Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.
The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Here's Jefferson Davis in his speech to the US Senate, January 10, 1861:
...the tenth amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a state; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States?
How was it ever taken out of that source of all power to the Federal Government? It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States.
A majority of the 13 original states either had statements in their ratifications the allowed the resumption or reassuming of powers of governance (NY, VA, or VA) or made statements or proposed 10th Amendment like amendments:
South Carolina:
"This Convention doth also declare, that no section or paragraph of the said Constitution warrants a construction that the states do not retain every power not expressly relinquished by them, and vested in the general government of the Union.
North Carolina proposed amendment:
"1. That each state in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the federal government."
Massachusetts proposed amendment:
"First, That it be explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several States to be by them exercised."
New Hampshire proposed amendment:
"I. That it be explicitly declared that all powers not expressly and particularly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution, are reserved to the several States, to be by them exercised."
By comparison, Benjamin Franklin spent many years in England hoping to negotiate a better deal for the Americans.
He failed repeatedly, but only reluctantly returned to Philadelphia a full year after the Brits had formally declared war and began waging war against the colonies.
By stark contrast, Confederate negotiators refused to negotiate constitutionally with Congress, and after a few weeks they went home to start Civil War.
Of course Lincoln "wanted peace", and as he told secessionists in his First Inaugural, March 4, 1861, they could not have a war unless they themselves started it.
Secessionist newspapers immediately declared that a "declaration of war", and Jefferson Davis ordered preparations for military assault on Fort Sumter.
And so the war came.
“and after a few weeks they went home to start Civil War.”
They didn’t seek “to start Civil War”. That’s you sneaking your conclusion into the premise of your argument.
The Confederacy wanted to be left alone, something Lincoln had no intention of doing since he denied that there was a Confederate States of America. He called up his 75,000 troops for the purpose of invading and forcing the people of the seceding states to bow to the national government.
You are referring, of course, to the failure of Deep South secessionists in early 1861 to convince their Upper South & Border State brethren to quit the Union and join their Confederacy.
Faced with abject failure in just seven Confederate states, and needing a solid excuse for others to join, Jefferson Davis ordered a military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, thus giving the Upper South, especially Virginia, what it needed to secede.
Fort Sumter turned Confederate abject failure into much greater success, almost enough to win independence through war.
But not quite enough, since Border States remained loyal to the United States, and that's what made ultimate Confederate failure inevitable.
That first link in my post #317 takes you to a chart on page #605 which shows specie exports after 1849 (remember the original '49ers, before they learned to play football?) growing from $5 million in 1849 to $66 million in 1860.
Or, if you consider just the net balance of specie export/imports, it was minus $1 million in 1849, growing to positive $58 million in 1860.
Those are not insignificant numbers, certainly smaller than the $191 million in cotton exports, but larger by far than every other category of exports.
PeaRidge: "...given the choice between calling Congress into session to do that, or leaving them out of any effort to follow the Constitution, the Executive chose to sent war ships South."
Because routine resupplying Union troops in a Union fort was neither an act of war, nor something Congress needed to get involved in.
When Congress did meet, in July, it eventually approved & funded all of Lincoln's actions.
The first "straw" part of your argument is your misrepresentation of a "Union launched... war against the South".
There was no such thing, there was only the Confederate provoked, launched & formally declared war against the United States.
The second "straw" part is your notion that somehow war could "protect the pocketbooks of New England."
It did no such thing, since cotton & other exports from Confederate states were cut off 100%.
So all Northern income which depended on Southern products ended during the war, ruining many old Northern businesses.
And yet... and yet... somehow they survived economically, adjusted, found new business models and, by war's end, were prospering more than ever, but no thanks to Southern cotton.
None of this should be a big mystery, since all the facts are well known:
And yet, Deep South unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure is exactly what happened immediately after the November 1860 election of "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans".
Regardless, in early 1861 the majority Union opinion was that of still-President Buchanan, who believed that while secession had been unlawful, the Federal Government could not legally do anything to stop it.
That was also incoming President Lincoln's opinion -- so long as Washington could continue to do what the Constitution required, such as deliver mail and collect tariffs, then things could continue indefinitely.
Lincoln saw no need for war, and indeed told secessionists in his March 4, 1861 First Inaugural: they could not have war unless they themselves started it.
Of course, pro-Confederate newspapers immediately called Lincoln's address a "declaration of war", but truth is, Lincoln was quite clear that war was not necessary, so long as secessionists didn't start it.
But start it they did, and then Lincoln declared their war a rebellion and the rest is history.
But the bottom line on secession is that our Founders actually left us with several legitimate ways to accomplish it, none of which Deep South Fire Eaters used in late 1860 & early 1861.
rustbucket: "So, might makes right, hmmm?
Doesn't matter that the Constitution didn't prohibit secession, the Northerners go to war to prevent the South from successfully seceding (psst, sotto voce -- because if they were successful it would ruin the North's economy}."
And that, we know, is the great shiny object -- the glittering straw man, if you will -- pro-Confederates always fall back on: Northerners went to war to prevent secession.
No, strictly speaking, the Union went to war to defeat the military force which had attacked in at Fort Sumter, and was even then threatening several Union states.
Yes, in defeating that military force they did expect to restore the Union, and eventually to abolish slavery, but it was the Confederate assault on the Union Army which changed a relatively peaceful secession process into war.
rustbucket: "The Constitution does not say that the Union formed under it was perpetual, only that the Constitution was a 'more perfect Union.'
Was it more perfect that the Union under the Articles?
Yes, it was, but it was a different Union, as Washington suggested."
In fact, they were more-or-less the same Union, framed by the same leaders, with the 1787 Constitution being simply the 2.0 version -- think the next release of Windows, still Windows, still compatible with older software, but updated, "more perfect", etc.
Regardless, Founders clearly understood appropriate methods to both create a new Union and to abolish an old one -- a Convention of States, an act of Congress, or under worst case scenario, a material breach of compact making all its mutual obligations null & void.
No Founder approved of unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession "at pleasure".
But if a robber walks into a bank, speaks politely to all while pointing a gun & demanding the loot, and then escapes without hurting anyone -- it is still a bank robbery, still unlawful, still subject to criminal prosecution and penalties.
The fact is that secessionists seized dozens of major Federal properties, including forts, ships, arsenals and mints.
If you wish to argue that some of those were not actually Federal property, that they had always been state property, then in fact they were not "seized", merely re-occupied.
But that is not what history records.
History says those Federal properties were "seized" by force, some even before their states formally declared secession.
It makes those occupations illegal and provocations for war.
You may remember some of the events leading up to the Second World War.
I'm thinking of the Japanese sinking of the USS Panay in 1937 -- a river gunboat in China, four killed, 48 others wounded.
It was a major incident, a serious provocation for war, but in 1937 neither the US nor Japan were ready for war and it was settled diplomatically, with reparations paid by Japan.
Point is: that was a provocation for war, and there were similar incidents in the Atlantic, despite Hitler's orders for his U-boat captains to give the US Navy a wide berth.
None of those incidents, though serious provocations, resulted in war.
Pearl Harbor was a whole different, much greater level of attack on the United States military.
Likewise, Fort Sumter was a much different, higher level of assault on the United States military than had been the many relatively minor seizures of Federal property.
Relatively speaking, in 1860 Fort Sumter and its Union garrison was as important to the United States Army as was Pearl Harbor in late 1941 to the US military.
Undeniably, Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor had the same effects on US public opinion and leadership decision makers.
But "specie" is included in this 1960 National Bureau of Economic Research "Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century" page 605, from the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth.
And there is no doubt that "specie" exports grew hugely from 1849, when gold was discovered in California through 1860.
And far from being economically insignificant, as you suggest, "specie" obviously had a huge effect on US balance of trade, and helped to pay for imports which our pro-Confederates always insist could only be bought from the earnings on Southern cotton, tobacco, hemp, sugar, etc.
Proof that pro-Confederate claims are not true came with the Civil War, which ended all Confederate states exports, but failed to end US foreign trade.
Doubtless "specie" exports are one reason why.
PeaRidge: "And it is spelled specie."
I note that you enjoy nit-picking, so I'll be sure to leave plenty of nits around for you to pick. ;-)
It might amuse you to learn the spell-checker only helps me to correct about 90% of my mistakes, so think how many nits you'd find if I turned it off!
PeaRidge: "Your they is Kettel, DeBow, United States Treasury, Dept. of Commerce, Statistical History of the US and the US Census.
Are you saying all of them are making a mistake and you are not? Really? No kidding??"
Doubtless they did careful work, but, for example, cotton today is grown in such non-former-Confederate states as Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Tobacco is grown in Northern states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio and Indiana.
Yes, sugarcane was/is only grown in the Deep South, but has never been exported, due to foreign competition.
And everything else you listed as "Southern Exports" was more likely to have been produced outside the Deep or Upper South.
PeaRidge: "The offloads if destined other non domestic ports would be inventoried and temporally stored.
But the value of those products would not be entered into the US Treasury records as being part of US commerce."
But your argument here is that I must be including such transactions, because my numbers are higher than yours.
I'm saying, based on what seem to me entirely legitimate numbers, if we don't look at "specie", then there is no way to understand what was really going on.
Just to pick on 1860, as an example:
Bottom line: you cannot discount "specie" as an important trade factor in 1860.
PeaRidge: "Those figures are accurate.
They originate with data from the US government.
And the percentages are accurate."
No, those figures, as you interpret them, are inaccurate and incomplete, as I've demonstrated.
Sure, as you quoted in a post #457 above, that is the argument made by Jefferson Davis himself, in 1861.
But that argument was never made by any Founder, nor by any state ratification convention.
What the Founders said was that mutual consent or necessity caused by such breaches of compact as "usurpations" and "abuses of power" were justifications for disunion, but not unilateral declarations, "at pleasure".
Further, Founders clearly demonstrated exactly how such matters should be handled: through a convention of the states authorized to rewrite the Constitution adding or deleting such states as may seem appropriate to them.
Nor should we discount the possibility of Congress authorizing a state's secession, since Congress already authorizes new states' entry.
rustbucket: "In case you've forgotten, Jefferson Davis, a better Constitutional scholar than you, was never tried for treason.
Treason against the United States only applies to what someone did while a citizen of the United States.
Davis was no longer that during the war. "
Which may explain the deciding rationale behind the otherwise insane-seeming and totally unnecessary Confederate Declaration of War on the United States, May 6, 1861.
But neither Davis nor any other Confederate were charged with treason, for reasons better understood as "peace and reconciliation" efforts than over-concern with Constitutional technicalities.
Now wait, whose web site is this, the DNC?
I thought it's Free Republic, where anybody who's posted here for more than two minutes quickly understands our "Feral Gimmit" has long since abolished all bounds of Constitutionally restricted powers and is working its hardest to compete with Almighty God as the most powerful force in the known Universe!
That is not even a question here.
The only question here is: who do we blame?
Do we blame "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans" or somebody else?
I blame somebody else, of course, and that somebody is mainly Progressive President Woodrow Wilson...
Though I will reluctantly admit the "progressive spirit" had infected both parties in those days, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt.
But Republican "progressivism" lead to the remarkable administrations of Harding and Coolidge, while liberal progressivism gave us, most notably Franklin Roosevelt.
Anyway, I'm here to defend Lincoln and basic Republican ideals against charges that they share paternity over some of today's governmental monstrosities.
Our Founders demonstrated, twice, by their actions what they believed were legitimate and valid methods of secession:
But no Founder ever suggested that unilateral unapproved declarations of secession "at pleasure" were acceptable, lawful or constitutional.
Economic reasons "slowly accumulating"??
Economics are the only kind of evidence Marxists recognize, they acknowledge no others.
So, will you 'fess up now and admit you're here to spread Marxism?
Congress began work on the Articles of Confederation on July 12, 1776 -- before the ink was dry on the Declaration and before many signers had even signed it.
Pending formal ratification in 1781, Congress worked with a "beta copy" of the Articles as its operating system.
The Declaration of Independence was never seen as, or used as, a governing document.
Yes, I've seen that, but there are other orders which more closely reflect Lincoln's instructions, and his promise to South Carolina Governor Pickens that no reinforcements would be landed if no resistance was met at Charleston.
An earlier comment said you doubted if Lincoln ever intended to land those 200 troops... if you think about it, they were ordered not to land if there was no resistance, but as events proved, in the face of resistance they were completely unable to land.
So what did Lincoln really intend?
The answer is that Lincoln's mission commander, Gustavus Fox, sold Lincoln & cabinet on his plan to quickly go in, make his deliveries and then get the h*ll back out again, with or without reinforcing Fort Sumter.
My opinion is that Lincoln believed he must do something more than a cowardly surrender of the fort, and Fox's plan was the best he could do, under the circumstances.
Your comment does not change the facts.
Many of the properties were simply abandoned as the union army consolidated its troops from outlying posts.
Others were claimed by the states themselves for the simple reason that they had rightful ownership of the properties. Several of the coastal forts in the south dated back to the revolution and were built and paid for by the individual states, not the federal government, which acted only as conditional tenants to garrison them in defense.
No violence from the Southern state militia.
Your comment does not change the facts.
Many of the properties were simply abandoned as the union army consolidated its troops from outlying posts.
Others were claimed by the states themselves for the simple reason that they had rightful ownership of the properties. Several of the coastal forts in the south dated back to the revolution and were built and paid for by the individual states, not the federal government, which acted only as conditional tenants to garrison them in defense.
No violence from the Southern state militia.
Hey! I get it, Truth hurts, and the more true the more it hurts.
In this particular example it is undeniable that Pearl Harbor and Fort Sumter were both opening attacks of what became the greatest, meaning most terrible, wars in American history.
The parallels between Pearl and Sumter are numerous and uncanny, and what is inescapable is their identical effects on US public opinion and leadership decisions.
Sorry if it hurts, but truth is true regardless.
No, it's just a simple fact of history.
When Jefferson Davis ordered military assault on Fort Sumter, just as the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Davis started the Civil War.
Three weeks later, when the Confederate Congress formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, it sealed it's own fate -- unconditional surrender.
Those are facts, not conclusions, and nothing "sneaking" about it.
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