Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
If enough people and states agree then pass an Amendment. Otherwise the people of the state can move.
As did the vast majority of whites living in America at the time. What's your point?
lincoln was nothing more or less than a cheap,scheming, power-hungry politician & shyster lawyer.
At the end of the day, though, Lincoln turned out to be smarter and more determined than any leader the CSA could muster. That's why we have a memorial to him here in DC.
he was just like wee willie klintoon! a creature W/O HONOR OR MORALS.
Shrug. The vast majority of your countrymen consider Lincoln to be a hero.
Heck, there's even a memorial to Lincoln in Richmond. That must drive you crazy.
Dr. Williams is wrong. The southern rebellion was not successful, so the people there remained a part of the United States. Civil war as defined in the dictionary would be accurate.
It was not a rebellion as the people of several of the sovereign states had decided to peaceably secede.
It was not successful due to the illegal military invasion by the North.
It was a rebellion because their unilateral acts of secession were illegal.
It was not successful due to the illegal military invasion by the North.
Once the Davis regime chose to escalate to armed conflict at Sumter then the southern defeat was inevitable.
It's called federalism. If a bunch of communists want to turn Massachusetts into a hellhole of taxation AND have the state constitution and the votes. Let them.
America was designed as 13 mini states functioning under a tighter umbrella than a federation. To the outside world they were one unit. Inside the borders, they were supposed to be 13 individual states.
It's a great idea since the parasites of communism could get together and screw up ONE state, not all of them at once.
Of course the Civil War and the subsequent growth of the federal levianthan we call government has replaced that concept.
Thank you for posting this!
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You are very welcome.
The Constitution left questions of the Police Power, that is the right to legislate as to health, safety and morals, to the States. Your unhappiness with how some of them choose to exercise that power, does not authorize you to work for Federal usurpation of powers never delegated.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
FR's resident southbashing posse will now stoop to slamming Walter Williams too in order to try to sate their insatiable appetite for moral superiority and sanctimonious arse-orifice-ness.
It never ends...social PC revisionists masquerading as "conservatives".
Walter Williams=Good Company
I'll take Walter Williams over a Morris Dees or Julian Bond any day. The South Bashers must love their comrades in arms.
"Worst Evil To Have Ever Existed"....signing off...lol
This is EXACTLY why slavery became a contrived issue AFTER the start of the war. The north simply wanted to keep Europe out of it. Things were inching that way and you know it!
…the dicitionaries also present another definition which happens to be an accurate description of what happened.
Sorry, my friend, but you’ve just posted more of your endless non sequiturs. South Carolina and many of the other Southern States had formally seceded from the United States prior to the initiation of hostilities. Before you can logically apply your definition of ‘civil war’ to the conflict in question, you must first prove that secession was unconstitutional (i.e., that the Southern States were still a part of the United States during the war). In other words, if secession was constitutional (and the United States Constitution nowhere prohibits State secession), then the war was fought between ‘opposing countries,’ not “opposing groups of citizens of the same country.”
“Whoever you're debating might whack you over the head with things like that.”
;>)
Well then call it a rebellion then, don't try to paint it as something it wasn't.
Congratulations - another of your ‘classic’ non sequiturs! The Southern States formally seceded from the federal union. To label that secession “rebellion,” you must first prove that State secession was unconstitutional. And of course, the Constitution nowhere prohibits State secession.
“Honestly, have you done no reading at all on this subject?”
;>)
…it wasn't a war between sovereign nations. It was a rebellion or, at best, a civil war.
The southern rebellion was not successful, so the people there remained a part of the United States. Civil war as defined in the dictionary would be accurate.
And again, your conclusions (that secession constituted rebellion or civil war) do not follow from the premises (the specific written terms of the United States Constitution). In short, you’ve simply posted additional non sequiturs.
But then, that’s to be expected…
;>)
Absolutely - consider the following:
…[W]e, the People of South Carolina, to the end that it may be fully understood by the Government of the United States, and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to maintain this, our Ordinance and Declaration, at every hazard, Do further Declare that we wil not submit to the application of force, on the part of the Federal Government, to reduce this State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage, by Congress, of any act ... to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce, or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union: and that the people of this State will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connexion with the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right to do.
South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification, November 24, 1832
The State of South Carolina very nearly seceded a generation before the war – and slavery was not the issue.
;>)
Actually, the Constitution itself notes that it was established “between the States so ratifying the same” (Article VII), and can only be lawfully amended by “three fourths” of the States (which might one day actually be inhabited by a minority of the ‘national’ population ;>). As Mr. Justice Thomas so astutely noted only a few short years ago:
“…[I]t would make no sense to speak of powers as being reserved to the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole, because the Constitution does not contemplate that those people will either exercise power or delegate it. The Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the undifferentiated people of the Nation.”
Clearly, the federal union is much less a union of the undifferentiated ‘American people’ than it is a union of the several States.
;>)
Every Northerner I've ever heard. Certainly not any real Southerners.
Actually, Mr. Lincoln’s election was only the last in a long series of events that contributed to the decision of the Southern States to secede. Even John G. Nicolay, Mr. Lincoln’s personal friend & private secretary (who could hardly be called unbiased), conceded the point:
With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some of the members [of the secession convention] were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution. "The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only against right, but that it was without cause.
That “thirty years” brings the origin of the secession movement at least as far back as the Tariff Crisis of the 1830s – which had nothing to do with either Mr. Lincoln or slavery. And if you read Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of 1825 and other historical records, you will find that the roots of secession significantly predate even the Tariff Crisis.
(By the way, we can thank our friend Walt for the Nicolay quote... ;>)
As a proud member of Red State America, I'm really glad the South lost the Civil War. :)
As someone who has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, I’m really NOT glad Mr. Lincoln’s government and the Northern States ignored our own history, the writings of the Founders, the written records of the ratification debates, the ratification documents of the States, the most respected legal references of the early Republic, and the specific written words of the Constitution of the United States – and pursued a war against secession that killed nearly three quarters of a million Americans…
If such ‘foreign recognition’ was actually necessary, then please answer one simple question:
Which foreign “country” recognized the very first sovereign nation to ever exist?
;>)
I understand Lincoln didn't give a tinker's doodle for the Constitution. Ends, Means, You Know. He didn't HAVE to HAVE that war. For some reason, he seemed to WANT that war.
Nonsense! In fact, many of “the Souths legislators” asserted a constitutional right to State secession. As Senator Robert Augustus Toombs of Georgia declared upon his resignation from the United States Senate:
Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new government; they have demanded no new Constitution. Look to their records at home and here from the beginning of this national strife until its consummation in the disruption of the empire, and they have not demanded a single thing except that you shall abide by the Constitution of the United States; that constitutional rights shall be respected, and that justice shall be done.…
Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and the duties of the federal government. I am content and have ever been content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I do not believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that I would have voted for it as a proposition de novo, yet I am bound to it by oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by established forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance… I say that the Constitution is the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that “the powers not granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to the States, belonged to the States respectively or the people.”
That hardly qualifies as ‘admitting that he was violating his oath of office to defend the US Constitution,’ now does it? Rather, it is a declaration by a Southern legislator that the Constitution itself (Amendment X) reserved the right of secession to the States and their people...
;>)
Since the state of Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, the full force of the US Consititution protected it, and prohibited Lincoln from freeing slaves there. However, when it came to the states in rebellion, Lincoln used his presidential war power to proclaim slaves in those states free. This was accomplished in a practical sense as the advancing Union armies liberated large areas of the south from the retreating southern armies.
Mencken's observation that Lincoln had no jurisdiction in the seceded states was simply incorrect.
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