Abe Lincoln - He would have built a wall to protect our borders!
Posted on 08/11/2015 1:11:21 PM PDT by iowamark
What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery.
But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and love the South to want to believe that the continued enslavement of our neighbors could not have possibly been the motivation for succession. But we should love truth even more than liberty and heritage, which is why we should not only acknowledge the truth about the cause of the war but be thankful that the Confederacy lost and that freedom won.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.acton.org ...
Abe Lincoln - He would have built a wall to protect our borders!
Smartest man I have ever run across in the history of the United States, or anywhere, anytime. If Jeff cross dresser Davis had dared call Lincoln a liar to his face, Abe would have done to him what he did to Jack Armstrong (the toughest man in the county).
Then, in Lincoln, this country found a leader of enormous strength. Lincoln was determined to protect the territorial integrity of the United States and to protect all of the citizens living within the territory of the United States. Clearly, our country's domestic enemies underestimated Lincoln. Now, we have had a prolonged leadership deficit. We are just very lucky that those who today want to divide us are so few in number. But, there is no question that the American people miss their 16th president, a real leader who saved our nation from disunion.
Then, the territorial integrity was threatened by what was called "secession." Now, our territorial integrity is threatened by weak borders and by Americans who would invite strangers to breach them.
Now, the underlying problem is the demand by some for cheap labor. There are employers who are willing to compromise the integrity of our nation for cheap labor. Then, the underlying problem was a demand by some for free labor. There were those who were willing to sell out our nation for slavery.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Want some fun? Read pea’s #242. Then take a look at this page: http://www.tulane.edu/~sumter/Reflections/LinWar.html
By the ninth grade, Jed was usually carrying a half pint of vodka in his back pocket. But, in the end, it's all turned out ok, I guess.
Buell did not arrive in Charleston until the 9th of December.
Memorandum of verbal instructions to Major Anderson, 1st Artillery, commanding at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina:
You are aware of the great anxiety of the Secretary of War that a collision of the troops with the people of this State shall be avoided, and of his studied determination to pursue a course with reference to the military force and forts in this harbor which shall guard against such a collision. He has, therefore, carefully abstained from increasing the force at this point, or taking any measures which might add to the present excited state of the public mind, or which would throw any doubt on the confidence he feels that South Carolina will not attempt by violence to obtain possession of the public works or interfere with their occupancy. But as the counsel and acts of rash and impulsive persons may possibly disappoint these expectations of the Government, he deems it proper that you shall be prepared with instructions to meet so unhappy a contingency. He has, therefore, directed me verbally to give you such instructions.
You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression, and for that reason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude. But you are to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or attempt to take possession of either one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper, to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
D.C. Buell, Assistant Adjutant-General.
FORT MOULTRIE, S.C.,
December 11, 1860.
This is in conformity to my instructions to Major Buell.
John B. Floyd, Secretary of War.
Links appearing on this page:
D.C. Buell
John B. Floyd
Major Anderson
“Some people don't seem to understand that a declaration of “secession” includes the improper attempt to unilaterally cancel the citizenship of U.S. citizens and the attempt to deprive those U.S. citizens of their rights under the United States Constitution”.
Secession did not affect anyone’s rights. If you read the minutes of the
Montgomery meetings, it shows that your assertion is completely wrong.
iowamark: "direct link to video:"
Was the Civil War About Slavery
Sorry I'm so late to the party... ;-)
Excellent summary by Col. Seidule, can't say that I've ever seen better.
So, let's see what our Lost Causers say about it... did any even watch it?
Nearly every Confederate state had counties or whole regions where slavery was rare to non-existent -- notably western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Arkansas and others, all of which remained loyal Unionists, and sent their young sons to serve the Union Army, not the Confederacy.
Those counties and regions did not consider the Union Army an "invasion force", but rather liberators who came to free both the slaves and themselves from the tyranny of Slavocratic Confederate government.
All told, Southern slave-states provided over 350,000 troops for the Union Army, at least two-thirds of whom were white.
So, why did over a million other Southerners serve in the Confederate army?
Because, like the Confederacy itself, they were willing to fight, kill or die to preserve, protect and defend their "peculiar institution", slavery.
http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/was-the-civil-war-about-slavery/
A new video entitled “Was the Civil War About Slavery?” from Prager University is currently making the rounds on the Internet. A caption claims that the video “settles the debate once and for all,” superseding over a century’s worth of scholarship by historians who have argued this matter.
But does it really?
The video is filled with misconceptions and myths about the Civil War. The few facts it does get right are vastly outnumbered by the promulgation of incessant fallacies and significant omissions that would severely contradict the narrative.
It is true that several states in their secession ordinances claimed the reason for seceding from the government concerned slave rights. However, this was not the case for the mid-south states, which definitively rejected secession on those grounds and provided different explanations for leaving the union. Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, and North Carolina departed from the union only after Lincoln resupplied Fort Sumter and pledged to raise an army of 75,000, while Congress was not in session, with the express purpose of invading other states.
Notwithstanding the fact that some slave states mentioned slavery in their secession ordinances, this pronouncement was not as universal as is commonly believed. For instance, the secession ordinances of Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee do not mention slavery or the slave motive at all. Arkansas’ secession ordinance suggests the primary reason it announced its withdrawal from the union was Lincoln’s proclamation “to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule.” In October 1861, the separatist government of Missouri passed an ordinance which charged that the United States had:
“violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of a State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity.”
The film asserts that “The secession documents of every southern state made clear, crystal clear, that they were leaving the union in order to protect their “peculiar institution” of slavery.” This is a bold-faced lie, and a cursory 5 minute glance at the secession ordinances tells a different tale. While some of the states in the Deep South articulated that they were leaving the union because they feared the dissolution of slave rights, the union government did not attempt impose any anti-slavery legislation at all. In fact, northern officials continued to assert that they would not interfere with slavery where it already existed. The entirety of the debate concerning the expansion of slavery from the 1820s-1850s was predicated on the potential for slavery to expand into the western territories, not its existential presence in the slave states.
Interesting summary, largely correct, except that we don't really know how actively a few Northern states resisted the Federal government's efforts to enforce the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
So far as I can tell, the whole issue of "runaway slaves" was hugely exaggerated by Deep South Fire Eaters to encourage secession.
In fact, there cannot have been more than a rare handful of Deep South slaves who escaped via Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.
Distances were too far, and all along the way waited squads of slave-catchers looking for anybody they could grab and sell back into slavery.
Southern Border States (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri) were a different story, of course.
There slavery was much weaker to begin with, freedom much closer, and many former slaves had already been freed by their white masters.
Point is: those Deep South Fire Eaters who complained the most about Federal non-enforcement of Fugitive Slave laws were the least likely to be adversely affected by it.
But all of that was "politics as usual" for our young republic -- tariffs rose & fell, economic conditions worsened or improved, it all happened within the limits of normal politics.
So, what was new -- what changed in the 1860 Presidential election -- was the first ever officially anti-slavery political party and president elected.
And even as milk-toast & mild-mannered as Republicans then (and now) were, still their opposition to slavery's expansion was enough to convince Deep South Fire Eaters to declare secession, Confederacy and war on the United States.
So for you to say, "Southern business interests" is just a euphemism for protecting slavery, the real reason, the only real reason.
No, it was about Deep South Fire Eaters declaring secession, Confederacy and war on the United States, to protect their "peculiar institution" slavery, period.
Initially the Union fought to defend itself against Confederate aggressions, in the course of which freedom for slaves became a huge strategic move, which also fit perfectly with Republican abolitionist ideology.
Genoa: "The sport?"
First of all, go back and review the video:
Second, it's important to remember that from almost Day One of our republic, Southern political parties were Jeffersonian & Jacksonian Democrats, and the North we can call John Adams' or even Hamiltonian Federalists who eventually became Whigs and finally Republicans.
Of all those parties, only the Republicans were anti-slavery and that's what ultimately caused Civil War.
But beginning with Barry Goldwater in 1964, the Deep South realigned itself away from Liberal / Progressive / Leftist Democrats and to the same Republicans whose ancestors fought to abolish slavery, and (so the legends tell us) further abused the South during Reconstruction and later.
That was a huge problem in psychological disconnect -- how could Southerners politically align with those very people who (so they were told) destroyed their land, raped their women and ate their babies?!
The answer is: only with great difficulty, and one expression of that huge difficulty are the nearly continuous Civil War treads on Free Republic, where history buffs, some scholars and many partisans on both sides attempt to establish their own views as the more-or-less official Free Republic version of Republican history.
I say: enjoy, participate and learn -- it's all good, so long as real facts & reason prevail.
Thanks for the video, and now the transcript.
This is a great summary.
Of course it did. The people who resided in Mississippi could no longer sue in the United States District Court in Mississippi. The people who resided in Mississippi could no longer exercise, assert or enforce their constitutional rights as guaranteed by the United States Constitution in Mississippi. The people who resided in Mississippi could no longer participate in elections for the selection of United States House of Representatives from Mississippi or for the selection of President of the United States. United States officers who lived in Mississippi could no longer enforce the laws of the United States in Mississippi.
I'm not sure that you understand what the secessionists meant by "secession." The "secessionists" believed that post "secession," United States citizens living in Mississippi could no longer depend upon the enforcement of United States laws or the provision of United States services in Mississippi. The whole purpose of "secession" was to terminate the governance of the United States government in the geographical areas that were "seceding." And, that necessarily meant that persons residing in those areas could no longer depend upon United States laws or services unless the United States government sent troops to those areas. And, of course, that's what the United States government did.
It may sound crazy to you now, but the "secessionists" actually intended to replace the government of the United States with a new, more local government that they called the "Confederate States of America." And, they never even asked the United States government for permission.
See, it's arguments like this which make me think you people are not just unreconstructed Dixiecrats, but actual Democrats -- posers, agent provocateurs, so to speak -- whose real purpose is to convince people that Republicans generally, not just those racist Southerners, are evil to core, never to be trusted, always to be defeated by the enlightened, intelligent and all-feeeeeeeeling loooooooving Democrats!
You make me sick!
The truth of this matter is simple for anyone who wants to understand.
Civil War began as a response to Confederate aggressions, at a time when abolition of slavery in the South was not even on the table, politically, not discussed or advocated by any political party, for fear that it would cause, yes, secession and Civil War.
Of course, many Northerners supported abolition, certainly in their own states, in Western territories and perhaps eventually, even in Southern states.
But they were not, in 1861, willing to fight a war over it.
By 1863, things were much different.
By 1863 the great strategic advantage of freeing millions of Confederate state slaves was hugely obvious to everyone, and so, with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, freedom for slaves did become the war's objective.
Indeed, except for that, peace terms might well have been amicably arranged years before the Confederacy was finally forced to surrender, unconditionally, and so abolish slavery everywhere.
Yeah, I realize that I oversimplified the issue a little. I just like to jump in every time I think we’ll see a bunch of Confederate apologists on the thread and remind them that the Southern fire-eaters were basically mad because the Federal government would not step in and take over enforcement of federal law within the northern border states.
Floyd was low-life scum and a traitor to the United States. He deliberately misused his office to aid the insurrectionists at the expense of those who sought to defend the union and keep the peace.
He should have been hanged.
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