Posted on 07/11/2015 9:54:21 AM PDT by golux
The Confederate Flag Needs To Be Raised, Not Lowered
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that what we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience.
In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.
History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States, characterizing them as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers, traitors, etc. You know, the same way that people in our federal government and news media attempt to characterize Christians, patriots, war veterans, constitutionalists, et al. today.
Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did NOT have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans. To say that southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from Great Britain. One cannot be right and the other wrong. If one is right, both are right. How can we celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then turn around and condemn the Declaration of Independence of the Confederacy in 1861? Talk about hypocrisy!
In fact, Southern states were not the only states that talked about secession. After the Southern states seceded, the State of Maryland fully intended to join them. In September of 1861, Lincoln sent federal troops to the State capital and seized the legislature by force in order to prevent them from voting. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested Democrats and anyone else who believed in secession. A special furlough was granted to Maryland troops so they could go home and vote against secession. Judges who tried to inquire into the phony elections were arrested and thrown into military prisons. There is your great “emancipator,” folks.
And before the South seceded, several Northern states had also threatened secession. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island had threatened secession as far back as James Madison’s administration. In addition, the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were threatening secession during the first half of the nineteenth century--long before the Southern states even considered such a thing.
People say constantly that Lincoln “saved” the Union. Lincoln didn’t save the Union; he subjugated the Union. There is a huge difference. A union that is not voluntary is not a union. Does a man have a right to force a woman to marry him or to force a woman to stay married to him? In the eyes of God, a union of husband and wife is far superior to a union of states. If God recognizes the right of husbands and wives to separate (and He does), to try and suggest that states do not have the right to lawfully (under Natural and divine right) separate is the most preposterous proposition imaginable.
People say that Lincoln freed the slaves. Lincoln did NOT free a single slave. But what he did do was enslave free men. His so-called Emancipation Proclamation had NO AUTHORITY in the Southern states, as they had separated into another country. Imagine a President today signing a proclamation to free folks in, say, China or Saudi Arabia. He would be laughed out of Washington. Lincoln had no authority over the Confederate States of America, and he knew it.
Do you not find it interesting that Lincoln’s proclamation did NOT free a single slave in the United States, the country in which he DID have authority? That’s right. The Emancipation Proclamation deliberately ignored slavery in the North. Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army? Check it out.
One of those Northern slaveholders was General (and later U.S. President) Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, he maintained possession of his slaves even after the War Between the States concluded. Recall that his counterpart, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, freed his slaves BEFORE hostilities between North and South ever broke out. When asked why he refused to free his slaves, Grant said, “Good help is hard to find these days.”
The institution of slavery did not end until the 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865.
Speaking of the 13th Amendment, did you know that Lincoln authored his own 13th Amendment? It is the only amendment to the Constitution ever proposed by a sitting U.S. President. Here is Lincoln’s proposed amendment: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that a person's held to labor or service by laws of said State.”
You read it right. Lincoln proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution PRESERVING the institution of slavery. This proposed amendment was written in March of 1861, a month BEFORE the shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
The State of South Carolina was particularly incensed at the tariffs enacted in 1828 and 1832. The Tariff of 1828 was disdainfully called, “The Tariff of Abominations” by the State of South Carolina. Accordingly, the South Carolina legislature declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were “unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.”
Think, folks: why would the Southern states secede from the Union over slavery when President Abraham Lincoln had offered an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the PRESERVATION of slavery? That makes no sense. If the issue was predominantly slavery, all the South needed to do was to go along with Lincoln, and his proposed 13th Amendment would have permanently preserved slavery among the Southern (and Northern) states. Does that sound like a body of people who were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men on the battlefield over saving slavery? What nonsense!
The problem was Lincoln wanted the Southern states to pay the Union a 40% tariff on their exports. The South considered this outrageous and refused to pay. By the time hostilities broke out in 1861, the South was paying up to, and perhaps exceeding, 70% of the nation’s taxes. Before the war, the South was very prosperous and productive. And Washington, D.C., kept raising the taxes and tariffs on them. You know, the way Washington, D.C., keeps raising the taxes on prosperous American citizens today.
This is much the same story of the way the colonies refused to pay the demanded tariffs of the British Crown--albeit the tariffs of the Crown were MUCH lower than those demanded by Lincoln. Lincoln’s proposed 13th Amendment was an attempt to entice the South into paying the tariffs by being willing to permanently ensconce the institution of slavery into the Constitution. AND THE SOUTH SAID NO!
In addition, the Congressional Record of the United States forever obliterates the notion that the North fought the War Between the States over slavery. Read it for yourself. This resolution was passed unanimously in the U.S. Congress on July 23, 1861, “The War is waged by the government of the United States not in the spirit of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions of the states, but to defend and protect the Union.”
What could be clearer? The U.S. Congress declared that the war against the South was NOT an attempt to overthrow or interfere with the “institutions” of the states, but to keep the Union intact (by force). The “institutions” implied most certainly included the institution of slavery.
Hear it loudly and clearly: Lincoln’s war against the South had NOTHING to do with ending slavery--so said the U.S. Congress by unanimous resolution in 1861.
Abraham Lincoln, himself, said it was NEVER his intention to end the institution of slavery. In a letter to Alexander Stevens who later became the Vice President of the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote this, “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.”
Again, what could be clearer? Lincoln, himself, said the Southern states had nothing to fear from him in regard to abolishing slavery.
Hear Lincoln again: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” He also said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do so.”
The idea that the Confederate flag (actually there were five of them) stood for racism, bigotry, hatred, and slavery is just so much hogwash. In fact, if one truly wants to discover who the racist was in 1861, just read the words of Mr. Lincoln.
On August 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln invited a group of black people to the White House. In his address to them, he told them of his plans to colonize them all back to Africa. Listen to what he told these folks: “Why should the people of your race be colonized and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You here are freemen, I suppose? Perhaps you have been long free, or all your lives. Your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of our race.”
Did you hear what Lincoln said? He said that black people would NEVER be equal with white people--even if they all obtained their freedom from slavery. If that isn’t a racist statement, I’ve never heard one.
Lincoln’s statement above is not isolated. In Charleston, Illinois, in 1858, Lincoln said in a speech, “I am not, nor have ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on social or political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white.”
Ladies and gentlemen, in his own words, Abraham Lincoln declared himself to be a white supremacist. Why don’t our history books and news media tell the American people the truth about Lincoln and about the War Between the States?
It’s simple: if people would study the meanings and history of the flag, symbols, and statues of the Confederacy and Confederate leaders, they might begin to awaken to the tyrannical policies of Washington, D.C., that precluded Southern independence--policies that have only escalated since the defeat of the Confederacy--and they might have a notion to again resist.
By the time Lincoln penned his Emancipation Proclamation, the war had been going on for two years without resolution. In fact, the North was losing the war. Even though the South was outmanned and out-equipped, the genius of the Southern generals and fighting acumen of the Southern men had put the northern armies on their heels. Many people in the North never saw the legitimacy of Lincoln’s war in the first place, and many of them actively campaigned against it. These people were affectionately called “Copperheads” by people in the South.
I urge you to watch Ron Maxwell’s accurate depiction of those people in the North who favored the Southern cause as depicted in his motion picture, “Copperhead.” For that matter, I consider his movie, “Gods And Generals” to be the greatest “Civil War” movie ever made. It is the most accurate and fairest depiction of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson ever produced. In my opinion, actor Stephen Lang should have received an Oscar for his performance as General Jackson. But, can you imagine?
That’s another thing: the war fought from 1861 to 1865 was NOT a “civil war.” Civil war suggests two sides fighting for control of the same capital and country. The South didn’t want to take over Washington, D.C., no more than their forebears wanted to take over London. They wanted to separate from Washington, D.C., just as America’s Founding Fathers wanted to separate from Great Britain. The proper names for that war are either, “The War Between the States” or, “The War of Southern Independence,” or, more fittingly, “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Had the South wanted to take over Washington, D.C., they could have done so with the very first battle of the “Civil War.” When Lincoln ordered federal troops to invade Virginia in the First Battle of Manassas (called the “First Battle of Bull Run” by the North), Confederate troops sent the Yankees running for their lives all the way back to Washington. Had the Confederates pursued them, they could have easily taken the city of Washington, D.C., seized Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps ended the war before it really began. But General Beauregard and the others had no intention of fighting an aggressive war against the North. They merely wanted to defend the South against the aggression of the North.
In order to rally people in the North, Lincoln needed a moral crusade. That’s what his Emancipation Proclamation was all about. This explains why his proclamation was not penned until 1863, after two years of fruitless fighting. He was counting on people in the North to stop resisting his war against the South if they thought it was some kind of “holy” war. Plus, Lincoln was hoping that his proclamation would incite blacks in the South to insurrect against Southern whites. If thousands of blacks would begin to wage war against their white neighbors, the fighting men of the Southern armies would have to leave the battlefields and go home to defend their families. THIS NEVER HAPPENED.
Not only did blacks not riot against the whites of the South, many black men volunteered to fight alongside their white friends and neighbors in the Confederate army. Unlike the blacks in the North, who were conscripted by Lincoln and forced to fight in segregated units, thousands of blacks in the South fought of their own free will in a fully-integrated Southern army. I bet your history book never told you about that.
If one wants to ban a racist flag, one would have to ban the British flag. Ships bearing the Union Jack shipped over 5 million African slaves to countries all over the world, including the British colonies in North America. Other slave ships flew the Dutch flag and the Portuguese flag and the Spanish flag, and, yes, the U.S. flag. But not one single slave ship flew the Confederate flag. NOT ONE!
By the time Lincoln launched his war against the Southern states, slavery was already a dying institution. The entire country, including the South, recognized the moral evil of slavery and wanted it to end. Only a small fraction of Southerners even owned slaves. The slave trade had ended in 1808, per the U.S. Constitution, and the practice of slavery was quickly dying, too. In another few years, with the advent of agricultural machinery, slavery would have ended peacefully--just like it had in England. It didn’t take a national war and the deaths of over a half million men to end slavery in Great Britain. America’s so-called “Civil War” was absolutely unnecessary. The greed of Lincoln’s radical Republicans in the North, combined with the cold, calloused heart of Lincoln himself is responsible for the tragedy of the “Civil War.”
And look at what is happening now: in one instant--after one deranged young man killed nine black people and who ostensibly photo-shopped a picture of himself with a Confederate flag--the entire political and media establishments in the country go on an all-out crusade to remove all semblances of the Confederacy. The speed in which all of this has happened suggests that this was a planned, orchestrated event by the Powers That Be (PTB). And is it a mere coincidence that this took place at the exact same time that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to legalize same-sex marriage? I think not.
The Confederate Battle Flag flies the Saint Andrews cross. Of course, Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus Christ, brother of Simon Peter, and Christian martyr who was crucified on an X-shaped cross at around the age of 90. Andrew is the patron saint of both Russia and Scotland.
In the 1800s, up to 75% of people in the South were either Scotch or Scotch-Irish. The Confederate Battle Flag is predicated on the national flag of Scotland. It is a symbol of the Christian faith and heritage of the Celtic race.
Pastor John Weaver rightly observed, “Even the Confederate States motto, ‘Deovendickia,’ (The Lord is our Vindicator), illustrates the sovereignty and the righteousness of God. The Saint Andrews cross is also known as the Greek letter CHIA (KEE) and has historically been used to represent Jesus Christ. Why do you think people write Merry X-mas, just to give you an illustration? The ‘X’ is the Greek letter CHIA and it has been historically used for Christ. Moreover, its importance was understood by educated and uneducated people alike. When an uneducated man, one that could not write, needed to sign his name please tell me what letter he made? An ‘X,’ why? Because he was saying I am taking an oath under God. I am recognizing the sovereignty of God, the providence of God and I am pledging my faith. May I tell you the Confederate Flag is indeed a Christian flag because it has the cross of Saint Andrew, who was a Christian martyr, and the letter ‘X’ has always been used to represent Christ, and to attack the flag is to deny the sovereignty, the majesty, and the might of the Lord Jesus Christ and his divine role in our history, culture, and life.”
Many of the facts that I reference in this column were included in a message delivered several years ago by Pastor John Weaver. I want to thank John for preaching such a powerful and needed message. Read or watch Pastor Weaver’s sermon “The Truth About The Confederate Battle Flag” here:
The Truth About The Confederate Battle Flag
Combine the current attacks against Biblical and traditional marriage, the attacks against all things Confederate, the attacks against all things Christian, and the attacks against all things constitutional and what we are witnessing is a heightened example of why the Confederate Battle Flag was created to begin with. Virtually every act of federal usurpation of liberty that we are witnessing today, and have been witnessing for much of the twentieth century, is the result of Lincoln’s war against the South. Truly, we are living in Lincoln’s America, not Washington and Jefferson’s America. Washington and Jefferson’s America died at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Instead of lowering the Confederate flag, we should be raising it.
© Chuck Baldwin
You've been reading far too much Chuck Baldwin.
The national debt at the end of FY1859 was about $65 million dollars.
She took her own property. You know, the stuff that was hers before the marriage.
The mints and the forts and the arsenals and the court houses and the customs houses and the revenue cutters and all the rest of the property the South took were there before they became states? You sure about that?
Keep your analogy straight. "Firing Shots" is lethal force directed at the Husband.
And a 24-plus hour bombardment would qualify as lethal force directed at Sumter as well. The fact that they didn't kill anyone doesn't negate the fact that they tried really, really hard to do so. Likewise if your wife took shots at you on her way out the door and missed doesn't mean the authorities would conclude no crime had been committed.
Until you provide some support for your claim that something was owed to them, you don't have an analogy worth discussing.
If members of your organization walk out on the organizations debts and obligations and takes a substantial share of the organizations assets are you still saying that the remaining members should have no recourse whatsoever?
And that is something you wish to believe.
I've seen a lot of wishful thinking from Confederate supporters, too.
Of course most, though not all, Republicans believed whites were racially superior to blacks.
But they did not believe in a Master Race in the same way Nazis and Confederates did.
They didn’t believe the superior race should dominate and enslave the others.
There is, after all, a pretty big difference between second-class citizenship and chattel slavery. Those who conflate the two do so, generally, to make the claim that all those not in favor of total equality are “the same” as those in favor of slavery. Which is a ludicrous argument.
Many leading Americans, notably including Jefferson, thought colonization would be best for both blacks and whites. This was based on the not inaccurate realization that most whites were unwilling to live with large numbers of free blacks.
By no means were all Republicans proponents of this approach. It had a run of experimentation during the first couple years of the war and was then dropped.
Lincoln, unlike some of the other proponents of colonization, again notably including Lincoln, never had any idea to make colonization involuntary. The idea foundered on the paucity of volunteers. And on the fairly obvious logistical and financial challenges, which meant it had never been anything other than a pipedream.
You’d think Jefferson would be better at math than this. Probably he wanted so badly to believe it was possible he ignored the realities.
You’d think Jefferson would be better at math than this. Probably he wanted so badly to believe it was possible he ignored the realities.
To what you are referring are examples of "liberals" once more being gobsmacked by reality and human nature.
They literally do not count the cost to others of their liberal dreams. They simply keep pushing them until they run out of other people's money. Or lives.
It is not enough to list what it was, you have to list how it came to be, and who got what and who contributed what.
The mints and the forts and the arsenals and the court houses and the customs houses and the revenue cutters and all the rest of the property the South took were there before they became states? You sure about that?
The real estate was always there and always belonged to the states in which it was located. As for the rest, I would assume Southern revenue cutters were paid for by the tax dollars they collected. I'm sure the Confederates were not interested in taking any which were paid for by Northern taxes in Northern waters.
And a 24-plus hour bombardment would qualify as lethal force directed at Sumter as well.
You keep mixing up your analogies. Had it killed anybody, you could argue it was lethal force directed at individuals, but on the scale of a nation it was not even a pinprick, let alone anything approaching lethality to a nation. On the scale of a nation, it was a slap on the hand.
The fact that they didn't kill anyone doesn't negate the fact that they tried really, really hard to do so.
I imagine that if that had been their intention, they would have succeeded.
Likewise if your wife took shots at you on her way out the door and missed doesn't mean the authorities would conclude no crime had been committed.
Mixing up your analogies again. Look, a "wife took shots at you" constitutes a threat of being killed by her actions. Blasting the rocks at Ft. Sumter never rose to the level of a threat against the continued existence of Washington D.C. Washington D.C. was never at risk of being killed by what happened at Ft. Sumter.
You are deliberately mixing up the levels of threat between the analogies. You can't accept the fact that Ft. Sumter was no sort of threat at all to the Union, it was a hand slap in real terms.
On the other hand, sending an invasion force to seize Richmond was the equivalent of using a club on someone's head.
The correct analogy is Wife tells husband to remove hand from her knee. Husband refuses. Wife slaps Husband's hand, Husband tries to knock wife out.
Are you saying Lincoln's proposed 13th amendment is not true?
According to this article, it is in fact true.
Two days before his first inauguration in March 4, 1961, Lincoln and the Republicans passed a proposed 13th Amendment, which enshrined slavery by prohibiting Congress from abolishing or interfering with state-allowed slavery.
I'm saying Lincoln didn't propose it. I'm saying that the claim that Lincoln authored it and proposed it while president, which Baldwin claims and you apparently believe, is complete nonsense. The dates don't match for one thing. The record of the amendment doesn't support it for another. Was there a 13th Amendment proposed in Februaru 1861? Yes. Did it pass out of both the House and Senate? Yes. Did Lincoln propose it? No. Did he author it? No.
Now you're just being silly.
The real estate was always there and always belonged to the states in which it was located.
No it did not. It was the property of the U.S. government, which exercised exclusive legislation over it through Congress. The local states had no claims to it at all.
As for the rest, I would assume Southern revenue cutters were paid for by the tax dollars they collected. I'm sure the Confederates were not interested in taking any which were paid for by Northern taxes in Northern waters.
Now you're just being sillier. You really think that someone in DC kept a ledger? South Carolina finally paid $10,000 in taxes so now we can build that revenue cutter they always wanted, something like that? Really?
Look, a "wife took shots at you" constitutes a threat of being killed by her actions. Blasting the rocks at Ft. Sumter never rose to the level of a threat against the continued existence of Washington D.C. Washington D.C. was never at risk of being killed by what happened at Ft. Sumter.
Sillier still. So if that wife of your's sat on the front lawn and blazed away at the house without hitting you, the police would come and say, "No laws broken since you weren't hurt. I don't suppose there is any way we could find out, do you?
So your quibble is whether Lincoln was the author. Again, that article seemed to indicate that he supported it, whether or not he was the author of it.
And he said:
"holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."
It is silly to demand an accounting before you saddle someone with an "owed" debt?
Today the Nation owes ~17 trillion dollars in admitted debt. it more likely owes 100 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.
What do you think my share of the debt ought to be? How much of it was run up with my consent, rather than my screaming at Washington D.C.'s spending policies for decades?
Do I want to walk away from that debt which I didn't create, got little if any benefit from, and which was spent over my objections? Yes. That others would heap debt on me against my will does not make me morally obligated to pay that debt.
No, an appropriate accounting is not silly. I say the people who ran up the debt, should be the ones obligated to pay it.
So if that wife of your's sat on the front lawn and blazed away at the house without hitting you, the police would come and say, "No laws broken since you weren't hurt. I don't suppose there is any way we could find out, do you?
You insist on being obtuse. You cannot characterize a wife as having "blazed away" if what she did could not possibly threaten the Husband's life.
You keep trying to make Ft. Sumter into a DEADLY THREAT when it was nothing of the sort. The Union was never in any danger over what happened at Ft. Sumter. Therefore if your attempt at an analogy implies danger, it is a flawed analogy.
I'm beginning to think your cognitive powers don't rise to the level of comprehending analogies. You Keep wanting to make a pin prick into a deadly threat. You keep trying to force a situation in which no possible threat to the Union was the equivalent of a wife "blazing away" at a husband.
Either you don't understand how analogies work, or you are being deliberately dishonest. If there is a third possibility, I don't see it.
No, the Baldwin article says he wrote it, and wrote it while president. There is no doubt that Lincoln said he supported it. There is no evidence he wrote it, much less wrote it after his inauguration.
Well it appears that he is absolutely wrong about that. I see Lincoln reluctantly supporting it as a necessary compromise. I read nothing that indicates Lincoln Authored it or was even aware of it until after the fact.
Yes, Baldwin gets a lot of stuff wrong, and exaggerates a lot as near as I can tell. He goes too far, just as I said when I first read it.
So, in your version of history, the ruling elite of the South all woke up one morning and said, “youi know, looks like a good day to secede from the union, for no reason at all. It might cause a war that will devastate the country and kill over half a million people, but f*ck it, I have the right to do it, so I will”?
I do have a question, though. If most of the states gave no reason for seceding, at least 4 did. And in the case of Mississippi, they said, and I quote, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.” So, they (and South Carolina, and Texas, and Georgia) thought it was important that they stated their reason, and the reason was slavery. Do you disagree with them?
You can try to dodge the question by stating that they had no reason for secession, but for those 4 states, at least, the historical record is clear - they had a reason and the reason was slavery.
And so you are going to insist on arguing like a f***ing child? According to what I read earlier, Virginia's secession resolution passed by a 6 to 1 vote of the people. Kinda blows a big f***ing hole in your "Ruling elite of the South" bullsh*t.
This is the problem with your side. You WILL NOT be objective. You resort to red herring, to childish outbursts, to subterfuge, to bait and switch, but the one thing you will not do is accurately portray the social dynamics occurring at that time.
they had a reason and the reason was slavery.
And I will repeat, it is none of your f***ing business why someone no longer wishes to associate with another group. The higher principle in this dispute is the freedom of Association with it's corollary. The freedom of Disassociation.
What you are saying is that other people don't have a right to leave unless *YOU* say so. You are not God. You don't get to tell other people for what reason they must remain connected to people with whom they do not wish to associate.
Stop trying to be God. Especially a retroactive God that punishes people after the fact for something you also did prior to the fact. It's like a thief shooting someone else for being a thief because he wasn't getting any more of the loot.
YOU supported slavery too. Your president was willing to make it Permanent through a constitutional amendment. You have no moral high ground to condemn people for something you yourself condoned, and you are an intellectually dishonest person to even attempt to make something your side condoned into the primary issue.
They got upset because Lincoln represented a purely sectional party, the idea of which the founders had always dreaded. Lincoln was not anti-slavery. He was in favor of passing an amendment which would make it impossible for Congress to touch the slavery issue. He was also a white supremacist who believed that blacks would never the social equals of whites and was in favor of returning all blacks in America to Africa.
Of course he wouldn't arrest all of them, there were no doubt some who were staunch unionists, and he would leave those well alone. The fact remains however, that the federal government stooped to arresting members of a state legislative body in order to manipulate the vote and thus the will of the people.
The "other country" part is open for debate
In that case you will have to agree that if the South had no right to declare themselves free and create their own country, neither did the patriots during the revolution. But if you study American history you will find that they actually had even more of a right to break away than did the patriots, because the states created the Federal government, whereas Britain created the colonies.
but what it did do was make sure that any Southern slaves who ran off couldn't be returned
They weren't being returned anyway. if that were the reason for the proclamation you would have to admit that it worked
Yes, it did.
Declarations of the Causes of Secession
Yes, some did mention the slavery issue (primarily regarding the returning of runaways). However I believe you keep missing the point that these were no longer issues after they left the union and after Lincoln gave his inaugural address. They didn't go to war over that.
There was no 40% tax on Southerners.
The tariff the North was trying to push through would have been nation wide, however the South, being mainly agrarian and relying on imports for many of its manufactured goods, would bear the brunt of it. As usual, they would lose by the tariff while the Northern manufacturing economy gained by it. If you don't believe that tariffs can be a huge cause of contention, then review the history regarding the Tariff of Abominations, in which South Carolina almost seceded over tariffs.
Lincoln could have said he was dead set against it and it wouldn't have made a difference. The president plays no part in the amendment process. He doesn't vote on them, doesn't sign them, can't veto them, nothing.
Of course he couldn't. All he could do was promote, which he did. In the inaugural address he stated that he was in favor of its being made "express and irrevocable.". It was ratified by Maryland and Ohio, and endorsed by Illinois before being withdrawn. And Yes, Lincoln did not write it, he only endorsed it.
“That’s right - they were subject to the terms of the confederation they joined before their pretend secession, during their pretend secession, and after their pretend secession. The terms of their confederation prohibited them from forming separate alliances or confederations outside of congress.”
If it was a pretend secession, then why did the U.S. invade its own states? One can’t invade oneself.
I stand by my comment. You speak like a good little Bundist.
South Carolina mentioned tariffs as a reason for secession, but in a different document. In 1860 South Carolina declared unfair taxes as a cause of secession in her Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States:
“The British parliament undertook to tax the Colonies, to promote British interests. Between taxation without any representation, and taxation without a representation adequate to protection, there was no difference.” “And so with the Southern States towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, they are in a minority in Congress.” “The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three-fourths (75%) of them are expended at the North.” (Paragraphs 5-8)
Georgia also declared tariffs to be an issue in their Causes of Secession, issued January 29, 1861:
“The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial and manufacturing interests of the North (i.e. Wall Street industries) began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests.”
Also, I'm not sure if you realize, although some states did cite slavery issues as causes for secession, they did not fight a war to defend slavery. By leaving the union they abandoned all claims regarding slavery in the territories and returning of fugitive slaves, and Lincoln had promised that congress would not touch the issue of slavery. So slavery was no longer an issue. Thus, while for certain of the states such issues may have been a cause for secession, they were not a cause for war.
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