Posted on 11/21/2015 11:35:55 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Before when free-soil men invoked the right of revolution in defense of their political rights, proslavery men condemned them for defying the legitimate government. But proslavery men feared the loss of their right to own slaves as much as free soilers feared the loss of the right to exclude slavery.
At Hickory Point, [Kansas] a squabble over land claims ignited these political quarrels. A settler named Franklin M. Coleman had been squatting on land abandoned by some Hoosiers, who subsequently sold the claim to Jacob Branson, another Hoosier. In late 1854, when Branson informed Coleman of his legal claim and attempted to move into Coleman’s house, Coleman held him off with a gun. A group of arbitrators later awarded part of the claim to Branson, but the boundaries between his land and Coleman’s were not determined. Branson invited in other men, including a young Ohioan named Charles W. Dow. Branson belonged to the free-state militia, a connection he used to intimidate Coleman, although Branson later testified that there had been no problems between Dow and Coleman – until the day of Dow’s murder.
On the morning of November 21, 1855, Dow went to the blacksmith shop at Hickory Point to have a wagon skein and lynchpin mended. While there he argued with one of Coleman’s friends, but left unharmed. As he walked away, he passed Coleman on the road. Coleman snapped a cap at him. When Dow turned around, he received a charge of buckshot in the chest and died immediately. His body lay in the road until Branson recovered it four hours later. Coleman claimed that Dow had threateningly raised the wagon skein (a two-foot piece of iron) as they argued over their claim dispute, forcing him to act in self-defense. Fearing that he could not get fair treatment at the free-state settlement of Hickory Point, Coleman and his family fled to Missouri.
Nicole Etcheson, “Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Eraâ€
Most everyone knew then, and knows now, what the causes were.
But if for some reason they’ve missed it, all they have to do is read the Declaration of Independence, and the secession documents of the States of the South.
Why pick April 12th? Why not January 9th and The Star of the West? Or why not October 16, 1859 and the Harper’s Ferry raid? John Brown was compared to Christ and regarded as a great hero in much of the north.
He was the darling of New England high society. It’s where the funding for his weapons came from. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns were very influential people. They were Saudis to his Al Qaeda. It’s not like his attempt to ignite a Haitian style massacre was condemned as being a great crime. It would have been pretty hard for people south of the Mason Dixon Line to miss what their northern neighbors had in store for them.
So am I correct that your objection isn’t to secession itself, which was Lincoln’s stated causus belli, but to slavery?
If that’s the case, then once again the Crown declared slaves emancipated during the Revolution. So do you then side with King George and emancipation? Or with the Americans and the continuation of slavery?
If your problem is secession itself, which was Lincoln’s position, how do you defend the Colonials seceding from Great Britain?
What you say about Brown is certainly true. Of course, he wasn’t an agent of the government, and, if I recall correctly, he was hung by the neck until dead.
I’m saying that no Constitution is a suicide pact, so that within the confines of the United States Constitution, there is no “right” to secede.
But if you’re going to go outside of the Constitution and revolt, you better have a really good moral cause for your actions, because you’re going to have to justify it to God and the whole world.
If you can’t do that, and premise your rebellion on an unjust cause, you’re probably never going to gain access to the kind of physical means it’s going to take to carry out your revolutionary acts.
The US Constitution does not prohibited secession either. The US Constitution is silent on the issue. You stand corrected.
President Lincoln supported colonization during the Civil War as a practical response to newly freed slaves. At his urging, Congress included text in the Second Confiscation Act of 1862 indicating support for Presidential authority to recolonize consenting Africans.[57] With this authorization, Lincoln created an agency to direct his colonization projects. At the suggestion of Lincoln, in 1862, Congress appointed $600,000 to fund and created the Bureau of Emigration in the U.S. Department of the Interior. To head that office Lincoln appointed the energetic Reverend James Mitchell, a leader of the American Colonization Party.[58][59] Lincoln had known Mitchell since 1853, when Mitchell visited Illinois. Mitchell’s Washington D.C.’s office was in charge of implementing Lincoln’s voluntary colonization policy of African Americans. In his annual December message to Congress that year (his second “State of the Union” Message), he reiterated his strong support for government expenditure on colonization for those who wanted to go, but he also noted that objections to free blacks remaining in the United States were baseless, “if not sometimes malicious.” [60] In 1862, Lincoln mentioned colonization favorably in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Much concerning the controversial Bureau of Emigration is unknown today, as Mitchell’s papers that kept record of the office were lost after his death in 1903.[59]
That would be the North trying to secede in your example.
Any constitution or republic that made provision for its own dissolution and destruction wouldn’t be much of a constitution.
Of course, our Constitution does make provision for lawful, peaceful, constitutional changes if you’ve got a gripe.
No, it wouldn’t.
Perhaps you should ponder my analogy further.
Of course a fascists would view secession in that light....
Trust me, I only touched the surface of what I even go over in a regular survey class. My lecture on slavery alone takes a full week.
Perhaps your comparison has no validity. A lot of people think abortion is murder. Slavery was a "peculiar institution" which didn't include murder. It was a social compact were the slaves were given lifetime socialism in return for a life lived in indentured servitude. Sucks but hardly murder. You can try to call that murder but it was status quo for 300 years prior to 1860.
Not a great idea to go there, this early in such a worthwhile project, in my opinion.
So, I’ll forebear in terms of a response to that particular comment.
If you are going to pass judgement on 19th century Americans by using 21st century mores and values then you are going to get a very distorted view of history and come up with very unreasonable conclusions..
Chattel slavery and abortion are both evils. Both were, or are, in operation in this country, under the color of “law.”
The analogy fits fine.
Any constitution or republic that made provision for its own dissolution and destruction wouldn’t be much of a constitution.
Of course, our Constitution does make provision for lawful, peaceful, constitutional changes if you’ve got a gripe.
But, is not the right to bear arms our final recourse for illegitimate government? In that respect there is provision for its own dissolution and destruction?
You'll find a lot of people disagree with you, least of which was Abe Lincoln himself. But don't let that stop you from making ridiculous analogies....
Abe would have saved both "evil" slavery and the union if he could
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Of course don't skip the step of secession. Secession does not HAVE to lead to war...
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