Posted on 11/19/2019 10:34:27 AM PST by Bratch
Except for one thing. It cannot be "Rebellion" when it is a right guaranteed by the founding document of the nation.
Yes, Lincoln declared it to be a rebellion, because he rejected the idea that states had a right to secede, even though he acknowledged this idea quite clearly in 1848, and again he acknowledged this right in 1852.
It was only when he saw the states leaving his government that he flip flopped into claiming independence was illegal, even though the vast pile of evidence in prior US history demonstrates that he was wrong.
So Lincoln repeatedly called this legal move to separate a "Rebellion" when it was not, and all his yes men sycophants simply repeated this claim endlessly, and eventually this propaganda became accepted wisdom and remains so to this day.
It still isn't true, but most people believe it to be true, so you are just pushing back against the tide trying to change this long held but incorrect claim of Southern "Rebellion."
And yes, the force of 20 million beat the force of 5 million who were fighting for their homeland, and even then just barely.
“The last full measure of devotion.” Perhaps the most inspiring phrase ever spoken.
1.
(1776.)
13 slave owning states secede from a Union and form a confederacy.
(1861)
11 slave owning states secede from a Union and form a confederacy.
2.
(1776.)
Union forces offer freedom to any slave that will take up arms against the "rebels."
(1861)
Union forces offer freedom to any slave that will take up arms against the "rebels."
3
(1776)
"Rebel" armies led by slave owning general from Virginia.
(1861)
"Rebel" armies led by slave owning general from Virginia.
Pretty close.
Did you go to college? Do you know what is a thesis statement?
Is "All Men are created equal" the thesis of the document called "Declaration of Independence"?
If not, what *IS* the thesis of the Declaration of Independence? For what purpose was it written? What was it intended to accomplish?
.
Now it took a while to teach certain sections of the country that all men were indeed equal and put into place laws to gve effect to that self-evident truth.
That was not at all the lesson that was intending to be taught when Lincoln launched that war against the South. You can't go from offering the South perpetual protection for slavery in the form of the "Corwin Amendment" to claiming you started that war because slavery was bad.
The lesson being taught to the South was "Don't you dare threaten the economic interest of the powerful Washington DC/ New York influence cartel, or we will destroy you!"
You see, they were going to protect slavery with the Lincoln backed Corwin Amendment, but they were *NOT* going to ever allow the South to trade directly with Europe without funneling all the money through New York and Washington DC.
So get it right. Washington DC was not trying to teach the lesson that "all men are created equal." They were teaching the lesson that "We are your masters, and you will pay us, or we will destroy you!"
Right here:
"dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
That's absolutely ridiculous. Lincoln was literally quoting the Declaration of Independence -- written and signed "four score and seven years before", that expressly said:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,"
Not only did the men who founded this country make the express claim that "all men are created equal", but they listed it first among all the "self-evident truths".
Your accusation that Lincoln committed a "bald face lie" about the principles on which this country was founded when he was literally quoting verbatim the Declaration itself is the only lie I've seen in this thread.
A popular speaker, Edward Everett was the “main” speaker that day. His speech, prior to Lincolns, lasted over two hours. Then Lincoln arose and delivered his immortal, exquisitely germaine address. The newspapers panned it as an insult, but later realized it for the gem that it was.
Eward Everett wrote to Abraham Lincoln on 20 November 1863, a day after the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg. Everett had been the primary speaker, but he remarked to Lincoln,
“I should be glad if I could flatter myself, that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”
Almost lost in squabbling over the accuracy of Lincoln’s declarations is the fact that the address is a gem of brevity and eloquence in an age of prolixity.
62 years ago, when I enlisted in Uncle Sam’s Army, I ran into a few, not many, knotheads who were still bloviatingly refighting the Civil War. I was flummoxed that anyone could be THAT obtuse. Now, here, at this late date, some knotheads are STILL doing it. No wonder Hillary and her minions are still fighting the 2016 campaign. I sometimes am just a bit obsessive compulsive myself. But after 250 years?! Some people belong on the “Funny Farm”.
Except that isn't an accurate summation of what the document said, and it is clearly a distortion of what it meant when it said the words he quoted.
Let us be very clear here. The people signing the Declaration of independence and the states which they represented had absolutely no intention of applying that verbiage to slaves.
Coming along after the fact and trying to make it appear that the founders and signers were making a statement about slavery, is just lying. They were not. Thomas Jefferson put that flowery language in there, and it sounded so good they chose to leave it in there, but none of them understood it to mean that slaves were equal to them, or that slaves should be free.
Let me illustrate my point mathematically. If you copy the text of the Declaration of Independence and put it into a file, it constitutes a file of 7.91 KB. The verbiage "all men are created equal" constitutes 26 bytes.
This makes it 0.3% of the text of the document, yet Lincoln has presented it as virtually the whole purpose of the document.
No, the *PRIMARY* purpose of the document is to justify secession from the United Kingdom, and the document asserts it is a right given by God to leave a government which the people no longer see as serving their interest.
The revolution of 1776 is about the very opposite thing of which Lincoln claimed in his speech. It wasn't about freedom for slaves, it was entirely about freedom of states to leave a government they viewed as oppressive. It was about the very thing he was fighting, yet he twisted it so as to appear he and the founders were on the same side.
Clearly they were not.
Your accusation that Lincoln committed a "bald face lie" about the principles on which this country was founded when he was literally quoting verbatim the Declaration itself is the only lie I've seen in this thread.
You want it to be a lie, because to believe otherwise sort of upends your world view a little bit.
I can lead you to water, but I cannot make you drink. If you wish to believe the Declaration of Independence was primarily about slavery, and not about Freedom of States to leave what they viewed as an oppressive government, you are entitled to believe that. I cannot stop you.
But those with clearer vision can see that there is something contradictory going on between what he claims regarding the revolutionary war, and what actually happened.
No, the revolutionary war was not a freedom for slaves movement. Not at all.
I guess you are somewhat unfamiliar with the history of Ireland, Scotland and England. You think 150 years later is bad?
A lot of people do not understand that the civil war broke the original compact of federalism. The Federal portion of the government is now far more powerful than it was ever intended to be when it was created by the founders. They would be aghast and horrified at the usurpation of the rights of states and the rights of individuals, and much of this disaster is a consequence of the Civil War.
Abortion, gay marriage, "anchor babies", and other modern disasters are a consequence of the growth in Federal powers caused by the civil war. This system of governance born in 1776 has become a monster. It is now too big and too powerful and issues edicts and directives completely at odds with the will of the people.
Just one knothead's view regarding the origin of many of our modern problems.
To give Lincoln his due, he was an astonishingly good wordsmith, and a masterful politician as well.
It upholds some of your arguments but rebuts others.
Okay, I read it, and he doesn't quite get to my point. The closest he approaches it is near the end of the article and then he spins it in Lincoln's favor. (That Lincoln's sleigh of hand was a good thing.)
I didn't see anyplace in the article that I would regard as a rebuttal of my point.
The author seems to imply that misleading the public about the Declaration is a good thing, but I don't think it's a good idea to cover up ugly parts of history.
Also he seems to keep conflating the Declaration with the US Constitution, and it makes me wonder if he grasps the distinction between the two things.
The Declaration is the Mother document from which all their inherited authority flows. The Declaration establishes a new government. The Articles of Confederation establishes some rules and some powers, and so does the US Constitution, but the source of all their power is the fundamental principle established by the Declaration as "consent of the governed."
—
fundamental principle established by the Declaration as “consent of the governed.”
—
exactly, and as slavery deprived the slaves of their ability to give consent, it was a completely invalid institution.
A year ago today, early in the morning, I stood at the very spot where Lincoln is purported to have read the address that day. The weather was cool and foggy. I was all alone in that cemetery, at by appearances.
"Consent of the Governed" only applies to citizens. Slaves were not citizens.
Look, I know we would all prefer that everyone at the time accepted Christian principles of equality, but they didn't. Pretending they did is wrongheaded and foolish.
The people of those times were quite racist and quite willing to practice subjugation of other people. It is what it is, and not what we would have it be.
It is also a mistake to believe the Northern powers launched a war to stop slavery. They didn't. In fact, they were falling over backwards to offer the South more protection for slavery if the South would simply remain in the Union.
It didn't work, and now people are embarrassed at the lengths to accommodate slavery which the Northern representatives enacted. Nobody is taught about the "Corwin Amendment" precisely because it undermines their claim as to why the war was fought.
It seems to me you may be understating the Founder’s intentions (the words “all men are created equal” being in the preamble and thus governing the overall sense and purpose of the following enumerations) and overstating Lincoln’s intent, who was not interested in pressing the slavery issue at this time with these words.
Moreover you seem to be overstating your own case, well-intended as it may be. “Bald-faced lie” is a tad strong. Let us put the best contruction on things, as history has.
This much is certain: you’ve given careful thought to these things and express yourself well.
You caught me. Yes, i'm overstating the case. From my years of experience in debating with people, you have to go big or go home.
You can't even get people to look at the point if you say something like "he exaggerated a little." You have to use stuff like "bald faced lie" to gin up enough emotional outrage to get people to examine the information you want them to consider.
Trump uses a similar technique. He'll say something outrageous like "Obama wiretapped my office!" Get the media screaming bloody murder, and he will thereby get them to cover a story they would have otherwise ignored. He does this again and again.
Getting back to the founders intention, Jefferson perhaps wanted those words to be meant as applying to slaves too. His original draft contained much harsher condemnation of the practice, but the other committee members removed this language. It just wouldn't work in a predominantly slave owning society, and they knew it would torpedo support for the idea of independence.
Subsequent founders took those words to heart, and freed their own slaves, but saying this was the intent when the document was written is misleading people about what was the actual and correct history of this era.
Lincoln's move was political, and intended to reinforce his narrative that the war was just and consistent with the founding principles. He knew the difference, it's just the version he provided supported his policies, while the real history would not have done so.
This much is certain: you’ve given careful thought to these things and express yourself well.
Well thank you. I have given it much consideration and I learned from studying the origins of "natural born citizen" that "Natural law" foundational principles are really really important in steering a nation on the right course. When I started trying to understand what happened in the Civil War, I realized that there was a lot more going on than what I had been taught growing up.
It changed my view of the whole event.
Thanks for the reply. I, too, have come to learn over the years that the history I’ve been taught is not as cut and dried as many make it appear.
One problem, and it is a big one, is assessing the intent and motives of those who precede us in history. I would posit, in fact, that many an individual is troubled by, or unaware of, undergirding motivations even in the present moment.
My sense from Lincoln’s address in this case, is that he wanted to incorporate a broader sense of what happened, so an appeal to the Declaration’s preamble regarding “all men are created equal” is, at least as I understand it, a way of inviting the hearers to a higher principle. It certainly was, and remains, a bone of contention, the manner and degree to which slavery plays a part in both the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration.
The Declaration's one and only purpose was articulating a right to independence, which is what the Southern states were trying to have.
Making the Declaration into a statement on slavery is just wrong.
Lincoln was fighting against the purpose of the Declaration, not in harmony with it. Had Lincoln been truly respectful of what "our fathers brought forth on this continent.." he would have ended the war against those seeking independence from a government they saw as no longer serving their interests.
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