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 ...
No such "right" to secede is enumerated within the Constitution. Reasonable people recognize that a gray area exists and that the potentiality of secession is within the realm of possibilities. But not the way the southern slavocracy attempted it. A war was waged to settle what could have been accomplished peacefully and a supreme court ruling validated both president's "view".
Lincoln destroyed states rights and little to nothing remains of the once great protection of the Constitution.
Poppycock
I will remind you to read the Declaration of Independence which explicitly states a people’s right to form a new state. Obviously without the Declaration of Independence we would have never had a revolution, nor a Constitution or bill of rights.
We celebrate as a nation the Declaration of Independence, but I don’t see the Constitution being celebrated yearly.
ALL things not specifically assigned in the Constitution to the Federal Government is reserved to the states. I read that as the right to break the contract with the Feds.
Poppycock to you!
Disposition and deportment of the states is enumerated unto congress.
You obviously are not paying attention. I celebrate Constitution Day every year.
Important for everyone to understand that this is a total crock of mushy-stuff.
In fact, the first seven seceding states did so "at pleasure" for the sole and explicit purpose of defending the future of their "peculiar institution", slavery:
Yes, Texas at least mentions other complaints against Washington DC, but even then, it all relates back to slavery, for example:
This is exactly where things stood in April 1861, when Jefferson Davis ordered a military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter.
That assault, and Lincoln's response, brought four more states into the Confederacy -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas -- states which were not as dominated by slavery and so listed other reasons for their declarations of secession.
And we should keep firmly in mind that all four of these Upper South states formally ratified secession not only after Davis started war, but also after the Confederacy formally declared war, on May 6, 1861.
Therefore you can legitimately claim that at least some Deep South whites declared secession expecting a peaceful transition, but Upper South whites only voted to secede after they knew secession and Confederacy was already at war against the United States of America.
For those four states, their declarations of secession were simultaneously declarations of war on the United States.
In fact, President Buchanan did the same things Lincoln started off doing, with similar results:
Lincoln began the same way, telling Southerners that secession was illegal, but that there could be no war unless they started it.
And like Buchanan, Lincoln attempted to resupply / reinforce the Union garrisons in Union Forts Sumter & Pickens.
And as with Buchanan, Lincoln's efforts were met with both threats and actual violence, but this time far beyond mere provocations of war, to actual acts of war against the United States, especially at Fort Sumter.
Lincoln's response to those acts of war was met with a formal declaration of war against the United States, on May 6, 1861.
Bottom line: Buchanan stopped short of actions likely to unleash Confederate berserkers, for which he is often criticized, but the real truth here is that Buchanan, like our current President Nero, was unfit for the job of Commander in Chief.
So, in effect, he "kicked the can down the road" to a later time when someone more capable could take that job.
Thank you Comrade Stalin. We dissidents are obviously insane.
The Morrill Tariff bill was introduced and tabled in the first session of the 36th Congress, before the election of 1860.
After the 1860 elections, when low-tariff Southern senators left Congress, the Morrill Tariff was brought out again, modified and passed with significantly higher rates.
President Buchanan signed the Morrill Tariff law on his last day in office, March 4, 1861.
In 1860, Republicans in general, and Lincoln particularly, did support the Morrill Tariff, nearly all Deep South Dems opposed and Northern Dems opposed by about two to one.
Secession was very legal and every Founding Fathers believed in the right of states to dissolve it’s association with the Union if it so felt. Do you think for one minute that a state would have entered into an agreement with other states they couldn’t get out of! Good God man! No one can be that naive. Lincoln crapped all over the Declaration and the Constitution when he carried on his Tariff War Against the South.It was about money and nothing else. Lincoln didn’t give a rats ass about a black man and said it many times.
And there's the sticking point ...
I wouldn't be so sure about that. You're 500 posts late to the party and most of what you just claimed has been debated and refuted long before now.
Reading is hard. ;’)
Nowhere near as popular nor as meaningful to the majority of Americans. It is an also-ran compared with July 4th.
Yes, slavery was protected in states which declared it lawful, but certainly not in states which outlawed slavery, and not necessarily in US territories controlled by Congress.
For example, President Jefferson proposed and got passed a law to abolish slavery in what were then called "the Northwest Territories" -- Ohio through Wisconsin.
Such actions were well within constitutional limits.
But what our Founders did not contemplate, and what all Northerners strongly objected to was the Supreme Court's Dred-Scott decision which, in effect, could make slavery lawful and abolition impossible, even in Northern states.
That decision did much to radicalize Republicans and further disintegrate the few remaining Whigs.
Northerners believed the time had come to push-back against the slavocracy's over-reach for power.
There is simply no doubt that, had he lived long enough, Lincoln would have supported the 14 Amendment, or something like it.
So clearly he gets some of the credit for any good it's done.
As for all those who have abused and twisted its language for their own nefarious purposes, none of that can be blamed on Lincoln, they must take responsibility for their own actions, and credit their own ideological forebears -- i.e., Marx, Lenin, Stalin, etc...
Let me cite an analogy: slave-holders and their defenders often claimed the Bible condones slavery, but that is a grave misreading.
In fact, the Bible consistently and strongly opposes slavery for God's people, and Christians believe that anyone who's accepted Christ -- including slaves -- are among God's people.
So the Bible cannot be blamed for slavery of Christians, any more than Lincoln can be blamed for misuse of the 14th Amendment.
Refute till hell freezes over. Facts are facts. Secession was a right of the states. The greatest proponent of secession was Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in the union …. I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’”
At Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what “the people” meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.” In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
Just as President Buchanan did in January 1861.
There was nothing illegal, unconstitutional or threatening about such actions, especially considering Sumter's commander, Major Anderson, had notified Lincoln in early March, 1861 that his supplies were running out, and he must surrender the fort if not resupplied within six weeks.
So, Lincoln's mission was no more an "act of war" than any resupply or reinforcement ships today, to our troops in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
PeaRidge: "If hit, however, there were sufficient launches to save the personnel that Lincoln told Governor Pickens would not be present."
No, Lincoln told Pickens the opposite: so long as it encountered no Confederate resistance, his resupply mission would not reinforce Fort Sumter.
The obvious implication is that Lincoln's ships would reinforce Sumter, if they encountered Confederate violence.
So the choice to commit violence was not Lincoln's, it was Jefferson Davis'.
PeaRidge: "Next on the twenty-seventh day of April, he issued a proclamation establishing a blockade of the ports within the States of Virginia and North Carolina.
That was an act of war."
But a blockade is, in an of itself, not an act of war.
Indeed, throughout history blockades have often been used outside of war, and without causing war.
More important, until June 10, 1861, not one Confederate army soldier was killed directly in battle by any Union force.
Before June 10, all the violence, all the threats, all the seizures of property and imprisonment of troops, all the deaths of soldiers were inflicted by Confederates on the Union army.
Before June 10 the Confederacy engaged in violent war against the Union, and the Union did nothing serious to oppose it.
At any time in those several months the Confederacy could have backed down and asked for peace terms, and there would have been no loss of life in the South.
But that did not happen, it could not happen, because in their own minds Confederates did not want just "peace", they wanted victory in their "Second War of Independence", a victory which they could use to dictate their own terms to the Union.
Compromise & negotiation were not just in the Slavocracy's tool box.
They are, but you don't seem to have many. Just partial quotes and opinion.
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