Posted on 05/10/2015 6:19:23 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
DALLAS (AP) - Pity Jefferson Davis, if you will. Vandals have defaced his statue on the University of Texas campus, most recently with the words "Davis must fall" and "Emancipate UT." Student leaders are also seeking to remove from the Austin campus the century-old statue that recognizes the president of the Confederacy.
"We thought, there are those old ties to slavery and some would find it offensive," said senior Jamie Nalley, who joined an overwhelming majority of the Student Government in adopting a resolution in March supporting his ouster.
But as students take aim at Davis, the number of sites in Texas on public and private land that honor the Confederacy is growing - despite the opposition of the NAACP and others. Supporters cite their right to memorialize Confederate veterans and their role in Texas history, while opponents argue the memorials are too often insensitive or antagonistic, while having the backing of public institutions like UT.
The Texas Historical Commission has recognized more than 1,000 such sites from far South Texas to the upper reaches of the Panhandle. And the Sons of Confederate Veterans are planning others, including a 10-foot obelisk a few miles from the Davis statue to honor about 450 Confederate soldiers buried at the city-owned Oakwood Cemetery.
"I don't think we're trying to put up stuff just to put up stuff," said Marshall Davis, spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Texas. "We don't want to impede anyone else from honoring their heroes. We would like to honor our heroes with the same consideration, tolerance and diversity."
(Excerpt) Read more at waff.com ...
“Many Confederates viewed their insurrection as a second war of independence against tyranny.
What tyranny specifically?”
In its Declaration of Secession, South Carolina explicitly mentions the abrogation by fourteen states of Section 2, Article IV of the U.S. Constitution:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/southcarolina_declaration.asp
This Constitutional crisis, and the election in 1860 of Lincoln, who was vilified by many in the slave holding states for his famous “house divided” remarks during and after the debates with Douglas, precipitated the series of successions.
Here I am trying to represent the common perspective of many in the South at the time, not to defend it.
Well I asked for examples of the tyranny that you said caused the Southern states to secede and you respond with actions by individual states, all of which I believe were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So if we can agree that an accurate definition of tyranny is “cruel and oppressive government or rule” then can you tell me exactly what tyranny the South was trying to flee?
Don’t you think that the failure of fourteen states to uphold an article of the U.S. Constitution could have been reasonably interpreted by elected officials in the other states as oppressive government or rule worthy of “trying to flee”?
You're kidding, right?
We could spend years, as some historians have, debating the motivations of the leaders of the various states that seceded from the Union. Instead, why not read and think about what they wrote at that time in the various declarations of secession? And you might start by answering the question I posed in my last post.
What I’m trying to identify are those acts of tyranny that you claim provoked the Southern secession. I know all the excuses that the South gave for their actions. I’m trying to understand the oppressive or unjustly severe conditions that the South was laboring under. The arbitrary acts of a cruel government which they had no say in. All the actions which define a tyranny, and I’m afraid I can’t find them.
ARTICLE IV, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3
“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
This provision of the U.S. Constitution was widely unenforced in the North, as were the various Federal Fugitive Slave Acts and numerous affirming Federal court decisions. Many Southerners viewed this as a form of tyranny, as indicated by the language in several of the declarations of secession, and an abrogation of the famous Compromise of 1850. Of course, the long-standing animus between the North and the South also involved other issues unrelated directly to slavery, such as the protective tariffs and non-tariff restrictions on imported machinery and the “free soil” movement.
I'm still not seeing how this qualifies as "tyranny" under the commonly accepted definition but maybe that's just me.
You yourself mentioned how the federal government passed laws to ensure Article IV was enforced. That doesn't sound like tyranny to me. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 were both meant to strip fleeing slaves of any legal protections they may have had. So it isn't non-compliance that the Southern states complained about, it was the fact that they thought that the fleeing slaves had habeas corpus rights and the protections of the court which guaranteed them a fair legal hearing before being extradited. Southern states couldn't handle that. Also you complain that the Northern states didn't enforce the law. But the Prigg v. Pennsylvania decision made it clear that federal laws were federal responsibility to enforce, and that states could not be compelled to do it for them. So maybe if the federal government forced the states to do their bidding, that might have qualified as tyranny. But they didn't.
Of course, the long-standing animus between the North and the South also involved other issues unrelated directly to slavery, such as the protective tariffs and non-tariff restrictions on imported machinery and the free soil movement.
Again, where is the tyranny of an oppressive and overreaching federal government in any of that?
As I said before, states could not be compelled to enforce federal law.
But the bottom line is that many Southerners viewed such nullification as a form of tyranny by federal and Northern state officials, much like some of us view many of President Obamas executive actions as a form of tyranny.
And we all know that the South never, ever even considered nullification in any way, shape or form. </sarcasm>
“As I said before, states could not be compelled to enforce federal law.”
But some states were failing to enforce their own laws, as well.
“And we all know that the South never, ever even considered nullification in any way, shape or form. </sarcasm>”
I think it was my mother who first told me “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
In any case, I was simply trying to use the words of the secessionists to convey what might have been their interpretation of various actions by federal and state officials as “tyrannical.”
” opponents argue the memorials are too often insensitive or antagonistic”
Poor feelings. Always getting hurt. If they don’t like the monument they can look away.
I find these idiot “students” offensive. If there parents are aware of their student’s ignorance, they should stop funding their purported “education”.
What laws were those? The ones requiring a writ of habeas corpus, runaway slave or not? Or which guaranteed a slave the right to legal proceedings before being extradited? Laws like that?
I think it was my mother who first told me two wrongs dont make a right.
No but it does make the first wrong guilty of incredible hypocrisy.
Although the statues are literally carved in stone or cast in bronze, if enough people don't like them, the university probably won't keep them around.
As the statues are part of an ensemble, what to do with the space if students don't want the statues is going to be a problem for the university.
I have - all of them. And I've compared them to the Declaration of Independence as a sort of benchmark since so many lost causers attempt to apply that in an analogous way to their insurrection. They all come up short and they all seem contrived - with the exception of those which told the honest truth - that they were quitting over slavery.
The plain, unvarnished truth is that, although there was friction and strife, there was no tyranny.
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