Jamie Murdock

10/1/14
HIST 1700
Dueling Document 2
Slavery and Secession
These dueling documents are statements from the highest officials of the Confederacy
with opposing opinions about the cause of the civil war. Both have a few good points, but have
really strong and obnoxious views on slavery. In the speech given by Alexander Stephens (the
vice president of the Confederacy), he talks about how slavery was the one and only cause of the
war. He goes on about how slavery is natural and how the north wrongfully opposed it and didnt
know how to deal with it at the time. The statement that Jefferson Davis (the president of the
Confederacy) says that even if slavery was out of the equation, there still would have been the
war and it was just the issue that happened to get everything going.
I thought Jefferson Davis perspective on how there was already tension between the
Northern and Southern states that would have led to a war about something eventually was very
interesting. I never thought of it that way and I cant say that there were no such feelings
between the North and South because I wasnt there. Would a war result of that tension? Im not
entirely sure but its something to consider. Was slavery the real problem, or was it the states
inability to be get along? However, if this is the case, it kind of makes the North out to be the bad
guy because they just wont let this little issue go because they have to have their way. I think
that the entire purpose of him saying these things is to make the North look like they were
picking a fight rather than fighting a real issue.

I agree with the part of Stephens speech that says that slavery was the cause of the war
but I disagree with who was right on the issue. He says that the idea of equality of the races is
fundamentally wrong and that slavery is best not only for the superior race, but for the inferior
one too. Today, its easy to say that these opinions are wrong in every way, but back then it was
a popular opinion. I just never imagined that their way of thinking was that slavery was in
everyones best interest. In fact, in both of these Documents, slavery is made out to be mild,
natural, and best for everyone (which isnt surprising because they are coming from
Confederates) but the extent to which they take it is alarming. Not thinking that something is
wrong is one thing, but saying that youre doing someone a favor by enslaving them is taking
things too far. I dont think that they necessarily agree with every word they are saying but they
dont want to lose slavery so much that they will say anything to keep things the way they are.
Davis says that for climatic, industrial, and economical not moral or sentimental
reasons [slavery] was abolished in the Northern. I think that those are only the reasons for the
North stopping slavery in the first place, but by the time that they wanted the South to abolish
slavery as well it was also (not entirely) about how slavery was morally wrong. This statement
further makes me believe that Davis is trying to make the North look bad, this time by saying
that they are trying to abolish slavery for selfish reasons, not because they believe what theyre
doing is right.
In conclusion, I think that there was probably tension like Davis had said but the real
cause of the war was slavery. Davis, in my opinion, was making it seem worse than it really was
in hopes of making the North look like the bad guy trying to pick a fight. Both Davis and
Stephens did their best to convince people that slavery isnt the bad guy, but they tried doing so
in different ways.