Posted on 12/05/2014 5:44:32 AM PST by TurboZamboni
MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — At the heart of this well-preserved antebellum city, sunbeams stream through the arched windows of a grand public meeting room that mirrors the whole Civil War — including its death throes, unfolding 150 years ago this week when Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman launched his scorching March to the Sea.
The first major objective along Sherman's route, Milledgeville was Georgia's capital at the time, and this room was the legislative chamber. Crossing its gleaming floor, Amy Wright couldn't help recalling family stories of the hated "foragers" who swept through then. "They were just called 'Sherman's men,'" she said in a hushed voice.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Sir, why do you blather such blithering nonsense?!
By April 1861 Confederates had seized by force dozens & dozens of Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
Far from Lincoln's "capitulation to the claim of sovereignty of the CSA", Lincoln was hoping to secure Virginia's loyalty so that he could move against secessionists, to eventually restore the Union.
FRiend, you are working, working way too hard to stretch the truth of history into places it just won't go.
Give it up!
And not just me, that was also Lincoln's opinion, and not just Lincoln, but all five of the US Presidents still living in 1860!
That they did not secure such consent from England makes this a case of "do as I say, not as I do." Given Madison's role in promoting the US constitution of 1787, I can see where he wouldn't want to see his work undone.
That chip on your shoulder must be uncomfortable. It sure is unpleasant ;’)
Funny, that is just what I was thinking about you! You know you sit here and quibble about details of which Forts got abandoned, but it occurs to me that the British abandoned quite a lot of Forts. This is a normal part of what happens when one part of a nation separates from another.
Why should one country maintain forts inside of another against that nation's consent? Did we not abandon our Military bases in Iran? How about the Philippines? That was once ours, but we let it go and we sought and got leases to remain, but when they wanted us out, we left.
Same thing with Cuba. Pity we couldn't show the same courtesy to people who were our wrong headed kinsmen.
First of all, before the Battle of Fort Sumter, Virginia did vote to remain in the Union, because that's what the majority of Virginians wanted.
What Virginians "gained" was preservation of their political inheritance.
But they remained in convention, threatening to secede if the Federal Government took any actions against secessionists.
What Lincoln wanted was for Virginia's convention to go home so he could take care of business with the Confederacy, and for that, he offered to abandon Fort Sumter.
But Virginia's Fire Eaters didn't want Fort Sumter to end peacefully, since some kind of military battle, any battle, was necessary for them to persuade the majority of Virginians to declare secession.
Lincoln's offer was therefore ignored.
So, please explain, what exactly is your problem comprehending this?
You (or John Bingham) having an opinion doesn't change the fact that under the actual words of the law as written and interpreted by the bodies constitutionally empowered to do so, jus soli is the law of the land.
There is nothing arbitrary about the border. In your own land, you have a say. In our land, you do not.
Of course they're arbitrary. They're laid out by negotiation, or by a draftsman. There's nothing natural about the shape of Colorado. It was drawn by men with rulers. To go back to the example of hispanics in the southwest, why do they not have a greater right, since those lands were taken from them them by force, and an arbitrary line drawn to slice off half their land? Do they not have a greater multigenerational claim than some johnny-come-latelies who have only been there 150 years?
If you are a citizen, then you have a say, and children born to citizens are also citizens and they also have a say.
Citizenship is legal construct. Either a person has a natural right to self-determination or they do not. You really believe that your God-given rights depend on which side of a line someone drew with a ruler you're standing on?
Invaders and guests do not have a say in how the household is ran.
Tell that to the Indians.
Neither Buchanan nor Lincoln (nor any other living ex-president) recognized the Confederacy as legitimate, and did not negotiate with it.
Lincoln believed that Congress alone could decide issues of union or dis-union.
As for what Virginia could "benefit", again, the answer is preservation of the Union, their political inheritance for which many Founders had fought & died.
Obviously, that was not enough for Virginia's Fire Eaters, determined only on secession, regardless of consequences.
I am not seeing as how I have a chip on my shoulder. From my perspective, it appears as if we have been misled about the truth regarding various historical events. As I pointed out before, I grew up revering Lincoln. It was only after my best friend who is black, and a History Major, told me that he had just learned that Lincoln had cleverly engineered the start of the civil war, that I came to have misgivings.
He thought that made Lincoln awesome. I thought it made Lincoln disturbing. What sort of man would play such games with so many people's lives? 600,000 men killed? A huge area devastated? A legacy of excessive Federal control ever since?
While he was laughing and explaining, I was searching inwardly for some explanation that could square such Machiavellian acts with what I had been taught about a man who is considered one of our greatest Presidents.
Yes, I could see how he was thrilled with the notion of Lincoln the manipulator who outfoxed those stupid racist Southerners, but at that time it was not so long ago that I had read "Red badge of Courage" and had nightmares about being conscripted into fighting in that horrible war.
Feeling as if I had been there went a long ways towards making me feel revulsion at the idea someone would have intentionally caused it for any reason other than unavoidable necessity, and that is when I began to doubt Lincoln's motives.
Later I discovered that Lincoln was quite willing to let the South keep slavery, and so another bit of his legend was tarnished. Now I am highly suspicious of the "history" we've been taught over the years, and I have began to realize that then as now, we are always being fed propaganda that suits the interests of whomever is telling the tale.
More rubbish.
It's certainly true that Lincoln's opinions evolved over time, but Lincoln's parents were abolitionists, and there was nothing in Lincoln's history to suggest he didn't sympathize.
Politically, of course, abolitionism was impossible even as late as the election of 1860 -- it was not on the ballot!
What was on the ballot was restricting the expansion of slavery into the western territories, that was Lincoln's position and it's electoral victory was the immediate cause of South Carolina's declaration of secession.
In time the Civil War changed everything, and when opportunity presented, Lincoln first issued the emancipation proclamation and then sponsored the 13th Amendment.
This explanation plays right into the image of Lincoln the manipulator. You as much as imply that this was just a tactic to gain the upper hand politically, and not a good faith effort to deal with the issue forthrightly.
The salient aspect of this effort is to just get the Virginia convention to go home, and then do whatever he felt was necessary after that political threat had been averted. "Honest Abe" indeed.
That your friend has allowed himself to adopt such a stupid narrative is pitiable. That you have bought into it is shameful - you’re smarter than that.
You seem to have a lot of rules and exclusions for one to exert their natural rights. This state can, this state can’t. This state should be disqualified as a state.
But your opinion on this is irrelevant to the hypothetical proposed by Sherman Logan, a hypothetical which will soon not be so hypothetical...
If majority citizens of a certain race (or religion, or ideology) suddenly declare their independence in California, or elsewhere, what constitutional obligation does the Federal Government have to recognize such?
Answer: none, unless approved by Congress.
In order to assert an independence, a populace must be capable of an independence, meaning they have sufficient wherewithal to manage their own affairs as a nation must be capable of. Does this not sound reasonable to you?--You, in #248.
Reconcile?
Says a court. Other courts have said that the words mean what the men who wrote them intended, not what we wish to believe they meant.
A prime example is the Declaration of Independence. If it meant what it said, slavery was abolished July 4, 1776, but we know for a fact that this was not the case. Here is an admonition from the man who wrote it.
"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322)
Of course they're arbitrary. They're laid out by negotiation, or by a draftsman. There's nothing natural about the shape of Colorado. It was drawn by men with rulers. To go back to the example of hispanics in the southwest, why do they not have a greater right, since those lands were taken from them them by force, and an arbitrary line drawn to slice off half their land? Do they not have a greater multigenerational claim than some johnny-come-latelies who have only been there 150 years?
At the time these lands were taken, there were no notions of "natural rights", there was a universal philosophy of "might makes right" and those ideas of natural rights that later developed were never intended to apply outside of the society which created them. It is a modern notion to apply the idea to the larger world and especially outside of one's own tribe.
The people who did not live under such ideas at the time cannot be held to account for a philosophy of which they did not know and which they did not advocate, but those who came later and grew up within the society in which such ideas were taught and accepted should have know better than to violate these ideas within their own society.
The previous occupants may have a valid moral claim to the property, but at this point they will not get it back short of force or domination.
Citizenship is legal construct.
To you perhaps, but to adherents of the concept of natural law it is not a legal construct, but a natural condition. Man made law comes after nature in the order of moral precedence.
Either a person has a natural right to self-determination or they do not.
No one is arguing that they don't. The citizens of Mexico are entitled to any form of government they desire. They are not entitled to be in our country voting for changes to our government.
You really believe that your God-given rights depend on which side of a line someone drew with a ruler you're standing on?
Your point eludes me. Boundaries are primarily mental. The lines are just physical representations of the mental constructs. They are a convenient method of simplifying the concept and entirely consistent with the human notion of "territory."
Tell that to the Indians.
Conquerors may be invaders, but invaders need not be conquerors. One cannot be stopped, while the other cannot be permitted.
What we are dealing with in this country is a lack of will to stop it, not a lack of ability.
Whether Lincoln maintained troops in Fort Sumter, or abandoning the post, was not a "principle", it was a tactic in support of a great principle: preserving the Union.
The "Rubicon" was Confederates' military assault on United States troops in Fort Sumter, just as was, for example, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Preserving the Union was the great principle against which Lincoln judged all his actions, from defending Fort Sumter to freeing slaves under Union Army control.
How you can get so much obvious pleasure from distorting and mocking that, I'll never understand.
Sure. The first one was just dismissive of the idea that the "rump" was not economically viable. Rather than just assert that it was, I brushed it off as immaterial.
The second was after further thought when I considered that economic viability is probably very important in regards to the question of independence. How can a state or nation exist if it cannot be economically viable?
I have little doubt that the "rump" confederacy would have been able to sustain itself economically. It would have done so much better with Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina etc. as part of it, but it could have existed on it's own.
And that's it for me for awhile. I have some responsibilities that I need to attend to.
DiogenesLamp: "That they did not secure such consent from England makes this a case of "do as I say, not as I do"...
Again, you have it backwards.
It was the 1774 Brits who unilaterally & illegitimately abrogated the Massachusetts constitution of 1691 and imposed dictatorship over the colonists.
The colonists were given no say, did not agree, and were therefore under no moral or legal obligations to comply with British rule.
Likewise in 1861 Confederates unilaterally & illegitimately abrogated the United States Constitution of 1787, and seized by military force assets of the Federal Government, threatening and shooting at Federal officials.
By US law the Federal Government treated those acts for what they were: rebellion, insurrection, domestic violence, invasion and treason.
DiogenesLamp: "Given Madison's role in promoting the US constitution of 1787, I can see where he wouldn't want to see his work undone."
As Conservatives we believe that our Constitution should mean what our Founders intended it to mean, and no Founder expressed himself more clearly on this particular subject than James Madison.
And no Founder ever explicitly contradicted Madison on this.
The important point to remember about Union troops in the Union Fort Sumter is that Brits also maintained their troops in their forts in United States Northwest Territory for over 30 years (!), from 1781 through 1814.
British troops in British forts in United States territory were doubtless matters of some concern to our Founders, but the Founders never made them a casus belli, never threatened war if forts weren't abandoned, and never fired on those forts to force their surrender.
Seems our Founders understood something the Confederates didn't.
You, sir, are obviously totally confused, having drunk deeply of the Lost Causer Kool-Aid.
You seriously need to read some real history, and learn a few actual facts.
DiogenesLamp: "my best friend who is black, and a History Major, told me that he had just learned that Lincoln had cleverly engineered the start of the civil war..."
Such a claim is, well, idiotic and demonstrates the abysmal failure of our education system.
The truth of the matter is that Lincoln did the best he could with the options presented him, given his long term goal of preserving the Union.
To say that Lincoln somehow "tricked" Jefferson Davis into assaulting Fort Sumter is to first, assume Davis was a total numbskull, and second that Lincoln had serious choices to do otherwise.
In fact, Lincoln's decision to resupply Major Anderson in Fort Sumter was just that -- a decision to resupply, not to start a war.
Davis alone decided to make it a casus belli.
Then Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to restore Federal properties was also just that -- not a declaration of total war, but rather the minimum force necessary to return Federal properties.
It was the Confederates alone who responded by formally declaring war on the United States, and increasing their Army from 100,000 to 500,000.
And Confederates also sent military aid to pro-Confederate forces in Union states, making them existential threats to the United States itself.
In short, it began as a War of Confederate Aggression against the United States.
DiogenesLamp: "Feeling as if I had been there went a long ways towards making me feel revulsion at the idea someone would have intentionally caused it for any reason other than unavoidable necessity, and that is when I began to doubt Lincoln's motives."
Sorry, sir, but if you hadn't been drinking so much Lost Causer Kool-Aid, you would easily see that all the blame -- 100% of it -- for the death and destruction belongs on the heads of those who first provoked, then started, then formally declared war on the United States while sending military aid to Confederates in Union States, and finally they continued fighting to death, long after their war had become a hopelessly Lost Cause.
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