The Untold Story of the Civil War

Jackson Jambalaya ^ | December 2, 2008 | Kingfish

[lentulusgracchus]

[CK] A "more perfect Union" is no mere confederation of sovereign states.

"Confederation" describes, as Hamilton patiently pointed out, describes a much looser combination of free states or city-states than ours ever was. The Articles of Confederation built a stronger house than, say, the Etruscan league, or the Greek leagues.

Even under the Articles, the States ceded some sovereign powers to the Congress, such as the conduct of war and foreign policy. The Articles' cessions didn't add up to a general cession of sovereignty and self-dissolution, and the same was true of the Constitution. The States did not abolish or transfer their sovereignty, when they lent their sovereign powers and agreed that the federal government should exercise them.

The key to understanding the cessions of the Constitution is in the Lockean distinction between perpetual on the one hand and threshold, or permanent consent, on the other. "Perpetual", as in Latin perpetuus, means "continuously operating" (until it stops or is revoked). Locke used the term "tacit consent" to mean the same thing. A "permanent", or in Locke-speak, an "express" or as lawyers call it now, a "threshold" grant of consent, is a single act, by which the power of control and revision is thereafter relinquished by the grantor forever.

The consent given the Constitution by the People of the 13 original States was "perpetual" and "continuously operating". It was not a one-way street, a one-time event that could never be revisited: the amendment provision alone in Article V is enough to show their intention. And in certain circumstances, it must be said, as someone else has said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

If the rebs thought the states sovereign and believed in states rights, how come under the reb constituion, Confederate states could not outlaw slavery within their borders? States rights indeed!

It's like the Defense of Marriage Act(s) today. They wanted to make a strong statement on that issue. The Confederate Constitution was nevertheless amendable.

The whole point of the Confederacy was that the departing States simply didn't want to be part of a Republic dominated by people who hated them and meant to disadvantage them.

[lentulusgracchus]

No fair. You answer my question first.

[lentulusgracchus]

[Me] The People can't unmake their government? What an interesting concept.

[Your reply] They can try ... and that's what's called rebellion.

Does that mean that your answer is "no"?

By the way, when the People unmake their instrument, that is not rebellion. But you knew that.

[lentulusgracchus]

[Me] So, who does have all power, N-S? Who has the power to tell the People, "no"?

The Constitution and the rule of law.

You mean, the federal government and the men who run it, and the clerisy who tell those men what to do.

[Non-Sequitur]

Ping me when you diss me, troll.

I suppose I should have out of politenes, though it would have been wasted on you anyway. Still I don't see how the truth is 'dissing'?

Ping to my #303 above.

You lost me at your Nazi reference. Par for your course.

So, on what clause of the Constitution do you rest your hero's rape of the South, and of the Constitution?

"Rape of the South?" ROTFLMAO. The South followed her own self-destuctive path. She has nobody to blame but her self for the negative consequences of her own decision.

Can you point me to the clause authorizing the President to make war on his own motion, without reference to the Congress, and treat the People like a pustule? To suppress the rights of the People in their States, to exercise their right to secede from political abuse and the ascendancy of a violently (as in Kansas and at Harper's Ferry) hostile political faction?

The Militia Acts gave the president the authority to combat rebellion when Congress was out of session. After July 1861 everything was done with Congressional oversight. But you knew that.

Show me.

Why bother? In the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "You have two good eyes but you still won't see."

[Non-Sequitur]

You mean, the federal government and the men who run it, and the clerisy who tell those men what to do.

I mean, the Constitution and the rule of law.

[Non-Sequitur]

Does that mean that your answer is "no"?

That means there are legal means for changing things and illegal means. The South chose the later, and that's called rebellion. And what the South's rebellion resulted in is called an ass whuppin.

By the way, when the People unmake their instrument, that is not rebellion. But you knew that.

It is when they try to do it through illegal means. But you knew that too.

[Ditto]

The answer to you question is the Militia Act.

Now answer my question.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Even had secession been sanctioned by the Constitution, the motives behind it are good for laughter and scorn. You have the "intellectual giant" John C. Calhoun insulting all the poor white Southern dirt farmers by saying that the southern climate mandated slave agricultural work. Maybe the would-be Ashley Wilkes of the plantation aristocracy couldn't dirty their soft white hands by doing real physical labor, but real southern white men could and did. Then closer to the war, you had the fire-eater who insulted real southern white womanhood by saying slave labor freed southern women from degrading tasks such as washing and cooking. So much for southern chivalry! This degenerate contempt for real labor is why intelligent southerners should have nothing but disgust for the decedent blood-stained class who led the nation into war to preserve and expand their contemptible slavery civilization.

The whole point of the Confederacy was that the departing States simply didn't want to be part of a Republic dominated by people who hated them and meant to disadvantage them.

I wouldn't call prohibition of slavery from the territories a significant expression of hate except in the minds of a slave holding class whose general political political maturity as a class was eroded by years of specials coddling from the rest of the country. The Republican victory of 1860 was merely evidence that the rest of the country was fed up with the dreams of an unlimited slavery empire.

The spirit of militant Dixie:

[CodeToad]

“The Constitution is the greatest protection of our liberties”

While it was, it isn’t anymore. The Supreme Court has made several key decisions that stipulate the Constitution is only a prevailing document if they say it is.

So far we have our property that can be taken for any reason by the government and sold to whomever they decide to sell it to.

We have a President-elect that has not and most likely will not be required to prove he is a US citizen before taking office. You’d think that would be a major issue with the court, but it isn’t.

I’d go on but the fact remains that the Constitution has been relegated to history.

[Non-Sequitur]

Well, Dearie, I see that you have conceded the point, and now are navigating into the “starvation” myth, and the false “status quo” creation of yours.

Hardly conceded. And hardly myths.

You also squeeze out of the fact that on several occasions, the states of South Carolina and Florida, as well as the Confederacy warned Lincoln that naval action would be war. You can rehash the cabinet meetings, but their subjects were successful resupply, not war avoidance.

Resupply. Nothing hostile in that.

There would never have been war had not Lincoln called up for 75,000 “volunteers”, and sent federal ships to blockade.

There would never have been a call for volunteers or a blockade if the South had not initiated the war by bombarding Sumter. That's the fact that you're avoiding.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Except for the graft, the US government did not get a return on its investment.

Wrong. The UP did go through several bankruptcies and reorganizations, but the one consistent factor was the government demanding its money, with interest. One of those reorganizations, in 1898, paid the government, $64 million of the $70 million it was still owed. The following year the Central Pacific paid off the $58.8 million it owed. The last of the government bonds was paid off in 1909.

The Charleston project was a locally funded venture by regional investors, with no federal expenditures.

Never said it was done with federal money. What I said was that the state of South Carolina which footed much of the bill. They endorsed bonds to the tune of $2 million, which was never repaid when the company went bankrupt, leaving the state on the hook. They reorganized again, this time as the Blue Ridge Railroad. South Carolina agreed to buy a million dollars worth of stock in that, and to endorse another $1.25 million in bonds. Then they went belly up again. The state paid the bond debt by selling off the stock it owned in other, more successful operations, but they declined to spend anymore money on the project, and private investors had lost all interest by that time.

[lentulusgracchus]

[Me] You mean, the federal government and the men who run it, and the clerisy who tell those men what to do.

[You, persisting in your continental lies, fantasies, and self-serving political garbage] I mean, the Constitution and the rule of law.

The Constitution is a document. Men ACT. The Constitution sanctions them, or it does not. The Constitution, an intellectual construct, has no inherent power to force its makers, when they decide to unmake it, it has no theoretic or legal force, either.

The Constitution does not own the People or exercise sovereignty over them. The People are sovereign -- not you, or your favorite politicians, or a document.

People > creations of the People. That is the fundamental inequation that you reverse, for your grubby purposes.

Lincoln's acts had no sanction in the Constitution or in Original Intent, as shown by the writings of the Framers. The Framers would have eaten rat poison before they'd have coerced a whole State by arms. Lincoln wasn't about the American Idea at all. He had another agenda entirely, and used Original Intent as his doormat.

After South Carolina withdrew from the Union, Lincoln had no authority in that State. You cannot show it to me; it did not and does not exist.

You lie when you insist otherwise.

[lentulusgracchus]

There would never have been a call for volunteers or a blockade if the South had not initiated the war by bombarding Sumter. That's the fact that you're avoiding.

And you accuse me of opinionating without factual support!

What a toad!

[lentulusgracchus]

The answer to you question is the Militia Act. Now answer my question.

You'd originally asked me, trying to impeach the legality, morality, and/or motives of Southern secession, what injury the South had absorbed before secession. I gather you are trying to make an argument that the States' secession was for "light and transient causes" and therefore, somehow, "illegal".

One, why would you constrain the States by requiring them to suffer damages from their enemies before applying the redress of secession? If they seceded as a preventive, what of that? The animus was real, it was ugly, and it wasn't going to go away. It certainly didn't go away after Lincoln won his war.

Two, how are the People constrained in any way, by a document that does not sanction the constraint in express language? The Southern States were not legally or constitutionally required to remain in the Union after the Constitution had ceased to serve them, and their neighbors had made clear their intention to harm them.

Three, why do you keep implying that the People are not sovereign, but playthings of their Government? Do you maintain that Hamilton successfully gulled the States into ratifying a death-trap fascist constitution?

[lentulusgracchus]

The Militia Acts gave the president the authority to combat rebellion when Congress was out of session.

Rebellion, yes -- but there was no rebellion.

Or perhaps you can point me to a certification of insurrection forwarded to the President or the Congress by a besieged legislature or governor of a State? Lincoln solicited one from Gov. Sam Houston -- but he didn't get it. He knew what he needed, he told us by his historically documented action what he needed to make his claim of "rebellion" (and yours) good -- and he didn't get it, not from a single one of the departing States. Their secession was sovereign, it was perfect, they had every right.

When the People act, it is not rebellion. Sovereign acts by the Sovereign People are not, can not be, rebellion against their own authority.

And if you claim authority over the People, you are either a tyrant, or you are the invisible high God of Israel.

The South followed her own self-destructive path. She has nobody to blame but her self for the negative consequences of her own decision.

Your Honor, the victim walked down that dark alley with money in his pocket -- I had to kill him -- it was his own fault!

You argue like a criminal.

[lentulusgracchus]

I wouldn't call prohibition of slavery from the territories a significant expression of hate

Harper's Ferry was. Everyone knew that the Territories weren't the real issue, and that not even slavery was the real issue.

The Republicans made themselves a sectional party. They were a nonentity south of the Ohio River. So the only way they could make their writ run in the South would have been by breaking down the States exactly as they did through the Civil War, only they'd have had to do it by Acts of Congress instead, using their federal majority to usurp the reserved powers protected by the Tenth Amendment, and doing in court and in Congress what in fact they ended up doing on the battlefield -- a coup d'etat.

The Southern States were right to leave, under the circumstances. Things had certainly come to a place that satisfied the speculations of the various Framers, about what it would take to divide the country.

[lentulusgracchus]

the fact remains that the Constitution has been relegated to history.

Which is exactly what H.L. Mencken's comment about the Gettysburg Address meant, with the fillip that Mencken considered that his countrymen were dolts, not to see the real meaning of what Lincoln had said. But that was Mencken, being a curmudgeon.