Posted on 04/15/2017 8:24:37 AM PDT by fugazi
True.
Well, the legislators that Lincoln didn't lock up certainly didn't, but the ones he locked up did.
Arresting legislatures for expressing a position? No wonder Maryland's state song refers to Lincoln as a tyrant.
Bigg Red: "Yes, Maryland was a slave state, and Lincoln was determined that the nation’s capital would not be surrounded by the Confederacy.
So he dragged Maryland into the Union when there were many here who wanted to side with the CSA."
In 1861 Maryland was a Southern Border state, one of the border states (Delaware & Missouri were others) where slavery was dying a natural death, and in due time may have been abolished peacefully, gradually, as it was in the North.
By 1861 the majority of Marylanders opposed slavery and the majority of Maryland's African-Americans had already been freed.
So when the Maryland legislature voted on the question of secession, on April 29, 1861, the vote was four to one opposed (53-13).
Of course, some Marylanders were slave holders and many supported the Confederacy, so another meeting was scheduled to reconsider.
But then something extraordinarily important happened:
on May 6, 1861 the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States which meant that any pro-Confederates in Union states met the Constitution's definition of treason:
As with many Southern states, Maryland supplied troops for both Union (60,000) and Confederate (25,000) armies, that proportion being a pretty fair reflection of overall Maryland feelings on the subject at the time.
Maryland pro-Confederates were strong in their support of secession and war against the United States, but they were a distinct minority, outnumbered about three-to-one by Unionists.
Seem my post #23 above.
After Lincoln started arresting them, i'm sure many declared themselves to be against secession. Who can say what it would have been had Lincoln not arrested people?
But of course we already know that answer, since the Legislature voted on April 29 -- before anybody was arrested and before the Confederacy formally declared war (May 6, 1861) -- Maryland's legislature voted four to one (53-13) against secession.
Remember, in every Southern state the vote for or against secession depended on how many slave-holders there were.
In states like Maryland slave-holders were a distinct minority and so no majority for secession was ever seen.
In Upper South states like Virginia & Tennessee slave-holder interests were the majority overall, but large regions opposed slavery and secession.
Hence, for examples, the state of West Virginia and Unionist East Tennessee.
And what is so often annoying about a lot of you Union appologists is the oft repeated claim that it would not have eventually died a natural death elsewhere.
I've read quite a lot regarding the issue of slavery in the United States since 1776, and there was an obvious social/demographic trend occurring. Slavery was slowly being recognized as immoral, and socially unacceptable.
This social pressure was never going to go away, and given enough time it would have eliminated slavery even in the deep South where it was profitable. Yes, abolition slowed as you went from states where slavery was not profitable to states where it was, but that is because there were conflicting pressures between economic and moral arguments.
People normally vote with their pocketbook, but eventually they can be persuaded to do the right thing.
This does not speak to what the vote tally would have been prior to the armed conflict beginning. If they were so solidly Union, why were legislators getting arrested?
Yes, that slavery was declining in Border States like Delaware and Maryland is obvious from the numbers -- both already had more freed blacks than slaves.
So pro-Confederates like yourself argue that means slavery must have died out naturally in Deep South cotton states as well.
Well... in a word, no.
And the reason is: it was precisely those highly prosperous and profitable cotton states which were, in effect, killing off slavery further north.
Because cotton and sugar, especially, were so profitable they generated huge demands for and prices of slaves, which is why so many were "sold down the river" from states further north.
Now, if you read Mississippi's Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union, you can see their devotion to slavery seems unlimited & unshakable:
DiogenesLamp: "I've read quite a lot regarding the issue of slavery in the United States since 1776, and there was an obvious social/demographic trend occurring.
Slavery was slowly being recognized as immoral, and socially unacceptable. "
Such recognition only happened in the North, where the press was free to express those opinions.
In Deep South states nothing like that was happening in 1860, nor would it be allowed to happen, ever, so long as the slave-holding planter class held reins of political power there.
No Maryland legislators were arrested -- none, zero, nada - legislators arrested prior to the first vote on secession, April 29, 1861.
That vote was 53-13 against secession, four to one, a pretty fair indicator of Marylanders' feelings at the time.
After that vote the Confederacy formally declared war, on May 6, 1861, and then and only then did any arrests in Maryland begin.
No legislators were arrested until September, 1861.
So the real issue in states like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri was whether majority vote would rule against secession, and as it turned out, the majority did rule, despite strong pro-slavery opposition.
Treason is a ‘’position’’?
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
Well what the founders did was definitely Treason, but after they founded this nation on the principle that people had a right to independence, the old British principle of "rule by divine right" no longer applied.
If Independence was Treason, the War would have been declared in 1860 when South Carolina declared independence.
Also there was no talk of "Treason" when Massachusetts was threatening to secede. People of the time simply recognized that Massachusetts had the right to do so if they wished.
The American colonists wanted more rights granted to them as subjects of the crown and an end to onerous taxes. That was not forth coming from the Crown. The South wanted to preserve an economic system based on the use of slave labor. They certainly weren’t advocating rights for slaves. They choose armed rebellion against a duly elected government. Rebellion to achieve independence and human rights from a degenerate monarchy doesn’t count as treason to me.
There were a lot of Virginians, North Carolinians, and Tennesseeans who wanted to remain in the Union but were dragged into the Confederacy. No sympathy for them?
There were a lot of Virginians, North Carolinians, and Tennesseeans who wanted to remain in the Union but were dragged into the Confederacy. No sympathy for them?
(((
I am sure that what you say is true about those Southerners.
As for “sympathy”, I honestly have no emotional investment in events that occurred almost a century before I was born.
"Rights" do not have qualifications. If you have a right to do something, you don't have to have a "good reason" to exercise that right. It is your right to do it regardless.
The founders declared that independence was such a right. Therefore a people's reasons for wanting it are irrelevant. They have an inherent right to independence and they do not have to justify it.
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