Posted on 09/07/2010 12:43:35 PM PDT by gjmerits
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at wolvesofliberty.com ...
And how dare you quote Robert Toombs and John C. Calhoun? Remember, they were ...... (all together now) ....... WAA-cisss!!
Which means, of course, that they never told the truth, even when they were reciting multiplication tables, and that nothing that ever flowed from either man's mouth or pen was ever true.
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Half the presidents on Rushmore were Southerners. So also were Madison and Monroe, as were Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk, and Andrew Johnson. Jefferson, Polk, and Jackson, among the three of them, defined the outline of the United States and made sure it went all the way to the Pacific and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Did Garfield or Chester Arthur or John Adams or Cal Coolidge do that?
Then Northerners decided that Southerners couldn't play any more, killed as many of them as they could, and looted the continent for their own benefit.
Result: Two world wars, three medium-sized wars, four panics, a depression, and one stagflationary recession since the REAL South was excluded from the White House, and only the Freaks you Yankees like to vote for were elected.
The South didn't vote for LBJ, Clinton, or Carter. You did.
Eat your words, wordgrinder.
Oh, and Poppy is a Connecticut Yankee, and Shrub counts as half of one, and half West Texas. The West Texas half is all man; the Yankee half cossets homosexual Yale ring-knockers and toe-tappers, and spent all his time giving tax breaks to silver-haired Ivy League graduates.
” According to you the colonies peacefully and legally seceded, and Great Britain launched an unprovoked invasion. Who’s view differs more from reality.
But I would disagree with you on yet another point. In both rebellions, ‘right’ won out. “
No according to me the British are better people then the folks from the Northern States as they eventually gave up and learned the lesion of the American Revolution which Northern hypocritically disregarded.
“Go ahead and rebel again, nuke a couple of cities, and then we’ll talk about it.”
No, we won’t. You’ll either be dead or I and my countrymen will. Either way millions of Americans will be dead and for what?
To betray our founding beleive that government must have the consent of the governed to be legitimate?
To maintain a union by the sword of the unwilling?
Unlike you I don’t beleive might makes “right”, but I am by no means not above using might to defend right. I don’t wish to see ANYONE die, You only kill a man to save your own life or freedom(practical life) from their unending attempts at usurpation.
If you wish to fight a meaningless and extraordinary bloody war over our freedom I am game, as every freeman must be perpetually game. For there is no object on this Earth of greater significants then our lives and freedom.
But I urge you to think twice before for you force this bloody conflict. To rule others against their will is not that important, nor is it so rewarding a thing as to justify this fight.
“So then what? Ratchet the chains down tighter? Start another war with the U.S. to regain your chattel? Surely you don’t expect us to believe that you would just have sat there and take it? “
Actually the Confederate leaders knew slavery was inevitably doomed, if they were fighting the war over slavery alone they were fools. But they we’re fighting the war over slavery they were fighting it to defend their country form the aggressive northern invasion.
The Southern States left the union because the North was not only failing to honor its Constitutional obligations & limitations it was using the Federal Government to abuses the South thou preferential(protectionist) trade policy.
The North got factories and industry(which fueled their rapid and disproportional growth), while the South footed the bill in both Taxes and Trade losses. (Among other things)
The fact that the political situation was getting worse and worse as more pro-northern States entered the union out of the west made the souths final arduous choice an relativity easy one. Stay and get screwed over even more then you are already getting screw over, or leave and compete among the world as equals.
As for the issue of escaped slaves its possible that the south might have talked the north into an extradition treaty that required the return of slaves, but even so the treaty would have been even less enforceable the the existing Federal Constitutional law.
The south couldn’t military threaten the United States they knew that, even before the war started, which is why all their war plans henge upon getting foreign support. So reclaiming their “chattel” would not have been possible.
The real kicker would have been in the establishment of a stronger more centralized border patrol then already existed in the pre-existing slave patrol system. But even that wouldn’t have worked. Building an “iron curtain” would simply not have been technologically or economically feasible at the time, much less effective.
Most likely what would have happen is that over the next 50 years slavery would have collapsed being economically too costly to be worth it. Many of the existing slaves would probably have feed to the united states.
The United States(northern States) would have had to start paying more attention to the rights and fair treatment of their minion. The Union would have had to be a better deal then independents for all States.
As a result the Federal government would not be able to politically engage in expensive idealistic crusades, to “crush” this or that evil, or otherwise build up this or that industry. The measure of their disparaging policies would be the willingness of the people to secede. In rugged individualist minded America that “balance” could not have afforded to be too far from anarchy at the Federal level.
At the state level of course the story is very different, due to the actual meaning of the insurrection clause of the Constitution, and the clause which prohibits the admission of new states from parts of existing states without the consent of the existing state’s concerned.
But then again in America individuals(as apposed to political majorities) can vote with their feet, so its not so bad.
Bigotry aside, let me point out that you ignored the question entirely. Is it your contention that the colonies peacefully and legally seceded, as you claim the Southern states did? And that the British response to that formed an illegal and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, as you claim Lincoln did?
No, we won’t. You’ll either be dead or I and my countrymen will. Either way millions of Americans will be dead and for what?
For what? For your failed second rebellion, of course. Would it be worth it for you?
If you wish to fight a meaningless and extraordinary bloody war over our freedom I am game, as every freeman must be perpetually game. For there is no object on this Earth of greater significants then our lives and freedom.
The Union fought a bloody war because that was the path the confederacy chose and what they forced on the country.
Actually the Confederate leaders knew slavery was inevitably doomed, if they were fighting the war over slavery alone they were fools.
Give me one quote from one Southern leader prior to or at the start of the rebellion indicating that they thought slavery was doomed to an early extinction.
But they we’re fighting the war over slavery they were fighting it to defend their country form the aggressive northern invasion.
If you start a war then you alone are responsible if that war comes home to you. You can call it 'aggressive northern invasion' all you want. But put the blame where it lies, with those who started the war. Jefferson Davis and his cabal.
The Southern States left the union because the North was not only failing to honor its Constitutional obligations & limitations it was using the Federal Government to abuses the South thou preferential(protectionist) trade policy.
Absolute nonsense. The Southern states rebelled to protect their institution of slavery from what they saw as the threat posed to its expansion by the election of Abraham Lincoln.
The North got factories and industry(which fueled their rapid and disproportional growth), while the South footed the bill in both Taxes and Trade losses. (Among other things)
Again, absolute nonsense. The vast majority of tariffs were paid by Northern consumers. The South actually imported very little. And exported a great deal, regardless of tariffs.
As for the issue of escaped slaves its possible that the south might have talked the north into an extradition treaty that required the return of slaves, but even so the treaty would have been even less enforceable the the existing Federal Constitutional law.
Without the disproportionate representation in Congress enjoyed by the Southern states I have a hard time believing that pro-slavery legislation would have been passed. Nor do I believe that without the slave state senators any such treaty would have been passed. I can see the South launching yet another war to press their case concerning their chattel, given it's importance to the Southern economy and Southern culture.
The south couldn’t military threaten the United States they knew that, even before the war started, which is why all their war plans henge upon getting foreign support. So reclaiming their “chattel” would not have been possible.
And yet that did not stop them from starting their war to begin with.
Most likely what would have happen is that over the next 50 years slavery would have collapsed being economically too costly to be worth it. Many of the existing slaves would probably have feed to the united states.
Hardly. Had slavery been ended in the South, for whatever reason, I can't see the South allowing their former slaves to migrate North. Someone would be needed to do the work the former slaves did. Who else would their be other than the freed blacks? More likely they would sit on their black population in ways that would have made South Africa blush.
But then again in America individuals(as apposed to political majorities) can vote with their feet, so its not so bad.
And yet here you are, with your other pseudo-rebels.
I think L had no intention of touching slavery at all in the South itself, for two reasons. First, he I think still believed in the "natural limits of slavery" reasoning (terribly flawed) which held that if kept out of the territories, slavery would prove unsuited to more "modern" forms of labor and industry. This was horribly wrong: by 1860, URBAN slavery was the most rapidly growing form of slavery and industrial slavery---where slaves literally brought home wages to their masters---was common and growing. Second, I think he believed---as Huston argues---that it was not about labor, despite his many speeches discussing "free labor." I think he recognized it was, and always had been, about property rights, and either a person was property or he was a person. That's why he continually used the phrase "eat the bread of his own hand" or words to that effect. A bread making machine can't eat the bread of its "own hand."
Now, as to Helper, it was not unusual at all for the abolitionist wing of the GOP (of which Lincoln was NOT one), to go right to the abolition of slavery in the South, and sure, they latched on to HH like anti-semites do to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." But a more interesting book that was not only ignored by the radicals in the North (who wanted not only abolition but "free love," abolition of ALL property rights, etc.) was George Fitzhugh's book, Cannibals All! which argued that slavery was socialism at its best and that all workers should be enslaved. The abolitionists well knew that their cause was over if the rank and file in the north thought that abolition meant also the end of (white) marriage and the destruction of non-slave property rights.
Divorce? Y'all love making up comparisons to keep from calling your cause what it really was, a rebellion. Now it's a divorce. In spite of the fact that your cause bears no resemblance to it.
ROTFLMAO!!! You guys crack me up every time.
Only to you oppressive/abusive types. Only one difference.. there wasn't no restraining order filed. Well hell, that would have been another judge tossed in the slammer.
So, do you or do you not believe that 'might makes right'?
Which is it?
Right makes right. The right side won the American Revolution. The right side won the War of Southern Rebellion.
It’s their feminist victim-status side that keeps them returning to the divorce metaphor. Why else would they be so fond of such a logical fallacy?
There's a reason so many groups who've done business with Northern businessmen detest you. Huron Indians, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards -- you guys are the moral halitosis of the New World.
Non-Sequitur, curb your dog. He's crapping all over the thread.
There was no rebellion. Only an exercise of rights. But then, you knew that.
There’s no way I could ever out-crap you lentil-breath.
The South exercised her rights, and the North resorted to the sword.
The biggest exercise of diplomacy during Lincoln's tenure was erecting the fiction that "the South started it". That and the Trent Affair -- but in the latter, Lincoln had substantial help from Prince Albert; the Fort Sumter affair he arranged on his own, cards held tightly to his vest.
What circumstances would have provided Lincoln a reason to meet with them?
In other words, might makes right. Yes? No?
Just answer the damn question, you POS libtard seminar poster.
That's a pretty ironic thing for you to be acting as if it's something to be proud of, considering that your position is that a whole section of territory (and specifically all the territory on the Gulf) can stop being part of the United States by saying the magic words, "I secede."
It's hypocritical of you to at once invoke the rhetoric of "a mighty nation stretching from sea to shining sea," while arguing for an interpretation of the Constitution that leaves the United States little more difficult to shrink than a cheap cotton t-shirt.
Which is the unspoken challenge behind all slavery and the motivation behind every rebellion. And would you deny the truth of it? Do slaves have a natural right to rise up and rebel?
If that be the case why do we not plan to do the same? Why do we not capture nuclear weapons and uses them to level your population and industrial advantage?
That's easy. It's because you don't feel strongly enough about your position to do what would have to be done to insure it.
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