Don't laugh off the left's attempts to change history

“It was not a coincidence that they were all slave states, though.”

That is an interesting comment.

During the Revolutionary War, how many of the 13 states were slave states?

And how many of the original 13 states voted to ratify slavery into the United States Constitution?

And finally, when did the principles of the Declaration of Independence cease to be valid?

I see. Now your contention is that the original Republican Party platform is the only acceptable resource for understanding the reasons behind the GOP's founding. Can you please point to where in the Republican platform you got the following idea:

I read the Republican Party was founded to prevent slaves from entering into U.S. territories and competing with free white labor.

It would be nice if you stuck to a consistent argument. This wild goose chase stuff is tiresome. I have to wonder if that's your intention.

“Now your contention is that the original Republican Party platform is the only acceptable resource for understanding the reasons behind the GOP’s founding.”

Do you have a better source?

If the first published Republican Party platform was a pretext for something that could not be publicly acknowledged, it wouldn’t be the first time people have used a false flag to advance their own economic and political best self interests.

What have you heard?

Prior to the Revolutionary War, all of the 13 colonies were slave territory. That was British law, and the colonies were under British law. After the war, about half the states banned slavery in pretty short order. I don’t know that any did so during the war.

I don’t know of anything in the Constitution that would be considered as ratifying slavery. The framers of the constitution did specifically bar the Federal Government from limiting the import of slaves for a time, to those states that decided to allow it. Each of the 13 states agreed to this, but it seems to be more accepting a necessary compromise than necessarily liking it.

I’m not clear on the meaning of the “validity of the principles of the Declaration” question. The declaration was never a law, and never had the force of law, but the principles it contained remained generally accepted.

In mentioning that only slave states tried to secede, I was referring to this: The first wave of secession was specifically to preserve the institution of slavery, by those who felt that the election of an abolitionist president increased the threat to slavery to a “too high” level. (Lincoln specifically stated that he did not intend to use the federal power to interfere with slavery in the extant states, as he considered that the Federal Government did not have that authority. But the tales that were told about him in some Southern newspapers made him an ogre that was going to attack any slave state, by means lawful or unlawful. How much the real Lincoln would have scared the southerners we will never know, but the imaginary Lincoln was considered so obviously unendurable that he buffaloed half a dozen states into trying to secede before he even showed up.)

The second wave of secession was specifically in reaction to Lincoln raising troops to re-establish federal law within the states of the first wave. The states in the second wave were willing to remain in the United States for now, but only if the United States granted that any state, which would include them, could leave whenever she wished. It was only slave states that considered it so important to open the exit, that they would fight any attempt to close it. Not all slave states were willing to fight to open the exit from the union, but no free state even considered it. How much the desire to protect slavery fed into their desire to open the exit, is not so easy to distinguish, at least for me. It certainly played some part.

Do you have a better source?

How about the proceedings from the 1856 Republican National Convention, during which the first Republican platform was debated and developed?

https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffir00repu/page/n8/mode/1up?view=theater

I took some time to skim through the 1856 convention proceedings, and suggest you do the same. I don't think a reasonable person could read this and conclude anything other than the formative Republicans' goal was to end slavery in the USA, but chose to limit their platform to the expansion of slavery in order to garner popular support and to avoid overstepping the States' rights by demanding a federal abolition of slavery. One relevant excerpt from the proceedings:

P. 16-17, introductory speech by Robert Emmet, President of the Republican Convention: "Without exception, all the great men of that day [the founding of the republic] foresaw and predicted that slavery, although it could not be summarily and suddenly abolished, would die out in this country. All acknowledged that it was an evil. All acknowledged that it was the policy of the country gradually to get rid of it. That was the policy of that day. That policy led to the adoption of what was called the Missouri Compromise. [...] We could not make all the Southern States free at once. We had then to draw a line; and let it be understood that it was by that line - the Missouri Compromise - slavery was to be limited, and that it should never extend north of it."

“I don't know of anything in the Constitution that would be considered as ratifying slavery.”

In addition to Article I, Section 9, see Article I, Section 2.

And Article IV, Section 2.

Of the original 13 slave states, 13 of them voted to incorporate slavery into the United States Constitution. This included New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Also, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Don't ever forget to cast four-thirteenths responsibility in that direction.

I'm not saying all the northern states liked slavery. If the inclusion of slavery in the U.S. Constitution had not been in their political and economic best self interest, northern states may very well have voted to exclude it.

I would not consider any of those clauses as ratifying slavery, so much as living with it. For example, on the whole, the free states wanted slaves to be counted for taxation purposes, but not for determining allotment of representatives. The slave states wanted the reverse. Essentially, they split the difference. The result was not to anyone’s liking, but was a compromise the constitutional convention, and then the states, could put up with. The framers, like the Congress that issued the Declaration of Independence, recognized that they weren’t going to be able to sort out slavery, and that trying would just crash the entire effort to set up the Federal Government, so they came up with an accommodation everyone could put up with.

“I would not consider any of those clauses as ratifying slavery, so much as living with it.”

When the original 13 slave states voted to ratify the constitution - all of them did - they voted to ratify everything in the constitution including protection of the slave trade until the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, the fugitive slave clause, and the three-fifths provision for calculating representation in Congress.

Yes, slavery was ratified in the United States Constitution, but not until Article I.

“I don’t think a reasonable person could read this and conclude anything other than the formative Republicans’ goal was to end slavery in the USA, but chose to limit their platform to the expansion of slavery in order to garner popular support and to avoid overstepping the States’ rights by demanding a federal abolition of slavery.”

That is an interesting comment: the official, published platform was limited to the prevention of slavery expansion, while every reasonable person knew their real goal was the overthrow of constitutional slavery.

I have to note no Republican introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish slavery until after the war started. I wonder how they expected to overthrow constitutional slavery without introducing a constitutional amendment?

Perhaps the unspoken intention - that every reasonable person knew - was to use extra-constitutional methods to overthrow constitutional slavery.

“. . . perhaps the thought was to ride it out until they could propose a Constitutional Amendment that would actually pass.”

If there are any insights from the 1856 convention proceedings on how the Republicans figured to get three fourths of the several states to peaceably agree to an abolition amendment - I'd like to learn more about that business model. It would have solved a lot of problems.

In Lincoln's House Divided speech he predicted the end of slavery without specifying how. Since southern states knew Lincoln knew he could not get the super majority needed to peacefully overthrow constitutional slavery, they (southern states) figured he must have something else in mind.

Like confiscatory taxation which required a simple majority in Congress, not a super-majority.

Northern-financed murder raids could also be used to bring pressure.

Refusal to honor the provisions of the constitution which benefited the South could be used to bring pressure.

And, if control of the U.S. military could be obtained by the election of a regional candidate with as little as 39 percent of the vote, then northern options would not be necessarily limited to the peaceful overthrow of constitutional slavery.

As I suggested earlier, you should read the text. It's 80-something pages, but only takes a couple of hours if you skip past all the procedural stuff.

I can contribute two observations from the proceedings though. First, some of the speakers during the convention saw the end of slavery as Providential. Second, one or two of the speakers said that Douglas and the Democrats had already initiated a civil war. In no case did anyone outline a plan for ending slavery. But there was a consistent view that slavery must end.

It seems that you now acknowledge that the Republican Party was formed to end slavery. Is that correct?

“It seems that you now acknowledge that the Republican Party was formed to end slavery. Is that correct?”

We may never know the purpose of the founding Republican Party members. Their founding party platform said the purpose was to stop the expansion of slavery. But there may have been a lot of smokey, backroom deals that could not stand the light of day.

My guess, the purpose of the party at its founding was to support the economic and political best self-interest of the founders.

For the purpose of this post, let's stipulate you are correct: the Republican Party was formed to abolish slavery.

I marvel that just a few short years later members of the Republican Party - with the first Republican Party president's tacit approval - were voting to adopt the Corwin amendment which would have enshrined slavery into the United States Constitution forever.

It doesn't add up.

It wouldn't have enshrined slavery into the Constitution, it would have enshrined the right of each state to choose how to handle slavery. Practically speaking it would have ensured slavery in the short-term, but anti-slavery elements (particularly those who considered the eventual abolition of slavery to be Providential) could have held out hope that the individual slave states would eventually choose abolition.

Furthermore, the perceived choice at the time was between Southern secession and a compromise like the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment would not have freed any slaves, but neither would have secession. So it might be understandable why those against slavery might not have a strong opinion on the matter.

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