Posted on 11/18/2017 6:36:43 AM PST by iowamark
On or around this day in 1861, Julia Ward Howe is inspired to write the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Did you know that this much-loved patriotic song has its roots in the Civil War years?
Julia was the daughter of a Wall Street broker and a poet. She was well-educated and was able to speak fluently in several languages. Like her mother, she loved to write. She also became very interested in the abolitionist and suffragette causes.
Samuel Howe was progressive in many ways, but he wasn’t too keen on expanding women’s rights. He thought Julia’s place was in the home, performing domestic duties. Interesting, since he proceeded to lose her inheritance by making bad investments.
One has to wonder if she could have managed her own inheritance a bit better?
After a while, Julia got tired of being stifled. She had never really given up writing, but now she published some of her poems anonymously. Samuel wasn’t too happy about that! The matter apparently became so contentious that the two were on the brink of divorce. Samuel especially disliked the fact that Julia’s poems so often seemed to reflect the personal conflicts within their own marriage.
In fact, people figured out that Julia had written the poems. Oops.
Events swung in Julia’s favor in 1861. Julia and Samuel had decided to attend a review of Union trips, along with their minister, James Freeman Clarke. The Union soldiers were singing a tune about the abolitionist John Brown, who had been killed before the Civil War. The lyrics included such lines as: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on!”
Clarke wasn’t too impressed. He suggested to Julia that she try to write more inspirational lyrics for the same melody. Julia proceeded to do exactly that. She later remembered that she “awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’”
Perhaps you will recognize the lyrics that she wrote that morning.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”
Julia’s hymn supported the Union army and challenged the Confederate cause. One historian notes that she “identifies the Army of the Potomac with the divine armies that would crush the forces of evil and inaugurate the millennium. . . .”
In February 1862, Julia’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published in the Atlantic Monthly. The song was a hit and Julia’s fame spread quickly. In the years that followed, she traveled widely, lecturing and writing more than ever. She was President of a few associations, and she later became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Julia’s song began as a morale-booster for Union troops. Today, it has grown beyond that to such an extent that most people do not remember its beginnings.
Primary Sources:
My apologies for mistaking your meaning. Yes, I believe there were quite a lot of people who's best interest lay in convincing people that the bloodshed and calamity served some higher purpose than the enrichment of the pockets of wealthy robber barons. The truth would have invited a vengeful fury on the perpetrators.
I found a Wikipedia bio of Thomas Kettell, author of Southern Wealth and Northern Profits. Apparently he was a New Yorker who spoke freely:
That's what I discovered when I went looking for information about him. So far as I was able to find, he was a New Yorker, and so therefore you would think he would deal with Northern concerns and positions in an even-handed manner.
Was there any explanation proffered? Who did that and why?
Franklin was indeed perceptive, and wiser than most. He was a rare talent.
It doesn't say "returned to the state". It says "But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
Under your interpretation. That doesn't automatically make your opinion the correct interpretation.
Any other interpretation is in conflict with the verbiage. The founders weren't stupid, and if an interpretation conflicts with the verbiage, it is wrong.
Sure they could, under the laws of the state.
State law cannot override constitutional law. The Constitutional law requires that the person "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
There is no wiggle room to free them. There just isn't.
You might be able to do bad things to the owner, though I think that would be considered a breach of his rights, but there is no provision whatsoever that allows a state law to free a slave held by the laws of another state.
He was on Lincoln's side when he made the original statement. By your interpretation Chief Justice Chase should have thrown the whole matter out of court on day one. But he didn't.
You apparently aren't grasping what I meant when I said he was on Lincoln's side. He had no interest in humiliating Lincoln and he also had no interest in declaring the war to be illegal. He may speak the truth in conversation, but he absolutely would not want to make such statements the official position of the Supreme Court.
He managed to obtain the result he felt was morally correct without having to denounce the legitimacy of events Lincoln set in motion.
Doesn't this remind you of the rage and childish behavior expressed at Trump for winning the election?
Remember the images of liberal kooks screaming at the skies in frustration over the fact that Trump is President?
Well they had these sort of people back in 1858 too; Wealthy Urban Liberals who couldn't stand it when reality intruded into their lives.
The full sentence is, "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." The "party to whom such service or labor may be due" is in a different state from where apprehended.
Any other interpretation is in conflict with the verbiage.
But in accordance with the meaning.
State law cannot override constitutional law. The Constitutional law requires that the person "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
Your reading comprehension problems are duly noted.
That is an assumption. The law says nothing about where the "Party" shall be. If it implies anything about the whereabouts of "the party", it implies that he is in the "free state" claiming his slave.
You would make the condition that the slave owner be back in the state under the laws of which his slave is held, but the law does not specify this as a requirement. Therefore it isn't a requirement.
But in accordance with the meaning.
If you are liberally "creative" with the meaning. If you go along with the plain text and in context of 1787 meaning, it doesn't mean at all what you claim.
Your reading comprehension problems are duly noted.
Your desire to deliberately make up interpretations that you prefer is duly noted. Neither the plain words, nor the manner in which the law was applied in 1787 agree with your claims. Furthermore, the slave states would not have agreed to your "interpretation" when the constitution was ratified.
Actually who really started the war were the southern fire-eaters that would not compromise at the democratic convention in Charleston in 1860. This splintered the democratic party and allowed the Republicans to win the election.
Also you lost causers seem so stuck on blaming Lincoln for this. None of the possible candidates from the Republican party (Chase, Seward, etc.) if they would have won the party’s presidential nomination, would have let the fire-eaters just set up their own government. It would have destroyed this country by setting the precedent that if you don’t like the outcome of an election you can just take your toys and go home. Much like the democrats today would like to do.
No person held to service or labor in one state...
For the purposes of our example, Kentucky.
...under the laws thereof...
Said laws allowing slavery.
....escaping into another...
Escaping, not being brought. Escaping. Fleeing. Illegally beating feet and leaving Kentucky.
...shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein...
For the purposes of our example, an Indiana law prohibiting the ownership of slaves by residents of Indiana.
...be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
In our example, the owner in Kentucky. Where slavery is legal. As opposed to Indiana. Where slavery is not. Therefore the captured runaway is returned to its owner in Kentucky, not to its owner now living in Indiana, because slave ownership is illegal there.
As further proof of how fallacious your argument is, look at the Confederate Constitution. It found the need to modify their own article IV, section 2, clause 1 to read: "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired. Likewise they saw the need to modify section 2, clause 3. In addition specifically identifying slaves, where the U.S. Constitution had merely said, "escaping into another" the Confederate leaders felt the need to clarify it by saying "escaping or lawfully carried into another." Why did they see the need to make those changes if a clear reading of the Constitution meant that no state could outlaw slavery completely within its borders?
It may be true that they caused the election of Lincoln, but this is far removed from any culpability for the occurrence of war. It was not a fore ordained conclusion that the election of Lincoln would automatically cause a war. It was highly probable, but not a guaranteed consequence.
Also you lost causers seem so stuck on blaming Lincoln for this. None of the possible candidates from the Republican party (Chase, Seward, etc.) if they would have won the party’s presidential nomination, would have let the fire-eaters just set up their own government
Chase is on record saying that secession is not rebellion. He says that a trial of the Confederate leadership for Treason would have condemned the actions of the North.
It doesn't sound like he agrees with you on this point.
It would have destroyed this country by setting the precedent that if you don’t like the outcome of an election you can just take your toys and go home.
The Declaration of Independence does not set conditions on the right to independence. In the two statements of which I am aware that Lincoln had made on the subject, neither did he.
The Only requirement is that the people want independence.
You are forcing onto the verbiage more specificity than the actual words convey. You are liberally interpreting it with additional requirements not in evidence from a plain reading of the text.
I'm not going to address your foray over into the Confederate Constitution because it does not have the slightest effect on what the US constitution said.
The Declaration of Independence does not set conditions on the right to acquiring wealth. The Only requirement is that the people want money. So where is the nearest bank?
I have been trying to find a source for that quote and cannot. Perhaps you have one? Also the quote seems suspect considering that in the Texas vs White case he said that the acts of secession where illegal.
I also don’t know of any republicans that advocated letting the fire-eaters have their way. Hell, you would be abandoning a lot of US citizens who did not want to join the confederacy.
The only people in the north that supported just letting the southerners go were “copper-head” democrats, but even hey seemed to be a minority.
Here is what Chase wrote in the Texas decision; “The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual.” And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?[7]
The subject is "independence". The Declaration of Independence expresses the natural law right under which our own effort to be independent was justified.
Not to my knowledge, perhaps it's because since you and DiogenesLamp are the only two people I've seen speak approvingly of the Scott v. Sandford decision it's never come up. But since you raised it, the simple answer is that there would have been no need to destroy the Dred Scott decision through violence. The bulk of Chief Justice Taney's comments were made in dicta and were not binding a precedent. The Lincoln Administration could have, and would have, challenged much of what Taney wrote in the courts had the Southern rebellion not interfered.
I'm reading the words as written.
I'm not going to address your foray over into the Confederate Constitution because it does not have the slightest effect on what the US constitution said.
Of course you're not. Not at all surprising.
“If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)
I also don’t know of any republicans that advocated letting the fire-eaters have their way. Hell, you would be abandoning a lot of US citizens who did not want to join the confederacy.
The founders abandoned a lot of British Loyalists. As a percentage of the population, they were likely greater than Southern Unionists.
The only people in the north that supported just letting the southerners go were “copper-head” democrats, but even hey seemed to be a minority.
In truth, most of the North was in favor of letting the South go. It was only after the wealthy and influential started to realize how much money it was going to cost them that there began to be resistance to the idea of letting them go.
"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." - Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860
After "four score and seven years", it is more indissoluble than the over thousand year old British Crown?
From the natural law rights which allowed us to throw off allegiance to the Millennial old British Monarchy, a government of only 87 years should more than meet it's match.
Words on paper written by men should not override natural rights given by God. In 1776, they didn't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
