A member of the Society of the Friends of Epicurus has the following to say about the Robert E. Lee monument that served as a lightning rod for recent Charlottesville violence:
“To everyone who is claiming that the secession and Civil War wasn’t about slavery, the following speech was given by the VP of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who served under President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi from February 18, 1861 to May 11, 1865. The speech was delivered three weeks after Lincoln was elected and three weeks before the first shots of the war:
“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away…
Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
For some mentally embattled people things never do change. Epicurus, on the other hand, believed in treating everyone equally. So do all decent, fair-minded people today.
Slavery, to Southerners at the time, was regarded as a “way of life”. This way of life, mainly agricultural, was threatened by the growing financial and industrial power of the North. The latter was prime mover in the rapid expansion westwards and the power and riches that went with a new empire. Southern politicians saw this as a threat and demanded that they have their share of the newly Indian-free lands, taking the institution of slavery along with them; it was the main instrument that helped them make money and remain internationally competitive ( cotton). Moreover, other countries, notably the British, who controlled the seas, had abolished slavery and banned the slave trade (1832), cutting off access to fresh boatloads of African slaves. Slavery looked increasingly doomed. If you think Congress non-functional, then look at the Congressional debates at the time, as Southern politicians saw their power and influence waning and slavery reduced to a small part of the new United States. The debates were vitriolic; the answer was Southern independence.