Posted on 03/10/2010 6:35:02 PM PST by Idabilly
Over the course of American history, there has been no greater conflict of visions than that between Thomas Jefferson’s voluntary republic, founded on the natural right of peaceful secession, and Abraham Lincoln’s permanent empire, founded on the violent denial of that same right.
That these two men somehow shared a common commitment to liberty is a lie so monstrous and so absurd that its pervasiveness in popular culture utterly defies logic.
After all, Jefferson stated unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence that, at any point, it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…
And, having done so, he said, it is the people’s right to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Contrast that clear articulation of natural law with Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, where he flatly rejected the notion that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Instead, Lincoln claimed that, despite the clear wording of the Tenth Amendment, no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; [and] resolves and ordinances [such as the Declaration of Independence] to that effect are legally void…
King George III agreed.
(Excerpt) Read more at southernheritage411.com ...
Can anyone read that letter, or look at the shenanigans in Missouri using the Illinois state government, a serving line officer of the U.S. Army, and the Wide-Awake waffen, and then tell us with a straight face that Abraham Lincoln had any other policy toward the South than to war them all down and "reorganize" their governments and politics by coup d'etat?
The best the Southerners could have hoped for was what Missouri and Maryland got: entire governments in prison and whole states under military occupation, according to the plan forecast by John Quincy Adams for bringing the South and West to heel -- the Yankee bastard.
When did anyone ever dream up doing something like that to Massachusetts?
But the Bay State men dreamed it up, they helped carry it into execution, and now 145 years later, they squat comfortably and confidently atop their carrion bonepiles and declaim to us about morality and good government and what our politics ought to be.
Now I know why there is a hell.
It was a standing Navy (and army for that matter) that Jefferson had a problem with. However the ongoing impressment of American into the Royal Navy, and especially the Chesapeake-Leopard affair in 1807, made it obvious that a standing military during peacetime was necessary to answer threats from without.
Yes, I know it's more bull but I'm going to read your post anyway. I promise.
See my comments about the Missouri Wide-Awakes above.
Yes, I know. But I noticed you forgot to talk about the St. Louis Minute Men - the pro-secessionist group that was active at the time and who the Wide-Awakes were organizing to oppose. And I also noticed that you completely forgot the mention that a state convention convened in March voted down secession. Why is that? Why is it that you have no problems with Southern mobs taking the state out of the Union against the wishes of the people as expressed at a convention held to determine the whole secession question, but you see nothing but evil intent in an attempt to oppose that attempt?
Also, if you are correct (and you are not), then why were Ben Butler and the Sixth Mass formed up and moving within 48 hours of Lincoln's call for troops?
Well it would nice if you were specific on which 6th Mass. you were talking about. Assuming you mean the one that was attacked by the rebel mob in Baltimore, then it was ready to move for the same reason why Virginia militia regiments were ready to move against Harper's Ferry the day the state voted for secession - state's had been organizing militias for decades. The 6th Mass. was made up of militia companies that existed. It was an organization of long standing with a history going back to the Revolutionary War. The fact that it could be collected and deployed withing a few days is not surprising.
Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts were all on foot within hours of Lincoln's call.
Same explanation as the Massachusetts militia.
Threat from the South? I don't think so.
Why not? They had already fired on the flag and had made it clear that they would have Sumter regardless. All the aggressive acts had come from them. The threat from such an unstable regime was very real and something Lincoln had to keep in mind.
What, did someone repeal Article I on us? Article I, Section 8: To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. Article IV, Section IV: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and 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." Obviously the Southern states were in insurrection and opposing the execution of the laws of the Union. And considering that the state governments were the ringleaders then it is folly to think the President had to wait for them to call for their own suppression. But folly makes up so much of the Southron argument.
The man who kicked the ass of every rebel general sent against him. It must be so embarrassing for you to have been beaten by a lush.
ROTFLMAO!!!! What part of "at and after the inauguration" did you fail to understand? Lincoln wasn't giving Scott instructions before then.
Massachusetts is said to have six thousand six hundred and seventy men, all equipped and ready to march at twelve hours notice.
New York State, according to the same authority, is pledged to furnish ten thousand men at forty eight hours notice, and other states in proportion.
Illinois and other Western States, adds the Herald, are begging to be called into the field.
Like I wrote in post 19, Lincoln couldn't have done much of anything without the support of the Northern States that elected him—twice. And maybe he gets a bad rap.
The Civil War proves one thing beyond dispute: In the age of the steam engine and telegraph; a group of states can leave the USA, then Confederate, form a functioning national Govt. and a huge army in four months. In today's terms, that's pretty good. Shows how useless the Feds really are and how the system SEEMS to be DESIGNED for that event....Hmmmm..
Federalists did the deal because pandering politicians, the mob and loser states (some were in the north) liked to inflate the currency. They had a moral reason--creating a sound financial system-- to accept Jefferson and his fellow aristocrats getting partial extra representation for every slave they owned.
The first movement to secession was from the north. Oliver Wolcott wanted CT to put out if Jefferson was elected. New England and New York almost did pull out in 1814.
Fisher Ames in 1804:
Federalism was therefore manifestly founded upon a mistake, on the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the public morals. The party now in power committed no such mistake. They acted upon what men actually are, not what they ought to be . . .They inflamed the ignorant; they flattered the vain; they offered novelty to the restless; and promised plunder to the base. The envious were assured that the great should fall; and the ambitious that they should become great . . . we are descending from a supposed orderly and stable republican government into a licentious democracy . . .
Good description of the Democrat Party of today isn't it? I don't see why conservatives think Jefferson was such a wonderful guy. He fomented a second American Revolution, from which, the licentious democracy and abandonment of the principle of delegated powers we see today sprang. Oh yeah, he talked a good game. He was the Bill Clinton of his day. He would say anything that sounded good to a particular audience and did.
If the Governor of Pennsylvania took an interview with the Administration on April 5th, then when was he called to that interview by, no doubt, the President?
Come to think of it, Col. Lee had his famous interview with Gen. Scott on April 20th. So when were his orders cut, and by whom, at whose request, on what date? Lee had to come from San Antonio.
And if Massachusetts had that many men trained up to a razor's edge for war, then when did the State begin training them, and at whose instigation, and with what purpose? This had been going on for a while.
And the South was the "aggressor" because they put out a call for large numbers of (yet) non-existent troops?
Please.
The apologetics keep flowing out from their fountainhead, only less and less convincingly as time goes by.
The Wide-Awakes were a political marching group organized well before the 1860 election. Who's zooming whom here? They were radical, militant, sinister paramilitary political street formations exactly analogous to the Nazi Sturmabteilungen, the Brown Shirts. The Wide-Awakes dressed in uniforms and wore black oilskins when they marched in their lamplight parades.
Don't play "equivalency" games with me. The Republicans dreamed these guys up on their own. There was no equivalent on the other side when the Wide-Awakes were organized.
And I also noticed that you completely forgot the mention that a state convention convened in March voted down secession. Why is that?
Because we were talking about something else -- the fact that Lincoln started planning before he armed the Wide-Awakes in January, to suppress the entire State of Missouri.
Missouri isn't the only Southern State -- it was a Southern State, pal, get over it! Full of rednecks! And you can't stand it, but there it is! -- to have voted down secession, only to change their minds later when they saw what Lincoln was doing.
Only they never got the chance -- Lincoln had his tigers at their throats before they could move.
Why is it that you have no problems with Southern mobs taking the state out of the Union against the wishes of the people as expressed at a convention held to determine the whole secession question, but you see nothing but evil intent in an attempt to oppose that attempt?
Nice try. The whole State was a "Southern mob" according to you ..... except for the Missouri Wide-Awakes who were innocent little lambikins rowing back and forth to the Illinois side to arm up with the contents of Illinois arsenals.
Your "attempt to oppose that attempt" was the original attempt -- don't try to turn this around. Your guy Lincoln jumped first. He started the whole damned thing, including the Missouri coup d'etat.
The Missouri volunteer Militia, the MMV, were legitimate. The Wide-Awakes were not. That's the difference. The MMV were the People of Missouri in arms, and your guy sent a jackleg army to "arrest" them and subjugate them -- precisely the thing that Hamilton and Madison promised us wouldn't happen under the federal system they'd devised with the Constitution.
Lincoln used force against States the way I use flyswatters on flies, and he did it unprovoked. Lincoln was the aggressor, you can't get out of it.
And Caesar had the falling sickness. So what?
Helen Keller could have beaten the South with the resources at Grant's disposal.
But might doesn't make right, does it, Dr. Lecter?
Oh, well! That sounds like a perfectly good reason to cut a few hundred thousand throats.
We must have a sound financial system -- no matter what it costs somebody else!
Not a good argument as the aristocracy Jefferson represented were slaveholders. Haven't referred to the civil war at all in any of my comments. The Republic Federalists had created was radically altered by Jefferson's faction almost 60 years earlier. Everything else flowed from that.
The letter proving the contrary notwithstanding.
Ever notice, rb, that every time you document a point, every time someone makes a good argument, this guy starts hitting the ROFLMAO button?
I think it's covered under "slothful induction" and "resistance to argument/elenchus".
Dishonesty is the simpler word.
That your best card? You're going to have to get another one -- slavery had been around for, oh, 7000 years or more (as an alternative to eating captives), and the argument that Slavery Is Not a Good Thing dated back only to the exertions of William Wilberforce in England. Which was a long, uphill slog for Wilberforce, given that even Leviticus and Deuteronomy (and Numbers, I think) contained moral guidance for the keeping of slaves.
So what's your point? Other than to judge ad hoc 18th-century men by 21st-century lights ? Which aren't all that bright either, come to think of it.
Not true, as I have just posted to you. And lying to people and sending troops after dissembling same, is not "aggressive" in your book, I'm sure.
The threat from such an unstable regime was very real and something Lincoln had to keep in mind.
Oh, so the way to deal eirenically with an "unstable" regime (that didn't exist, in Lincoln's theory) is to poke it with a stick. Good peace policy. Not.
Lincoln was going for a war all the way.
I forgot about the armed St. Louis Wide Awakes. Members of that particular branch of this Northern paramilitary organization were mustered into the US army and used to seize the Missouri state militia.
Here are a couple of parts of a very long article entitled "The Wide Awakes" from the November 17, 1860, State Gazette of Austin, Texas. They were a serious potential threat to the South. GOPCapitalist used to call them Lincoln's brownshirts.
Military Preparation. -- It has been suggested by several of our leading citizens of both parties, that there ought to be some military organization in our city, with a view to be prepared to some extent for the crisis that seems to be threatening our country. Such organization of companies, under the name of the minute men or otherwise, has taken place in most of the States of the South and in many places in Texas. Certainly the complete organization, thorough drilling and equipment of 300,000 Wide Awakes throughout the North, for the avowed purpose of forcing the South to submit to the domination of Black Republican rule and Black Republican principles, should warn us by every dictate of prudence, to make some preparation for our common defence.
And
At Brandywine, Pennsylvania, the other day, 50,000 of them drilled in the presence of a Republican mass-meeting of 25,000.
About 4,000 were in procession at Albany a few evenings since.
The 50,000 number seemed high to me. I checked to see if I could verify the numbers and found a September 12, 1860 New York Times article that said of this meeting, "There were nearly 5,000 equipped men, all drilled in military tactics, marching and counter-marching, and manoeuvering around the field ..." See Link. So, 5,000, not 50,000. Still a big number. Bigger numbers supposedly drilled elsewhere. See: 12,000 in NYC. Here is a drawing of the NYC march: Drawing of NYC March.
In the State Gazette article, Seward is quoted as saying that the Wide Awakes "would be found mighty convenient for ... crushing out any attempt to overthrow the Government."
And then proceed to piss it all away and lose, bringing untold death and destruction to themselves as a result. You planning on repeating that part, too?
Trained to a razor's edge? ROTFLMAO!!!!! What universe are you living in? They were militia. Little more than an armed mob. On both sides. As Bull Run was to demonstrate.
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