. By the time their first parties arrived in the Kansas Territory, they found that the Southerners had gotten there first and had settled closest to the eastern border, so the New England Immigrant Aid Society party continued westward to found the cities of Topeka and Lawrence, both of which later drew attacks from the pro-slavery forces.
My great-great-grandfather, Louis Wies, arrived from Baden, Germany, via Le Havre, France, at New Orleans on 25 May 1854. He was part of a massive emigration of Germans following the failed
1848 Revolution, after which about a quarter of a million Germans emigrated every year. Given the conditions of near-slavery back home, those new German immigrants were fiercely anti-slavery. He married an Irish girl, Anna Bridget Hastings, that same year of 1854 in St. Louis and then some time before Sep 1856 had arrived in Lawrence, KS, for the birth of their first children, the first white twins born in Kansas, Louis and Sarah. At some point before the 1860 census, the family had changed its name to Wise -- by family tradition, very shortly after his arrival in New Orleans; also, by family tradition, he hated the Jews, so we chuckle at him for having anglicized to a typically Jewish name.
That era before and into the Civil War was called "Bleeding Kansas" for the near-constant raids and fighting between pro- and anti-slavery factions. On 21 Aug 1863, during Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, my great-great-grandfather was shot through the heart while he held his 2-year-old son in his arms. His son was struck in the head and he and his father were added to the pile of the dead in the middle of the street and sentries were posted. During the night, sentries heard a child crying. That child was my great-grandfather, whose head had only been grazed by the bullet that had killed his father (he died sixty-odd years later, insane, possibly due to lead poisoning from that bullet). So, you see, I nearly didn't make it here tonight.
So regardless of what each Confederate state said, the slavery issue predominated US politics leading up to the Civil War. The only things I can say on their behalf is that I seem to recall part of the Constitution that stated that any state that wanted to leave the Union would be free to do so (the last time I re-enlisted, I was given a copy of the Constitution, but I cannot put my hands on it right at this moment).
But regarding 1865, I would indirectly quote a historian who noted that in that year, "United States of America" changed from plural to singular.
Edited by dwise1, : Added link to the German 1848 Revolutions, the turning-point of German history where Germany failed to turn
Edited by dwise1, : Topeka and Lawrence
Edited by dwise1, : the Jewish connection
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