Posted on 02/12/2018 3:57:10 AM PST by harpygoddess
It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.
~ Lincoln
February 12 is the anniversary of the birth of the 16th - and arguably the greatest - president of these United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Born in Kentucky and raised in Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-educated and became a country lawyer in 1836, having been elected to the state legislature two years earlier. He had one term in the U.S. Congress (1847-1849) but failed (against Stephen A. Douglas) to gain election to the Senate in 1856. Nominated by the Republican party for the presidency in 1860, he prevailed against the divided Democrats, triggering the secession of the southern states and the beginning of the Civil War. As the course of the war turned more favorably for the preservation of the Union, Lincoln was elected to a second term in 1864, but was assassinated in April 1865, only a week after the final victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
So far as I can see, it is axiomatic that someone defending their homeland should be given more leeway in making hard decisions to protect themselves and their families.
Why should the invader be given any consideration? No one is threatening their lands and homes, wives and children.
You've just made your task more difficult with the phrase "prevent their destruction."
The most fundamental principle of life is the right to self preservation. It is the foundation from which all other rights must descend. If you have not the right of self preservation, you have no other rights as well.
Lincoln felt that the union must be preserved.
As a domineering Husband would think his wife must not be allowed to leave. Shouldn't it be up to the wife?
In other words, by the standards you're implying, Lincoln would be okay taking desperate measures because he was trying to prevent the destruction of the union.
Someone leaving you is not a condition of "desperation" unless you are some sort of psychotic. Someone raining body blows on you and injuring you grievously is a condition that would be desperate, but someone saying they no longer wish to associate with you is not going to constitute a threat to your life.
This "Preserve the Union" is not a very good justification for killing 750,000 people in direct war, and perhaps as many as 2 million in subsequent starvation, disease, and loss of life from exposure. It is also not a good reason to break the Federalism which was originally established by the founders.
Lincoln birthed the federal behemoth which has been pressing down on us harder with each passing year, and has only increased in power and intrusion since 1861.
“Article IV section 2 would have to apply wherever the US Constitution held jurisdiction, and since it had jurisdiction over the territories, it would have had to apply there too.”
The Dred Scott decision does not preclude the United States Government from making ownership of a slave in a Territory illegal. The Courts decision only addresses slavery in “States” The word “territory” is not used in the Courts decision. The article you cite only applies to fugitive slaves. It does not address the ability of a territory or a state from making ownership of slaves illegal within that territory or state. The article only requires return of a runaway slave upon claim by the owner.
It is entirely legal for the Territory of New Mexico or Dakota to make ownership of slaves by residents of that territory illegal. But they do have a legal responsibility to return a runaway slave if the owner shows up and claims that slave.
That is valid depending on what they mean by it. States had a right to prevent people from being born into slavery in their state, and it sounds like a reasonable argument to say that States could prohibit their own citizens from owning slaves, but I don't see any valid legal argument to prevent citizens of other states from bringing slaves into their state if such citizens so wished to do.
The article and the 1850 Fugitive Act do not require an individual or a state seek out the owner of a fugitive slave. With out a claim of ownership, the state may assume they are free and allow them to proceed on their way. At that point no law has been broken, since not claim has been presented.
If it was done in that manner, It would likely be legal, but I think the "free states" would intervene if someone actually did come forward with a claim of ownership. I don't have any specific examples at hand, but I would be surprised to discover that the "free states" were passive in their resistance to slave owners capturing fugitive slaves.
They were likely more like California and it's "sanctuary cities" with illegal immigrants.
They were not iffy about it. They asserted they had a right to have it, not to seek it.
Excellent comparison! I think of the Southern rebellion as the anti-American Revolution. Where the American revolution explicitly stated in it’s declaration that “all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights ...” The confederate constitution proudly proclaimed that some men were meant to be slaves to other men.
The Constitution does that. So long as a slave is held by the laws of a state, the constitution requires the slave must be surrendered back to the person to whom his labor is due.
The article you cite only applies to fugitive slaves.
Which is pretty much any slave trying to get out of slavery, isn't it? Dred Scott for example.
It does not address the ability of a territory or a state from making ownership of slaves illegal within that territory or state.
It addresses it insofar as the authority of either the state or territory must comply with the requirements of article IV, to give the slave back to the person to whom his labor is due.
How are you going to free a slave when the constitution specifically says you can't pass a law to do it?
Let's try a thought experiment. A Slave owner brings his slave into one of the territories and puts him to work chopping trees or something. The Slave leaves. The Slave owner finds him. What are the authorities going to do? Tell the slave owner to let him go, or do what the constitution requires they do in such a circumstance?
Where do you see wiggle room in this?
It is entirely legal for the Territory of New Mexico or Dakota to make ownership of slaves by residents of that territory illegal.
I'm just going to punt on the citizens or residents being prohibited from owning slaves. I'll just give you that one, because I can see some reasoning behind that. It still does nothing about non residents from states that hold a slave in bondage.
But they do have a legal responsibility to return a runaway slave if the owner shows up and claims that slave.
And there it is. So how do they prohibit slavery in the territory? They can persuasively bar their residents/citizens from owning them, but they can't free them when non residents/non citizens own them.
At least not without running crosswise of Article IV, Section 2.
So did the US Constitution, and I wish people would stop trying to pretend it didn't so that they could pretend slavery was the needed justification to attack those Southerners who wanted to be independent of Washington and New York's financial control.
Slavery lasted longer in the Union than it did in the South.
No, they did not. In fact, the FF we’re paranoid, and rightly so, that the States had sovereignty and may one day exercise it.
The ENTIRE point of creating the Constitution was just that.
The was wasn’t about that. Slavery was done for regardless, industrialization was taking over, it was only a matter of short time. I’m not for slavery obviously, but there was far more at play there.
You can still hear English people using plural verbs like "are" with collective nouns like "the government" or "Ford" or "the Labour Party" where Americans use singular verbs like is.
The change happened in the 19th century and affected a lot of different words, not just the name of our country.
Shelby Foote did make that line about the Civil War being fought over a verb famous in our time. Carl Sandberg used it before him.
And before that it was used by Basil Gildersleeve, a distinguished grammarian who had fought in the Confederate Army.
Clever guy, but not to be taken altogether seriously. Gildersleeve was forever trying to justify the Confederacy.
He did let the cat out of the bag at one point:
That the cause we fought for and our brothers died for was the cause of civil liberty, and not the cause of human slavery, is a thesis which we feel ourselves bound to maintain whenever our motives are challenged or misunderstood, if only for our children's sake.
No entiendo.
¿Quién se hizo rico con la sangre de quien?
You don't want to understand.
¿Quién se hizo rico con la sangre de quien?
Well it certainly wasn't their own. They could pay $300.00 and get out of the meat grinder. Worst riot in US history was partly because the New York rich could buy their way out. One of the shouts of the rioters was that "their lives were worth less than a slave." (Slaves cost ~ $1,000.00 at the time.)
Just pointing out what the evidence shows.
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I’m not a confederacy supporter.
I simply believe that government that exceeds the constitution is a reasonable call for revolution.
I find nothing about the civil war that has been in any way positive.
.
Consider what was actually happening on the plantations before you start talking about the planters and the "bastards that had gotten rich off of their blood."
You seem to think that only the plantation owners suffered. There were 750,000 people killed as a direct result of that war, and nearly half of them were from a population 1/4th the size of the other.
Something like 20% of the South's population was killed trying to stop the invaders, and i've read that as many as 2 million died as a result of the aftermath.
I haven't given a care about the plantation owners. They fancied themselves as the same sort of Aristocrat that our Betters in New York (Jimmy Kimmel crowd) want to think they are.
Consider what was actually happening on the plantations before you start talking about the planters and the "bastards that had gotten rich off of their blood."
It is your mind that focuses on the planters. I was thinking of the vast bulk of the population that did not own slaves.
¿Quién disparó primero?
Lincoln started that war, and he did so deliberately.
¿Quién disparó primero?
Lincoln fired on April 5, 1861 when he launched that fleet with orders to attack.
Это глупая игра.
Industrialization was not taking over in the South. In 1860 out of a population of 9,103,000 people in the South, only 110,000 people were employed in manufacturing operations. In the North there were 110,000 manufacturing operations, employing 1,300,000 people. In the South 84% of the population was engaged in agriculture, in the North 40%. In the North $850,000,000 in capital investment, in the South $113,000,000 capital investment. In the North, they made 951,000 tons of pig iron, in the South 37,000 tons of pig iron. The available money in the South went into cotton not industrialization or manufacturing.
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