Posted on 05/04/2018 6:42:25 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
Leading elements of Union Major General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan River. With a few hours they would clash with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Battle of the Wilderness. Lieutenant General Grant's Overland Campaign had begun.
No, that's just another coincidence i'm sure. :)
The fact that it did so doesn't mean it was astroturf with an agenda. That was just a coincidence. :)
"Reactions" usually go both ways. The deal -- the Federal Compact -- included the Northwest Ordinance, which was contemporaneous with the Constitution and reflected the views of the founders.
Did it require ratification from the Southern states as did Article IV, section 2 required ratification from the Northern states?
Pro-slavery forces were trying to overturn the Ordinance (Dred Scott decision) and the Compromise of 1820.
Which was the constitutionally correct position. If you want to repeal Article IV, section 2, amend the constitution. Don't try to legislate it or court decide it away. That is dishonest.
They were even trying to make state laws against slavery null and void.
They effectively were, so long as a slave was held by the laws of another state. States could make laws forbidding the creation of new slaves within their states, but they could do absolutely nothing about the laws of other states holding people as slaves. They also could do nothing to restrict the legal movements of people into their states from slave states. They had to accept reciprocity of rights, even if they didn't like it.
Instead they chose to do what liberals always do. Pretend the law doesn't mean what it does, and look for friendly courts to interpret it to mean something other than what it means.
Free Soil was a response or a reaction to that aggression.
Maintaining the status quo accepted by the states in ratifying the US Constitution was not "aggression." What was aggression is the attempt to undermine the agreed upon terms by hook and crook.
Yeah, first they came for the slaves.
Don't be asinine. The Slaves were already "came for" before the nation was even formed. It is ugly, but that is the truth of it.
The United States can be responsible for what it agreed to when it formed, and how it behaved afterwards, but the rest is pre-existing condition.
Then you started bitching about the rights of slave owners. Shameless!
By God you are absolutely right! We should have just shot them down in the F***ing street because they had no right to live, so long as we don't like the agreement to which we agreed!
And while we're at it, we should have shot ourselves down in the F***ing streets for agreeing to a LAW that makes us just as culpable!
How could we have made such an immoral bargain? and why should we have to keep an immoral bargain that we made? Why our changing moral compass means we can simply ignore laws that we have come to dislike!
It boils down to that "rule of law" thing I mentioned earlier. Either you have rigid laws, or you have whims masquerading as law.
Same people who held it in 1865. One would think that would have been obvious.
Apparently not. So how did they hold the whip in 1861? How did it manifest itself.
"How it behaved afterwards" included continuing slavery, and thus it is something Americans were responsible for, not a fact of nature or a "pre-existing condition."
By God you are absolutely right! We should have just shot them down in the F***ing street because they had no right to live, so long as we don't like the agreement to which we agreed!
And while we're at it, we should have shot ourselves down in the F***ing streets for agreeing to a LAW that makes us just as culpable!
It's good when you show just how close to hysteria you really are. No masks, no pretenses, no deceptions.
Of course not. What an idiotic notion.
Please read this very slowly and carefully. The quote is unrelated to Lincoln and/or the Confederacy. It is about a condition that existed for a long time before Lincoln came on the scene. You are not only a Lost Causer sir, you are a Lost Cause.
Diogenes has Aspergers Syndrome. He said so here a while back.
The South wanted peace and was willing to negotiate all disagreements with the United States. That much is clear from the resolution passed by the Confederate Congress.
Lincoln could have negotiated a just monetary settlement for federal property. If he had tried and failed, whatever moral authority he had to kill his economic and political rivals he would have still had. He refused to even try.
“Resolved by the Confederate States of America in Congress Assembled, That it is the sense of this Congress that a commission of three persons be appointed by the President elect, as early as may be convenient after his inauguration, and sent to the government of the United States of America, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.”
“Thus, in truth, states’ rights were the protection of the free states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the slave power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South Carolina.”
That is an interesting comment.
However, Massachusetts was a slave state. In fact, of the 13 original states, 13 of them were slave states.
Does Mr. Adams explain why slave owners in Massachusetts bought, traded, sold, transported, insured, and worked slaves?
And why did Massachusetts representatives vote to enshrine slavery into the United States constitution?
Does Mr. Adams say?
But when you say it in that way, it sounds like a personal attack rather than a well thought out argument to advance your point of view.
No. Just putting out who and what one is dealing with. And here’s my point of view on The Civil War, flat out and straight up: The North won The South lost. Get over it.
But that's not what you said way, way, way back in reply 1075. There you were referring to the U.S. as the "former owners" implying that change of ownership had taken place. Now you're saying that the South would have paid for it? Why would they pay for something you say that they owned?
“Resolved by the Confederate States of America in Congress Assembled, That it is the sense of this Congress that a commission of three persons be appointed by the President elect, as early as may be convenient after his inauguration, and sent to the government of the United States of America, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.”
When he wrote his letter to Lincoln why do you suppose Davis left out that part about settling matters of disagreement? Did he forget it? Or was he just not interested in that part do you think?
This still brings me laughs.
And the way for them to avoid those reproofs is what? To join in supporting the expansion of slavery? That would make them not hypocrites or racists or self-seeking materialists or conspirators? That's nuts (and I don't say that very often).
But you don't apply the same analysis to those who wanted to expand the area of slavery. You just ignore and excuse their racism and greed. You think slave owners weren't hypocrites? That's a modern misconception. Of course those who supported slavery while claiming to value freedom or democracy or civilization or humanity or Christianity were hypocrites. That's obvious now, but it was denied by the slave owners themselves. If you want to know why "Northern hypocrisy" wasn't such a big issue back then, one reason was that the hypocrisy of slavery's defenders was so much greater.
And you dare to accuse the Free Soilers of advocating some "living Constitution" and wanting to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution. No, that is what slavery supporters were trying to do. Can you say "Dred Scott Decision"? It was those who wanted slavery expansion who wanted to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution.
A constitutional guarantee of the return of slaves to their masters did not include the right of slave owners to take their slaves to any state or territory, work them as slaves for some time, and then return to the slave states with the slaves still in bondage. It was recognized for decades that slavery could be abolished by states and that state laws outlawing slavery would not be overturned by the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. But the Taney Court and the slave owners tried to change all that. That is precisely what Handy's Henry Adams quote about states rights and slavery is about. What some called the "Slave Power" was always willing to overturn state laws and precedents to advance slave owning interests.
By contrast, anti-slavery activists relied on time and the spread of information. If voters come to reject slavery and support laws or amendments that weaken or roll back slavery, that's not judicial activism or the "living constitution." It's just the natural course of things. The Constitution didn't mandate that all Americans had to love slavery and seek to perpetuate it. Voters and representatives were allowed to change their minds over time.
I would have agreed with you at one point, but then I took as critical a look at slaveowners and secessionists as I did of the abolitionists and Lincoln. If you learn more about the history and apply the same standard to both sides, it's harder to see slaveowners as innocent victims of somebody else's intrigues. The rest of us recognize the blindspot you have when it comes to the faults and failings of slaveowners and secesionists. Some day, you might, too.
“No. Just putting out who and what one is dealing with.”
Well, it sounded like a personal attack.
And your denial that is was a personal attack makes it sound like you are very economical with the truth.
I sympathize with their position of not wanting to be a part of a system that has legalized slavery. I do no however sympathize with the notion that they can ignore what is actual law, or attempt to abuse the system by deliberately misinterpreting what is actual law.
I don't believe in the "living constitution" concept. It is wrong headed.
For you they're all racists, hypocrites, self-serving materialists or conspirators against the South -- is that it?
I thought I made it clear that only some of them were self serving materialists. The tiny minority core of their movement was just kooks. The bulk of their popular support came from a hatred of labor competition from people they considered inferior, and had nothing to do with care about black folk.
The Self Servers, the Kooks and the people opposed to free labor competition, all made common cause against the group at which their animosity was directed.
And the way for them to avoid those reproofs is what? To join in supporting the expansion of slavery?
To not lie about what was agreed to in 1787.
But you don't apply the same analysis to those who wanted to expand the area of slavery.
The actual constitutional law favors their right to do so. Again, if you don't like making slavery legal in the USA, don't do it. Once you've done it, own up to it.
And you dare to accuse the Free Soilers of advocating some "living Constitution" and wanting to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution.
That is exactly what they tried to do. You cannot get around article IV, section 2. All of this crap about banning slavery in the territories is a deliberate attempt to get around the legalization of slavery as represented in that article. It's the same sort of tactic the liberals today use against gun control. It's trimming around the edges of anything that is not specifically addressed in the constitution to restrict the right.
It is an attempt to violate the spirit (which was to make slavery legal in the United States) of the law by playing games with the words and interpretation of it.
Can you say "Dred Scott Decision"? It was those who wanted slavery expansion who wanted to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution.
Exactly backwards. Except for the contention that blacks could never be citizens, Dred Scott correctly restored the constitutional provisions of slavery to their legal and proper place. It was all the efforts to restrict it and abolish it without a constitutional amendment that were attempts to rewrite the constitution without actually rewriting it.
Liberals screamed with outrage because all of their efforts to slowly erode this right guaranteed by the US constitution had been rendered null and void.
A constitutional guarantee of the return of slaves to their masters did not include the right of slave owners to take their slaves to any state or territory, work them as slaves for some time, and then return to the slave states with the slaves still in bondage.
It actually did. If any state "freed" the slave, that state was in violation of Article IV, section 2. Article IV, section 2 does not have an exception clause. It specifically says that no state law can free a slave held by the laws of another state.
So yes, George Washington could work his slaves in Pennsylvania, and they would remain slaves.
But let's stop with the bullsh*t. You give me an example of how a state can free a slave held by the laws of another state in such a manner that it doesn't violate Article IV, section 2.
How do you get around article IV, section 2?
Sounds as reasonable as "The Nazis won, the Jews lost. Get over it."
The premise that some have the right to abuse the lives of others is the foundation of slavery. That's what was established by the Civil War.
You are on the "Might makes Right" side of the fence. So were the Nazis.
You may think that is what you are saying, but from the standpoint of us objective readers of English, you are saying the Confederacy was "statist", and I keep pointing out to you that it was the Union that was and is now, "Statist."
We see examples of Union statism every single day, especially if one reads "Free Republic."
After ratifying the US Constitution, the only legal means of preventing the continuation of slavery was to convince individual states to abolish it. Once you managed to get 3/4ths of the states to agree on this point, it could then be legally abolished.
But that's not what happened, is it?
Liberals never amend the constitution, because they can't get the votes to do it. What they normally do is just pretend it doesn't actually mean what it says, it means whatever it is they want it to mean. That's how they came up with this "living constitution" crap.
Good entry in this week's "Most Obtuse and Least Self-Aware Post" competition.
You are really outdoing yourself this week.
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