Posted on 08/11/2015 1:11:21 PM PDT by iowamark
What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery.
But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and love the South to want to believe that the continued enslavement of our neighbors could not have possibly been the motivation for succession. But we should love truth even more than liberty and heritage, which is why we should not only acknowledge the truth about the cause of the war but be thankful that the Confederacy lost and that freedom won.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.acton.org ...
Maybe you got some kind of point there, but you're up against Sarah Palin, a renowned Constitutional scholar. That has to carry a lot of weight.
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, . . ."
That provision recodifies the direct political connection between each person and the United States government, which owes each citizen the duty to enforce his rights as an American citizen. This was all true before the adoption of the 14th Amendment, but it was made even more certain by the adoption of that language.
What it means is that 99% of the citizens of South Carolina cannot deprive the other 1% of their privileges and immunities as American citizens and that the United States government is obligated to go into South Carolina to protect that 1%.
It's just another reason for you to feel as you do about the 14th Amendment. ;-)
You’re absolutely right. Slavery was an old, old problem. But, now it’s gone, gone for good!
When you said "state court" I didn't even bother to look at the case. I am well aware that state courts were ignoring the law for a "penumbra" of what they wanted to believe.
Federal overrides state. The rulings of the state court are not even germane, or did you somehow just come up with some newfound respect for the concept of "states rights"?
Taney ignored standing president and then went totally rouge in overturning the Northwest Ordinance as well as the Missouri compromise.
How does a "compromise" override the clear words of the US Constitution? I thought you had to get 3/4ths of the State legislatures to override the constitution?
Till the constitution is overridden, it remains in force, or did you just come up with some new found respect for breaking the Union Compact?
But that was the least of the problems with Taney's decision. When he decided he could solve all the sectional differences over the spread of slavery by doning his black robe and nullifying long established law with a stroke of his pen, he drove the nation over the cliff and set the stage for all the smart lawyers to come that they too could twist the clear intent of the Constitution into their desired political outcome.
You keep saying "established law" but you keep overlooking that it was established by states, and not by a federal decision. You also overlook the fact that it was "established" in those states for a much shorter time period than was the previous law.
If you look at the Massachusetts Freedom cases, and you have any objectivity, you realize immediately that they are pulling a fast one with the truth.
They cite their newly created state constitution which basically borrows it's words from the Declaration of Independence (All men are created equal) and then use it in as an ex post facto law to strike down what was then well established and understood law that slaves did not have such rights.
And now you are suggesting that we regard this deliberate sophistry in overturning what were the actually established laws, as something that should be respected by the Federal Courts because they had been "established"?
That is a legal and logical "two-step." It is a chain of nonsense masquerading as a legal argument, just as is this recent decision by the Supreme Court to force Christians to provide "gay" marriage licenses.
In fact, this is the exact same phenomena. Liberal Judicial activists in Massachusetts deliberately misread the actual law and made it say something it doesn't really mean, and then forced everyone else to obey their made up meaning, and Liberal Judges in the USSC deliberately misread the actual law, and make it to say something it doesn't really say, and then force everyone else to obey their made up meaning.
So now you are blaming Tanney for arriving at a decision that appears to me is completely consistent with that requirement of Article IV in the US Constitution?
As I have pointed out, the "Union Compact" requires states to respect the slave laws of other states. What this means is that you cannot free slaves held by the laws of other states. It explicitly says that all state laws designed to free slaves held by the laws of other states are NULL AND VOID.
Now I don't grasp how you think you can just ignore that. I don't see how you can just wish that away. It's meaning seems clear, and I am at a loss as to how you can even read that clause differently.
You keep SAYING Tanney's decision was twisting the meaning of the Constitution, but I don't see that at all. What I see are various states twisting the meaning, and Tanney setting them straight as to the evilness baked into the US Constitution in regard to slavery.
Like it or not, that is what the document says. If they were following the law, the first thing they should have done was to introduce a Constitutional Amendment to repeal that portion of Article IV.
Without that, the non-slave states do not have a legal leg to stand on. Their state efforts to make slavery illegal were effectively blocked by the Federal Constitution.
Waiting for your answer.
Precedent Rogue Inevitable.
Geez, you must have been enjoying that single malt last night.
Waiting for your answer.
"We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of mankind–black people in America–could not be denied the inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day, Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration’s purpose." - President Ronald Reagan
Like President Lincoln, President Reagan understood what the Civil War was all about and like President Lincoln, President Reagan understood the purpose and true meaning of our Declaration of Independence. They were two of our greatest presidents.
Winston Churchill understood that when Lincoln was murdered, the South lost its best friend:
"Lincoln died the next day, without gaining consciousness, and with him died the only protector of the prostrate South. Others might try to emulate his magnanimity; none but he could control the bitter hatreds which were rife. The assassin’s bullet had wrought more evil to the United States than all of the Confederate cannonade…[T]he death of Lincoln deprived the union of the guiding hand which alone could have solved the problems of reconstruction and added to the triumph of armies those lasting victories which are gained over the hearts of men."
This is why such beasts should not be conjured up.
This beast has been chewing on us ever since. It grows ever fatter while we lose more and more liberty.
Those who attempt to float the notion that seceding southerners “just wanted to be left alone” do so out of deceit, not ignorance. The confederacy didn’t wish to simply go their own way - they wished to set themselves up as direct competitors to the United States and dominate the North American continent.
In the same breath as their cowardly shouts of dissolution they began efforts to lay claim to everything that wasn’t bolted or locked down - and much that was. They had designs on all of the western territories and the states of California and Oregon and immediately set about seizing control of them.
At the center of it all was, of course, slavery. The confederates had doubled-down on the Particular Institution and intended to see it expanded everywhere.
It made precious little difference to northern states how they conducted their internal affairs as long as the threat of slavery was allowed to remain.
3/18/1861 The Boston Transcript wrote,
“It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.
“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.
“The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.
“If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby…
“The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“
“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”
The comments of people of the time have a way of removing modern assumptions and ignorance.
With dizzying speed the secession of Southern states had removed the issue of slavery from the Northern people, but immediately the North saw the upcoming financial competition. They would have had no problem if they had repealed the Morrill tariff, But greed and arrogance got in their way.
There existed remedies even in those days for myopia such as what was displayed in that editorial.
The New York Evening Post wrote,
“Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the Southern ports.”
The Philadelphia Press said,
“Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries, and make British mils prosper. Finally,, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls.”
All of that because they would not repeal the Morrill Tariff?
It is apparent that the issue of slavery was now moot, but the sectional arrogance and hostility would block reasoned politics or taxation policy.
Of all the posts on this long thread about a civil war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and about an elite group of people who believed themselves entitled to divide families and to buy and sell people like cattle, I think that your post (number 780) is by far the most remarkable:
"I do not post moral commentary."
I think that maybe you should try.
Bless your heart, I hope things somehow get better for you. ;-)
More like, all of our lives will be ruined, and many will be cut short, by the beast which Abraham Lincoln birthed, and then allowed to get out of his control.
Bless your heart, I hope things somehow get better for you. ;-)
Things are fine for me. What bothers me is the all too increasingly certain prospect that they will not continue to be so.
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