Even in 1832 there were those in the South who confessed that the tariff was only a battlefield, not the war. If they did not fight their ground and … - William C. Davis

Myths simply throw roadblocks in the path to enlightenment, and it is from truth that we have the most to learn. One man's truth, however, can be another's myth, and only through dispassionate and disinterested dissection of such stories can we tell the difference. The Confederate experience is dotted with episodes that are not particularly admirable.

So long as the number of slave states was the same as or greater than the number of free states, then in the Senate the South had a check on the government.

To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery. Of all the many testimonials to the fact that slavery, and not states rights, really lay at the heart of their movement, this was the most eloquent of all.