Posted on 06/06/2009 2:57:37 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
by Charley Reese
Most of the political problems in this country won't be settled until more folks realize the South was right.
I know that goes against the P.C. edicts, but the fact is that on the subject of the constitutional republic, the Confederate leaders were right and the Northern Republicans were wrong.
Many people today even argue the Confederate positions without realizing it.
For example, if you argue for strict construction of the Constitution, you are arguing the Confederate position; when you oppose pork-barrel spending, you are arguing the Confederate position; and when you oppose protective tariffs, you are arguing the Confederate position. But that's not all.
When you argue for the Bill of Rights, you are arguing the Confederate position, and when you argue that the Constitution limits the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, you are arguing the Confederate position.
One of the things that gets lost when you adopt the politically correct oversimplification that the War Between the States was a Civil War all about slavery is a whole treasure load of American political history.
It was not a civil war. A civil war is when two or more factions contend for control of one government. At no time did the South intend or attempt to overthrow the government of the United States . The Southern states simply withdrew from what they correctly viewed as a voluntary union. They formed their own union and adopted their own constitution.
The U.S. government remained intact. There were just fewer states, but everything else remained as exactly as it was. You can be sure that, with as much bitterness and hatred of the South that there was in the North, the Northerners would have tried Confederates for treason if there had been any grounds. There weren't, and the South's worst enemy knew that.
Abraham Lincoln's invasion of the South was entirely without any constitutional authority. And it's as plain as an elephant in a tea party that Lincoln did not seek to preserve the Union to end slavery. All you have to do is read his first inaugural address. What Lincoln didn't want to lose was tax revenue generated by the South.
As Northern states gained a majority in both houses, they began to use the South as a cash cow. Here's how it worked: Most Southerners who exported cotton bartered the cotton in Europe for goods. When the protective tariffs were imposed, that meant Southerners had to pay them. To make matters worse, the North would then use the revenue for pork-barrel projects in its states. The South was faced with either paying high tariffs and receiving no benefits from the revenue or buying artificially high-priced Northern goods.
Southerners opposed pork-barrel spending. Their correct view was that, because the federal government was merely the agent of all the states, whatever money it spent should be of equal benefit. Their position on public lands was that they belonged to all the people and the federal government had no authority to give the lands away to private interests.
Northerners had announced they would not be bound by the Constitution. What you had was the rise of modern nationalism fighting the original republic founded by the American Revolution.
So, regardless of where you were born, you may be a Southerner philosophically.
You know just as an aside,
I have been reading about just how many estimated slaves were imported into ourside of the world, and it seems that people say around 11 million or so. Yet the records show only 500,000 of them made it to the colonies.
That means 10.5 million were working in South America or the Carribean, not under American control.
Why don’t the dems ever eviscerate South America and the Carribean nations for importing 21 times as many slaves than we ever did? Why are they not having this issue beaten over their heads today? The standards of living for blacks down there are much worse than they are here.
My reply was that it wasn’t that the conservatives wanted Obama to win, but that some just could not bring themselves to vote for McCain. Much of the blame goes to the party for putting sh1t-on-toast up for the position. He’s damn lucky someone twisted his arm to put Palin on the ticket or he’d have lost even more.
And it also is terribly cliche to equate an election with an actual war that killed 600,000 people.
“Lincoln had it right.”
“Lincoln used war to destroy the U.S. Constitution in order to establish a powerful central government,” says Roberts. This is certainly a strong statement, but in fact Lincoln illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; launched a military invasion without consent of Congress; blockaded Southern ports without declaring war; imprisoned without warrant or trial some 13,000 Northern citizens who opposed his policies; arrested dozens of newspaper editors and owners and, in some cases, had federal soldiers destroy their printing presses; censored all telegraph communication; nationalized the railroads; created three new states (Kansas, Nevada, and West Virginia) without the formal consent of the citizens of those states, an act that Lincoln’s own attorney general thought was unconstitutional; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections; deported a member of Congress from Ohio after he criticized Lincoln’s unconstitutional behavior; confiscated private property; confiscated firearms in violation of the Second Amendment; and eviscerated the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.”
Words from Thomas J. DiLorenzo author of The Real Lincoln.
Look: the states were going to banish slavery. With the election of Lincoln, the Southern states saw thw writing on the wall and seceeded.
In my opinion, they had a right to do so.
But to pretend that slavery was not a part of that decision is just not true.
I know that goes against the P.C. edicts, but the fact is that on the subject of the constitutional republic, the Confederate leaders were right and the Northern Republicans were wrong.
Many people today even argue the Confederate positions without realizing it.
For example, if you argue for strict construction of the Constitution, you are arguing the Confederate position; when you oppose pork-barrel spending, you are arguing the Confederate position; and when you oppose protective tariffs, you are arguing the Confederate position. But that's not all.
When you argue for the Bill of Rights, you are arguing the Confederate position, and when you argue that the Constitution limits the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, you are arguing the Confederate position.
Clearly there's a logical fallacy involved there. Assume the Confederacy was or against all these things. It wasn't just the Confederates who were. There were others who had nothing to do with the Confederacy -- who would abhor it -- who also favored limited government or the Bill of Rights and opposed tariffs or pork-barrel spending.
The other logical problem here is that Reese compares everything that happened since 1860 in the US with what people said from 1861 to 1865 in a regime that's been dead for the past 134 years. Just what the Confederacy would have become had it survived is something he doesn't get into. As it is Davis's CSA interfered more in economic affairs than Lincoln's USA. Davis's government set up factories to produce war materials, a foreshadowing of later socialist developments. We don't know what would have happened if Davis's government had lasted.
Interesting that when Grant died, very few folks lamented his passing. At the death of General Robert E. Lee, it was reported that even battle-hardened UNION vets who faced him and his troops in the field wept.
That's faulty memory. You weren't around when the GAR veterans marched every year in Northern cities. You weren't around when Grant was buried, so you assume that no one noticed. How about doing some research?
While serving as Jackson's Attorney General, Taney was asked by the Secretary of State Edward Livingston for a legal opinion on a conflict between U.S. treaty obligations and a South Carolina law that mandated any black crew members of any merchant ship calling at South Carolina ports must be seized and held in jail for the duration of the ship's visit, and the cost of the imprisonment be paid by the ship's captain before they left. If the captain refused to pay, the crew member was sold into slavery to recoup the costs. Taney replied that the U.S. could not interfere with the state law. He wrote that blacks "...were not looked upon as citizens by the contracting parties who formed the Constitution...evidently not supposed to be included by the term 'citizen'. He further stated, "The African race in the United States even when free, are every where a degraded class, and exercise no political influence. The privileges they are allowed to enjoy, are accorded to them as a matter of kindness and benevolence rather thatn of right. They are the only class of persons who can be held as mere property, as slaves. And where they are nominally admitted by law to the privileges of citizenship, they have no effectual power to defend them, and are permitted to be citizens by the sufferance of the white population and hold whatever rights they enjoy at their mercy."
By just that alone he violated Amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and maybe 10(but there is arguments to be made against this one).
there are
Because there were a considerable number of people calling for the resumption of slave imports from Africa. There is little doubt that some traffic would have resumed.
So: Might makes Right?
"Tailhumper Joe" made the orignal comment in post #18.
Kansas was admitted January 29, 1861 - 6 weeks before Lincoln was inaugurated. But then again Tommy never did let facts stand in the way of his story.
Well, I’ll be if you aren’t right.
What about his declaration of war?
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/april/abraham-lincoln-declaration-war.htm
It was not a declaration of war. You declare war on other sovereign nations, not parts of your own country. Lincoln issued a call for militia to suppress the Southern rebellion. Something he was allowed to do on his own authority if Congress was not in session.
“And they could choose NOT to associate as part of that replacement process.”
I believe they agreed to perpetual union without regard to any replacement of the governing structure they decided upon. When you break an agreement like they made, you do so without penalty only if the other parties to the agreement impose no penalty, either because they freely choose not to do so or because they have no power to do so.
You know, that does bring up an interesting question - where was the confederate declaration of war? Firing on Sumter was certainly an act of war and members of Davis’s own cabinet pointed that out to him. If Davis was going to plunge his country into a war then wasn’t it up to the confederate congress to declare it? Didn’t their constitution require that? Couldn’t Davis’s actions be considered illegal under their law?
Sorry, but your link won't come up for me (even with a generous application of the 'refresh' button ;>).
FWIW, I must admit to having lost my enthusiasm for debating the constitutionality of State secession, about the time one of our fellow Freepers (Lord bless his soul) insisted that the United States Constitution prohibited State secession, because Article I, Section 8 (granting power to Congress "[t]o establish Post Offices and post Roads...") somehow negated the Tenth Amendment, and the "numerous and indefinite" rights (as James Madison referred to them) reserved by the people of the States.
The reference to "Section 8" was (IMHO) poetic justice - one would have to be literally insane to insist that some minor power delegated to the federal government, such as a limited authority over the delivery of mail, was sufficient to deny the right of secession to the ratifying States. As one notable friend of Washington and Franklin observed:
"To deny this right [of State secession] would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed."
William Rawle, 'A View of the Constitution of the United States of America,' 1829
When even Freepers are drinking (and spouting) 'big government' kool aide, I find I have better things to do...
;>)
“...the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.”
Do they? Could the people of New York establish a monarchy to govern New York State? Could Vermont establish some sort of clan/tribal system to govern the State of Vermont? How about a Theocracy to govern the State of Utah?
KK: Do they? Could the people of New York establish a monarchy to govern New York State? Could Vermont establish some sort of clan/tribal system to govern the State of Vermont? How about a Theocracy to govern the State of Utah?
The US Attorney for Pennsylvania addressed the subject at some length:
"The United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government, shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence."
The Union is an association of the people of republics; its preservation is calculated to depend on the preservation of those republics. The people of each pledge themselves to preserve that form of government in all. Thus each becomes responsible to the rest, that no other form of government shall prevail in it, and all are bound to preserve it in every one.
But the mere compact, without the power to enforce it, would be of little value. Now this power can be no where so properly lodged, as in the Union itself. Hence, the term guarantee, indicates that the United States are authorized to oppose, and if possible, prevent every state in the Union from relinquishing the republican form of government, and as auxiliary means, they are expressly authorized and required to employ their force on the application of the constituted authorities of each state, "to repress domestic violence." If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a state for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could thus be called forth to subdue it.
Yet it is not to be understood, that its interposition would be justifiable, if the people of a state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of government, or if they should, with the, express intention of seceding, expunge the representative system from their code, and thereby incapacitate themselves from concurring according to the mode now prescribed, in the choice of certain public officers of the United States.
The principle of representation, although certainly the wisest and best, is not essential to the being of a republic, but to continue a member of the Union, it must be preserved, and therefore the guarantee must be so construed. It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.
This right must be considered as an ingredient in the original composition of the general government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood, and the doctrine heretofore presented to the reader in regard to the indefeasible nature of personal allegiance, is so far qualified in respect to allegiance to the United States. It was observed, that it was competent for a state to make a compact with its citizens, that the reciprocal obligations of protection and allegiance might cease on certain events; and it was further observed, that allegiance would necessarily cease on the dissolution of the society to which it was due.
The states, then, may wholly withdraw from the Union, but while they continue, they must retain the character of representative republics.
- William Rawle, 'A View of the Constitution of the United States of America,' 1829
The short answer is 'yes,' the people of New York could establish a monarchy to govern New York State; the people of Vermont could establish some sort of clan/tribal system to govern the State of Vermont; and the people of Utah could establish a theocracy to govern their State. "[B]ut while they continue [to choose to remain within the union], they must retain the character of representative republics."
How could it have if the Confederate constitution specifically forbade it?
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