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
It appears that it is very important to you that I weigh in on whether they think they had a right to secede. Let’s delve into the Constitution. Article III empowers to Courts to review efforts for their Constitutionality. This was detailed in Marbury vs. Madison in 1803.
Since there was obviously a difference of opinion as to whether States could secede, the US Supreme Court should be the one that determined if these actions were constitutional. I cannot remember a case by the Supreme Court declaring secession legal. If you can cite one, I am all ears
Failing the legal route, the secessionist states went the extralegal (or illegal) route. They declared independence, and then at least 5 of the secessionist states, in their various Articles of Secession, explained that they were forced to do this because the rest of the country wouldn’t return their slaves when they ran away, wouldn’t allow them to make slavery legal in the new Territories, and said mean things about them in the press. Also, at some time in the future those mean states MIGHT do something about slavery in the states where it was currently legal.
So, it appears that they did not have the right to secede, based on the reading of the US Constitution. Since they did not have the legal right, they went the military route, starting by an unprovoked attack on Fort Sumter. The rest is history. Since the South didn’t win the war, there is no CSA Constitution declaring their acts were legal to fall back on.
So, to summarize – Right to Secede: no. Reason for Secession: Defense of Slavery.
Which is implicitly creating a "new government." It wouldn't make any sense to keep using the old one, don't you think?
It wasn't the creation of government.
This is self refuting, and needs no further assistance from me.
The AOC (and later the USC) are the foundations for how our republic operates.
The rule books. Right. Still inferior in both moral and legal terms to the Declaration, under the Authority of which the government was actually created.
You seem to be the only one that thinks it is relevant to the issue in dispute which is whether or not they had a legal right to leave.
I do not grasp how it is relevant. If they Had a right to leave, it isn't conditional, and if they didn't have a right to leave, then their reasons don't matter anyway.
You are deluding yourself. Slapping chains on the South is exactly what the Union did. They caught that runaway slave, and they beat him mercilessly.
That would be my reaction too if I saw my beautiful theory being beaten to death by a gang of ruthless facts.
More like bored to death by the same old, same old.
More like bored to death by the same old, same old.
I would suggest that if you don't want your inherent bias pointed out, you don't mention the circumstances of how you obtained it.
YOU WROTE IT.
Don't twist the question. I want you to justify any reasoning for why you think they didn't. I've put forth the proof that they did. I've made my salient argument.
The ball is now in your court to top my legal argument.
Why did they not have the same right to leave as the colonies from Great Britain? It should have been even easier because the Precedent was established by our own government.
So, it appears that they did not have the right to secede, based on the reading of the US Constitution.
The Declaration is legally superior to the Constitution. The Declaration created the nation, and invokes the power of God for it's authority.
The Constitution, in contrast, is the second of two man-made documents outlining the "rules" of how such a government should operate, and is severely inferior to the Declaration in terms of moral and legal authority.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The Declaration creates governments. The Constitution merely operates them.
And as has been pointed out to you ad infinitum, The answer to that question makes the reasons irrelevant. Given your answer, who cares about their reasons? They don't have the right to leave anyways!
They are effectively bound by chains, like a slave.
Some people have difficulty grasping a concept the first dozen times you explain it. Some people take even longer.
So I've noticed.
Jefferson had his faults, but he did see clearly that there was a conflict between the principles of the Declaration and the institution of slavery. So did Adams and Franklin. You can't seriously claim that the signers were all slave owners who were okay with slavery. Some of those same signers went home and supported emancipation in their states. Others voted to keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory. Jefferson had a hand in that himself.
The Declaration of Independence wasn't a legal document in the same sense that the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are. You can't go to court and demand the unhindered pursuit of happiness -- or at least you couldn't before the Supreme Court started getting involved with sex.
If we started a company we might put out a statement of purpose that wouldn't be as binding as the company by-laws, or our contracts, or the relevant legislation. You couldn't sue me if we're selling luxury goods rather than necessities for the masses as we agreed to do. But because the statement of purpose isn't legally binding in that sense, interpretation about what it means can be and is freer than a formal and binding legal agreement would be.
In other words, just because "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were written by adult, White, propertied men of British Protestant heritage, perhaps with those like themselves in mind. It doesn't follow that the phrase is restricted to people like that and doesn't have a broader meaning applicable to other classes of people. With the Declaration (more so than with the Constitution, I'd say) what you're setting into motion is as important as what your words meant at the time the document was written.
But say, I'm wrong and the Declaration only applies to the conditions of the time and the classes of persons who were involved. Alright, then, but let's interpret the document narrowly all the way around, and not assume that it proposes a right of anyone anywhere to sever relations with an existing government just because they are unhappy.
If you want to argue that the Declaration doesn't provide an argument, say, for slaves to rebel against those who deprive them of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, don't automatically assume that the document justifies slave owners in secession or rebellion or revolution for grievances that are a lot less pressing -- especially when those slave owners have the vote and representation in the legislature that was denied to the colonists of the 1770s or the slaves later on.
To consolidate their political support, the Republicans had used the method of attacking
an outside group, the South, and using slavery as the rationalization.
By its explicit guarantee of property rights against governmental interference, and therefore its implicit guarantees of the right to property in slaves, the constitution ruled out the possibility of a direct attack on the institution of slavery on its home ground.
If a direct confrontation was ruled out, then indirect means had to be found by abolitionists and Republicans. Over the years the slavery issue searched out the weak spots in the work of the Founding fathers. One such spot was found in the provisions for the return of fugitive slaves, but by far the most important lay in the uncertainty of the constitution on the question of slavery in the territories.
This proved to be the fatal point of sectional controversy: it mattered not just in its own right but because it stood for greater and wider issues.
Or so the politicians and newspapers said.
For Southerners, constitutional theory and political reality became one. As more non slave holding states were about to be admitted to the Union, their section became more doomed to a minority position in the Union. Southerners feared being ruled by a hostile majority. No longer would they have the option of compromise with the North.
Many in the press and government gave factual status to the concept that westward expansion was the complicating factor, the one which threatened the survival of slavery. They relegated the increasing division of the two economic and political worlds as secondary factors. The opposite was, in fact, true.
The feigned apprehension of the Northern Abolitionists and their allies, such as Lincoln, that Southern slaveholders would begin to flock northward and westward with their slaves ignored the clear historical fact that slavery had died out in the Northern States and that the slave population had shifted almost entirely to the Gulf States primarily because of the inability of the Negro to acclimatize to the harsh Northern climate and his natural affinity for the near-tropical climate of the deep South.
There was absolutely no reason at all for Southern plantation owners to move North with their slaves, and they had no inclination to do so. There was also no real inclination for most slaveholders to migrate into the Territories: They demanded a right which they could not actively use — the legal right to carry slaves where few would or could be taken. The one side fought rancorously for what it was bound to get without fighting; the other, with equal rancor, contended for what in the nature of things it could never use.
Consequently, the whole controversy over the expansion of slavery into the territories was rapidly becoming a phony issue.
Slavery was dying in the rest of the world. It had little chance of spreading further into new territories of the continent. If slavery spread, then it would take the slaves out of the United States.
Slavery had reached the limits imposed on its expansion by geography and climate, as Kansas, New Mexico, and Utah amply showed. The census of 1860 revealed that there were precisely two slaves in Kansas, and only a handful more in all the remaining territories. Even the Congressional Republicans had recognized that slavery posed no real threat in the territories, when, early in 1861, they provided for the organization of the new territories of Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota without any ban on slavery.
North and South were not divided by their mutual racism. Slavery was not a genuine issue and there was no need to go to war over it. The men of 1860-1 allowed an academic argument about an imaginary negro in an impossible place to end in a bloody civil war.
If the question was merely one of slavery in the territories, then competent political leadership would have been able to cope with it.
Instead, the Northern political class, seeing that the South was steadily becoming a minority in the United States, remained frustrated at the South's ability to cling to power. Not merely was the Northern stand against the threat of slavery in the territories a straw man argument and designed to inflame passions, but Northern expressions of moral repugnance towards slavery were nonsense, arising more out of totalitarian excess than logic.
“The Executive has no authority to decide what shall be the relations between the Federal Government and South Carolina. He possesses no power to change the relations heretofore existing between them, much less to acknowledge the independence of that State.” James Buchanan
So you would disagree with this also?
I'm sure it kept them up late at night, and took all the fun out of their parties.
Seriously, I don't know how to respond to this. The fact that they kept slaves places them overwhelmingly in the practicality over principle category.
Some of those same signers went home and supported emancipation in their states. Others voted to keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory.Others voted to keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory. Jefferson had a hand in that himself.
You give him too little credit. Jefferson gave a massive boost to the whole movement. The insertion of those five words, unnecessary to the main point of the document, were the impetus that propelled Abolition into the majority. Jefferson was the midwife of abolition.
The Declaration of Independence wasn't a legal document in the same sense that the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are.
No, it wasn't. It was the mother of the other two governing documents. It was on a different, higher plane of authority. If the Declaration had not been true, the Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution would not exist. If it be not true, then the nation's very existence is illegitimate.
You can't go to court and demand the unhindered pursuit of happiness -
It first mentions the more tangible rights of "Life" and "Liberty".
But because the statement of purpose isn't legally binding in that sense, interpretation about what it means can be and is freer than a formal and binding legal agreement would be.
The Declaration is nothing like that. It is a foundational statement. It is a "cognito ergo sum" of legal documents. It is the principle under which all subsequent and inferior legal documents acquire their authority. It is the creation of the US Legal system. It is the "let there be light" of a nation's existence.
In other words, just because "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were written by adult, White, propertied men of British Protestant heritage, perhaps with those like themselves in mind. It doesn't follow that the phrase is restricted to people like that and doesn't have a broader meaning applicable to other classes of people.
It doesn't follow from the specific words, but it axiomatically follows from their subsequent deeds and concurrent behavior.
As Jefferson said of the US Constitution:
"On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
Should we not apply his own dictum to his own creation?
.
Alright, then, but let's interpret the document narrowly all the way around, and not assume that it proposes a right of anyone anywhere to sever relations with an existing government just because they are unhappy.
.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
"Legitimate Reasons" are in the eye of the beholder. What may appear legitimate to one person may not appear legitimate to another, but it stands to reason that it should be the opinions of the people who wish to leave, rather than the opinions of those who want to force them to stay, that carry the weightier position. The British didn't think much of the Colonists reasons either, but we adhere to the precedent they established in not concerning ourselves with what the larger body felt were good reasons, and accepting the Colonists opinions as the stronger argument.
If you want to argue that the Declaration doesn't provide an argument, say, for slaves to rebel against those who deprive them of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, don't automatically assume that the document justifies slave owners in secession or rebellion or revolution for grievances that are a lot less pressing -- especially when those slave owners have the vote and representation in the legislature that was denied to the colonists of the 1770s or the slaves later on.
The Declaration, as a statement of principle, very much supports the slaves right to throw off their masters. I think this is why it was so effective in spurring the Abolition movement to greater popularity.
But your argument is a tu quoque. That one person in doing evil, does not justify another person in doing evil.
But you are rushing off in two opposite directions. You're praising the Declaration as the "let there be light" of a nation's existence" and arguing that its meaning is circumscribed by its origins as a narrow, shallow document signed by slave owners.
You're admitting the great impetus that the Declaration of Independence gave to emancipation movement, yet somehow arguing that it was illegitimate or irrelevant. But clearly, if the Declaration did encourage anti-slavery movement, one can't argue that whatever it was that encouraged opposition to slavery somehow wasn't a part of its meaning.
You're admitting that the Declaration gives support to slaves who would seek freedom. You're not making reference to any support secessionist slaveowners would derive from the Declaration. And you're assuming that this leaves you with of an argument, because you can throw out a Latin phrase like "tu quoque."
I don't know if I missed the beginning of the argument and don't know just what it is that you're talking about, or if you're irrational and just talking in circles.
Since only some wanted to KEEEP it , lets just limit the number of states
You state that “the Declaration is legally superior to the Constitution”. Exactly which orifice or your body did you pull this legal doctrine out of? If you could show me where (anywhere) the US Supreme Court made this ruling, I would be really (really) appreciative.
I will tell you why the colonies had the right to leave Great Britain. They won. In an earlier age it would have been said that, by winning, they had God’s grace. The CSA, on the other hand, lost.
You say “They are effectively bound by chains, like a slave.”
You say that like it was a bad thing. The states that seceded obviously did not agree, as that was why they seceded.
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