Posted on 07/11/2015 9:54:21 AM PDT by golux
As is usually the case, I can’t express it better than a dead man did.
“All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
That’s easy. Lincoln wanted a conclusion to the hostilities. He wanted reconciliation. He tried to make surrender terms honest and honorable so that the soldiers could go back their their lives.
As for the rest of it you’re trying to read more into it than there is.
“This is akin to joining a civil reenactment group then demanding the battles be played out differently”
You know that does bring up some intersting alternative history questions....
Would an independant South, who hated the north after a bitter war, have sided with spain during the spanish American war?
WW2?
Would the Japanese have tried a land invasion of a smaller weaker nation seeking an ally to the south?
Or during the cold war would the soviets had tried to put missles in the southern US?
How would a nation split in two, fare through an alternate timeline?
Interesting.
Gah!..civil “war”.....derp.
I see you are dodging my question. It figures.
I will agree with you that Slavery was legal at the time. If the South had not seceded, it would have been continued, at least in the states that had it. One of the main items that led to the Secession was the Southern fear that they would not be able to expand slavery into the Territories.
However, there was a large and growing percentage of the population that considered it immoral. Please note that all of the Northern European countries, most importantly Great Britain, had outlawed slavery and the slave trade decades earlier. The fact that the Confederate States allowed slavery was the main reason that Great Britain never recognized it. I believe that the fact that slavery is almost universally condemned is the reason why most Southern Apologists find it so hard to admit that this was the main, if not the only, cause of the Secession and cloak it in States Rights, or tariffs, or self-determination or, most hilariously of all, claim that they reason they seceded was unimportant.
As to the issue of whether the South had the right to secede at all, I will only say that there were two sides to this discussion, and a vigorous debate was had by both. The debate opened on April 12, 1861 in Charleston Harbor, was forcefully rebutted in July 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was finalized at Appomattox Courthouse and Bennett Place in April 1865. In the last 150 years there has been no legal challenge to results of this debate, even after all of the Southern States reclaimed their positions in the United States House of Representatives, Senate and the Judiciary.
I will close by going back to my main point, which is, if the people (at least those who mentioned anything at all )who seceded at the time had no problem claiming it was due to slavery (see Articles of Secession for Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Florida), why do some folks nowadays have a problem with it?
Read my posts, dude (or is it dudette?). I said that four seceding states cited slavery as a reason for secession. But you, curiously, claim I dispute that slavery was a “factor at all.” Now, how can that be? How can you make the leap from my saying that slavery was a specific (though not the sole) reason for secession for four states, to your incredible conclusion that I said it was not a factor at all?
And where, pray, did I ever “defend slavery?” Or “Jim Crow?” Come on, point it out. Again, you make shit up.
Re-debate “something that was settled 150 years ago?” You mean, like the “truth” that the earth was flat that was “settled” hundreds of years ago? You mean, like the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves is settled fact? Or...well, you get the picture.
In all candor, you need to take a very basic class in reading comprehension. Though, if you are a product of public government schools I can’t really fault you for your ignorance, but must lay blame on the semi-literate government employees who taught you.
Apparently this is going over your head...
Democrats are responsible for:
A) Governing the south before, during, and after the civil war.
B) the formation of the KKK after the civil war.
C) the institutions of Jim crow following reconstruction.
D) all of the above.
*Hint*...the correct answer is “D”
“Lincoln wanted a conclusion to the hostilities. He wanted reconciliation. He tried to make surrender terms honest and honorable so that the soldiers could go back their their lives.”
So he must have accepted that the parole documents did in fact identify two nations (the United States and the Confederate States of America), and thus he was accepting secession (he may not have liked it, and he sure as hell wanted to reverse it, but he necessarily must have accepted that it had taken place or why would he have allowed formal United States documents to identify two nations?).
Grant must have accepted it, as well, because after the surrender he said “They are our countrymen AGAIN.” In order for the “again” to make any sense, they must have previously not been his countrymen (i.e., they must have belonged to a different country).
The simple fact is that for four years, from 1861 to 1865, for good or ill, there were two separate and distinct nations known as the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. Facts are stubborn things, and history can be an unforgiving tutor, but it is what it is. There is now only the United States of America. Camelot was mythical, the Confederate States of America was not.
Yea, I guess if you squinch your eyes up just so I guess one could reach that conclusion - if it makes you feeeeeeeeeel better.
The simple fact is that there was only one nation with several of its constituent states in a state of insurrection. Lincoln never acknowledged them as a separate nation, and no nation on the planet ever recognized them as a sovereign nation.
The renegade states waged war against the nation and lost. Lincoln brought them back into the fold.
And they lived happily ever after.
Again, I said that four seceding states cited slavery as a reason for secession. But you, curiously, claim I dispute that slavery was a “factor at all.” Now, how can that be? How can you make the leap from my saying that slavery was a specific (though not the sole) reason for secession for four states, to your incredible conclusion that I said it was not a factor at all?
I am awaiting your answer.
Again, where, pray, did I ever “defend slavery?” Or “Jim Crow?”
I am awaiting your answer.
Finally, by your sophomoric logic, if you believe the War for Independence from Britain was a good and noble cause (and I certainly believe it was), you must necessarily support slavery (because, after all, slavery was legal and practiced in all the colonies at that time, to one degree or another).
So, by your logic, did the colonists fight the Revolution over slavery? I mean, you can’t take the position — and be consistent — that such an act was virtuous and noble and wonderful on one hand, then 85 years later say that very same act was the ultimate evil. If it deserves condemnation on the one hand, then it necessarily deserves condemnation on the other. If you are going to condemn the Confederacy over slavery, than you MUST also at least condemn West Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri over slavery. You can’t pick and choose and hope to have any credibility.
Slavery was an evil, no doubt about it. But it was legal. It was legal in 1776 and it was legal in 1782 and it was legal in 1793 and it was legal in 1865, at which time it was declared — and rightfully so — illegal. Just as today abortion is an evil, but it is legal. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
It’s really quite strange. On the one hand abortion was legal in some states, but not in others, so we made it legal in all states. On the other hand, slavery was legal in some states, but not in others, and we made it illegal in all states. I personally think both are abominations and both should be illegal. But America — at least as it is comprised today — disagrees with me.
I’ll be 65 next year, so I’m “in the fourth quarter,” as they say. In some respects, I’m kind of glad.
he is so anti slavery that the south never forgave him for getting rid of it, too
and you are proof of that
“...and no nation on the planet ever recognized them as a sovereign nation.”
They were, quite simply, being prudent: They were waiting to see which way the wind blew.
If it appeared the Confederacy was going to be successful, then you know as well as I that the Confederacy would have been recognized by a whole score of countries, especially England. We do much the same today. If it is to our advantage to take a side in someone else’s internal squabble, we will do so. We, too, usually wait to see which way the wind blows.
Mostly they were looking at how easy it would be to conquer them, and us.
“And they lived happily ever after.”
No, they didn’t.
“Mostly they were looking at how easy it would be to conquer them, and us.”
Perhaps.
Not seriously enough it would seem. You can't match his words to his deeds.
It's ironic that people who claim to honor Jefferson don't due him the courtesy of taking his ideas seriously.
I am not a huge fan of Jefferson. His act of excising all the things he didn't like in the Bible strikes me as pompous, arrogant, and unserious. He was a bit of a "Drama Queen" in my opinion. He was certainly brilliant, but as often accompanies brilliance, he was quite a lot eccentric.
They certainly don't have any monopoly on that.
No, but they are seemingly best at it. Modern day Puritan fanaticism merely has a new god called "Government".
Well, no. That courts in Britain and America called slavery into question at that time, indicates that the moral rightness or wrongness of slavery was indeed "comprehended by the law" at the time of the Founders.
You misunderstand my point. When I said "Such was not comprehended by the law" I wasn't referring to Slavery, I was referring to the notion that the Declaration abolished it. *THAT* is what was "not comprehended by the law."
None of the states regarded it as an act of abolition, it was an act of Independence.
That anti-slavery societies were formed at the same time attests to the same fact.
Those words in the Declaration are certainly responsible for the boost to the abolition movements which occurred at this time. No question about it. This is not, however, the same thing as declaring this as the primary or even "a" purpose of the Declaration of Independence. It wasn't the "Declaration of Abolition".
That other revolutions in the Founders' lifetime included the abolition of slavery likewise indicates that emancipation was a part of the moral climate of the day.
But not an intended purpose of the Declaration, at least not the states or the signatories. Jefferson may have anticipated and counted on this reaction, but it slipped past the people who would have objected to it did they but realize it's implication.
In this regard, they share the same circumstance with the British Slavery supporters who were also tricked and outmaneuvered in Parliament.
One can't say that the Declaration was a pro-slavery document or that ideas about the wrongness of slavery were alien to it.
One can't say that the intent of any of those states or signatories was anti-slavery either. Slavery was irrelevant to their purpose in creating the document. It's anti-slavery overtones were a clever insertion that simply escaped the comprehension of those people who supported the institution.
“I am not a huge fan of Jefferson. His act of excising all the things he didn’t like in the Bible strikes me as pompous, arrogant, and unserious.”
He was a Deist. That’s what Deists did. Jefferson was very much a child of the Enlightenment, and Deism was very popular then, and for some time after.
I don’t condemn Jefferson for his Deism, as I’m sure you don’t, either. He was a product of his times, a genius, and a very complicated fellow. He is one of the most interesting persons of the Revolutionary period, right up there with Franklin.
Lincoln, ever the white supremacist, also said the following in 1858:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races...I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
And this guy is held up as the ideal? Give me a break! We should sue the Department of Education for brainwashing our children with this swill.
“The fact that the Confederate States allowed slavery was the main reason that Great Britain never recognized it.”
Hogwash. Great Britain recognized the United States, which allowed slavery up until 1865. Or, are you saying Great Britain did not recognize the United States until 1865, when slavery was finally abolished by the 13th Amendment?
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