Originally Posted by dyna mo

"The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery."

General Grant, from his memoirs.



"It is very certain that the immediate cause of the political agitation which culminated in the dissolution of the Union was the institution of slavery." "There can be no doubt," he wrote, "that the Southern people" were "fighting to maintain slavery or prevent its overthrow by the hands of their enemies."

General Robert E. Lee's aide-de-camp, Col. Charles Marshall, in his memoirs.



"Abandon it [slavery], we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity and domestic happiness."

--Governor Isham G. Harris of Tennessee."


"When I say that this rebellion has its source and life in slavery, I only repeat a simple truism."

US Congressman George W. Julian, in a speech to the House of Representatives, January 14, 1862.


"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."

Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of the Confederate States, March 21, 1861.