Posted on 04/14/2015 6:57:32 AM PDT by Paisan
Your attack on my integrity is noted. I certainly stand by the statement. Anyone familiar with the public debate in the era, will know the truth thereof.
I believe it was a fellow lost causer that once noted, “The hit dog howls”.
And I read your response to imply that only one side of the equation has any rights. I submit that you are wrong on that.
Just wow. You had to run all the way ‘round the cabbage patch to come up with all of that. I will say that as apologists go I have seen few more enthusiastic than you.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"they should have added, "or if your feelings are hurt because someone said it's not good for you to own slaves, then it's totally okay, too."
A notion that would result in legal chaos and utter uncertainty that two cases with identical circumstances would be decided in the same way. On a site that decries judicial activism, you're calling for every judge to interpret the law for himself every time, and undermine every decision that has come before.
Then by all means, cite the specific complaints in the Declaration that were among the south’s reasons.
He’s just blog pimping...
Note that I wear my Ohio heritage as a badge of honor. Grant lived in the next County over. A great uncle of mine, born a few years after the war ended had a giant etching of Robert E. Lee on one wall and one of Grant on the other of his study. On the other hand, I attended Oberlin College in Northern Ohio, which was in the forefront of baiting the South from the 1830s until the war. There I studied in depth, the perfidy of some less tolerant Americans. (Oberlin, by virtue of its activities in the critical period, had a very extensive collection of anti-Southern tracts.) I am not imagining anything about the vitriol to which the Southern leaders were being subjected prior to the War.
That I recognize the honor of the Confederates and that many of their legal arguments were valid, does not mean, however, that I am bemoaning a victory, largely determined by my neighbors' forebears. I am very mindful of the tremendous respect that General Grant showed to General Lee at the end of the hostilities--also the way that General MacArthur treated the Blue & Grey with similar honor: Duty, Honor, Country. I share the Grant & MacArthur respect for Southern honor & heroism. I also, of course, applaud the enduring heritage of the Founders, which has always been well reflected in Southern values.
You think that using insulting terms strengthens an argument. It does not.
America, as a federation of kindred States, with limited Government, only can work, as intended, with mutual respect among the partners. We are all suffering, today, because there is no mutual respect in Washington. Your vilification of some of the children & grandchildren of the heroic generation that won Independence, does not help us pull together to deal with the present crisis.
Your selective outrage is duly noted.
Well, consider this passage in the context of some radicals actually trying to justify John Brown's activities at Harper's Ferry.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of war-fare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
But again, it is really the grievance admitted by Webster, even in denouncing the very idea of disunion, in his classic 1850 address, which goes to the lack of respect for partners in a once honorable coming together (Webster Address.)
People like Washington & the Virginia Lees, understood America as a project among honorable men, who respected one another & their respective contributions, but sometimes differing perspectives.
Gosh, as I recall, John Brown's activities at Harper's Ferry were put down by federal troops and Brown hanged. That some people justified his actions does not mean it was government policy.
But again, it is really the grievance admitted by Webster, even in denouncing the very idea of disunion, in his classic 1850 address, which goes to the lack of respect for partners in a once honorable coming together.
Proving how far the north was willing to go to appease the south. But that wasn't enough for them.
People like Washington & the Virginia Lees, understood America as a project among honorable men, who respected one another & their respective contributions, but sometimes differing perspectives.
That would be the Washington who said:
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.
It is no small matter to toss the equivalent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars away. The wonder is that many people did it anyway.
If it takes fifty $20.00 gold pieces to equal a thousand dollars, and if gold is currently ~$1,200/ounce, then if a slave cost $1,000.00 in the money of 1860, that makes the manumission of each one equal to $60,000.00 in today's dollars.
The moral hazard here is the belief that human life can be equivalent to money. Again, this is a consequence of the Muslim religion, not the Christian one.
The Washington quote, of course, absolutely presupposes the "mutual respect," that underlay the achievement of the unity he describes. But, then also, Washington states:
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations,--northern and southern--Atlantic and western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.
While the misrepresentations may have flown from both sides by the panic of 1857, they started as an attack on Southern society, well before the Southern "Fire-eaters" responded.
John Brown Fomented an Insurrection. The Whiskey Rebellion would be another and better example. In both cases, the agents weren't states or their agents responding to the democratic will of the people.
If the examples we have had are any indication, it would appear that the natural right to self determination would require the purposeful and knowledgeable consent of the majority of the voting populace in a defined area.
What was the recent defining criteria for Scottish Independence? (Which almost passed by the way. Boy, have the Scots really turned into pathetic welfare recipients nowadays.)
That is a non sequitur. Democracy can be messy, but it isn't the same thing as anarchy.
As Madison said:
An ordinance passed during the same Session, declared the Common law as heretofore & all Statutes of prior date to the 4 of James I. to be still the law of the land, merely to obviate pretexts that the separation from G. Britain threw us into a State of nature, and abolished all civil rights and Obligations.
The right to stop people from leaving? No, I don't think anyone has that right, or should.
The right to demand reparations? To demand punishment for offenses against them? The right to use force in the Defense against or punishment of others who wronged them? Sure.
But these rights cease once their goals have been met. Anything else goes beyond rights.
And your reading that that line applied to Brown and not Webster's endorsement of the Compromise of 1850 demonstrates your lack of understanding of the concept of paragraphs.
While the misrepresentations may have flown from both sides by the panic of 1857, they started as an attack on Southern society, well before the Southern "Fire-eaters" responded.
What attack?
The Washington quote, of course, absolutely presupposes the "mutual respect," that underlay the achievement of the unity he describes.
Like a ghetto hoodlum, you seem to believe that gettin' dissed is reason to start shooting.
…it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.--George Washington
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