I just had a back-and-forth Twitter exchange. The other side is knowledgeable and a skilled advocate for the Yankee interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction. At the end of our exchange, he used the term Southern “Degradation”.
He was referring to part of the December 17, 1860 statement by William L. Harris of Mississippi to the Georgia General Assembly, that he attached to a tweet. Harris is describing what he believes will be the result of Lincoln’s election.
They have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in the right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony.
The cry has been, and now is, "that slavery must cease, or American liberty must perish," that "the success of Black Republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery," "a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out."
To-day our government stands totally revolutionized in its main features, and our Constitution broken and overturned. The new administration, which has effected this revolution, only awaits the 4th of March for the inauguration of the new government, the new principles, and the new policy, upon the success of which they have proclaimed freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and for us...
His point in attaching this was that I told someone else they were using “talking points” that allegedly show that secession was primarily about slavery. There are several things interesting about his submission of “better” evidence:
Secession commissioners were chosen because they were for secession! Says nothing about the South as a whole or even a State.
Harris was more concerned about equality with blacks than with the end of slavery. He was expressing the same views many Northerners would express six or seven years later.
It is evidence that the maintenance of slavery was a concern for some, but it does not show why they were concerned other than what you can surmise in terms of seeing blacks as inferior.
What he does not attach are the parts of the speech where Harris refers to the history of the Constitutional issues, compromise, and that Lincoln was elected by a section.
If one wants to read it as evidence of secession in Mississippi being about slavery, it would be hard to convince them otherwise. Even if it was the case, it does not make every other State, and especially the last four about slavery. The war? Come on.