What's the latest in people's lives?

[Deepcrush]

[Tsukiyumi]

The latest: it's snowing in Houston, Texas. Pretty cool.

[Mark]

I saw a pic from a friend of one of the girls at work. It looked like it was coming down rather hard.

[Sonic Glitch]

I saw some pics from a friend I have at SHSU (she lived up here before moving a few years ago) to which I replied "That's just a grainy photoshop! It doesn't snow in Texas! "

[Tsukiyumi]

I got an inch and a half. Definitely very rare, but not entirely unheard of.

[kostmayer]

I got an inch and a half.

Cold weather will do that.

[Tsukiyumi]

[Sonic Glitch]

The stupid. The stupid. Alright, to explain: I am a Freshman Secondary Education/History Major, meaning I am planning to be a High School teacher and teach HS History. I am not taking any history courses this semester as I scored high enough on my high school AP History Exams to get out of the intro-level courses. However, I have a friend who is in one of the intro American history courses and must right a 1 page or so paper on why the civil war was fought, using her notes. According to her notes from the professors lecture the civil war was fought over slavery. I just spent over an hour explaining to her that slavery was not in fact the soul cause of the civil war.

We're in college. Our professors should know these things.

[Lt. Staplic]

seriously!

Slavery wasn't even a major source...it was kind of attributed to the cause after the war was already in it's first stages.

[sunnyside]

While not the sole cause, it was still issue #1.

As Alexander Stephens said in his big speech just before the war kicked off.

"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. "

Correct?

I think the tone in the North continued to emphasise slavery after the war, while over time the South has attempted to cast things in more of a "states rights" light. Still, the civil war was modern enough that many records still exist and, while there were certainly a plethoria of issues, the foremost issue leading to the war was slavery.

EDIT: By "war" I mean the withdrawl from the union and formation of the confederacy. The reasons why States couldn't just opt out of the union is a while different discussion and far beyond the scope of a one page paper.

[Lt. Staplic]

No, the main reason for the war was economics, would the US be an industrialized society with the federal government having authority (north) or an agrarian society where the states had ultimate authority (south).

Infact many historians and economists have agreed by the time of the Civil War, slavery was on it's way down anyway. It was getting to the point where it wasn't profitable for the plantation owners to use slaves. Because the slave trade had ended (abroad) the only slaves were ones born here in the US, cutting supply drasticly and upping the price...so now you have a $10,000 slave working on your plantation, are you really going to work that slave that hard and risk him/her overheating and getting sick, or dying? What about sending them into the swamps to clear the land for more farming and risk them getting attacked by an aligator or bitten by a poisonous snake...it was much cheeper (and in fact quite widespread) for planation owners to hire small plot farmers or other poorer people to do that dangerous work for them....

[sunnyside]

We may have to split this off. But no. I don't know the details of the economics of slavery of the time. What I do know, is that it was the prominent stated reason prior to the war.

I mean we aren't arguing about stuff that happened in 1000BC or something. This was recent enough that we still have copies of the actual declerations of successation, and the words of the vice president(which I quoted above)

*pokes around to find some of the declearions of succession from the various states*

here we are.

Georgia, first lines

"The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property"

MIssissippi, opening lines

"In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."

South Carolina starts off setting up the princples of states rights, but when it gets to in what way states rights have been violated:

"The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."

Texas, opening lines

"The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then *a free, sovereign and independent nation* [emphasis in the original], the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States."

I mean these are the states, and the vice president of the confederacy, giving their reasons, before the war, why they are succedding. They are, at this time, not being remotely shy about it. Frankly I don't know how it would be possible for Mississippi in particular to more firmly stress that slavery was the key issue here.

[Lazar]

I agree with Sunnyside - all the evidence indicates that slavery was the main issue dividing the North and the South, and the main cause of the war. States rights was a secondary issue, and in some cases it was the northerners who favored states rights, for example with fugitive slave laws.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

It's snowing, but not sticking to the roads.

[shran]

No snow, just weather that is awfulenough not to go cycling back to your room, instead opting to stay another night over at your parents house. Lovely, 2 days of doing nothing.