Fallacies of Confederate Civil War Narrative

Myth #1
The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery

Many Americans grow up learning that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Let us begin with the simple truth: Slavery had everything to do with the Civil War. Don't take my word for it, take theirs. As the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Hamilton Stephens famously told a crowd in Savannah in March 1861, Confederates rejected Thomas Jefferson's declaration that "All men are created equal" and the founder's belief that slavery "was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically." Instead, Stephens told the crowd slavery was a good thing, that "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition." While uncomfortable to read now, in 1861 this was widely understood to be the cause of the war by anyone paying attention.