William C. Davis: Nation

William C. Davis is American historian. Explore interesting quotes on nation.
William C. Davis: 34 quotes0 likes

“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.”

William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), pp. 97–98

“Race had never been a defining element in successful nation states. The true definition always depended far more on distinctions in language, culture, and political institutions. Southerners spoke precisely the same language as Northerners, so there was no distinction there.”

William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 20

“The South had a far better chance of preserving its institutions and quirks of culture by remaining a part of a larger nation.”

William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 21

“Southern states had embraced the Union only insofar as it served to protect their rights to hold property in slaves, and to spread slavery as the nation expanded and the institution itself became intertwined as a defining element in the struggle for national power itself. In slavery could not spread as new states were formed, then the existing slave states would be doomed to perpetual minority in representation in Congress, guaranteeing that if the day came when Northern antipathy to slavery itself became hot enough, the majority could use the government to subvert the Constitution and abolish the institution where it already existed. In short, the South could not affort to lose any battle over slavery, nor even over issues on its periphery.”

William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 3

“Inextricably intertwined in the question was slavery, and it only became the more so in the years that followed. Socially and culturally the North and South were not much different. They prayed to the same deity, spoke the same language, shared the same ancestry, sang the same songs. National triumphs and catastrophes were shared by both. For all the myths they would create to the contrary, the only significant and defining difference between them was slavery, where it existed and where it did not, for by 1804 it had virtually ceased to exist north of Maryland. Slavery demarked not just their labor and economic situations, but power itself in the new republic.”

William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 9