On this date in 1864 President Lincoln receives a Christmas gift.

[Bull Snipe]

"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" was over. During the campaign General Sherman had made good on his promise d “to make Georgia howl”. Atlanta was a smoldering ruin, Savannah was in Union hands, closing one of the last large ports to Confederate blockade runners. Sherman’s Army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. In all, about 100 million dollars of damage was done to Georgia and the Confederate war effort.

[jeffersondem]

Remind me to never get into an argument with you about historical facts.

[rockrr]

I’ll say. kalameta will call you a child and bury you in bullshit.

[OIFVeteran]

Presidents set precedents, Jackson and Buchanan set the precedent that secession was illegal. They based this on the Federalist view of the Constitution. That the constitution was adopted by all the people, not a subset of people in a state. Where did this idea come from? It came from the Constitution where it states “We the people...”. It came from the writings of the founders at the constitutional convention. This view was also upheld by the U.S. Supreme court as early as 1821 in the Cohens vs Virginia decision;
“The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake, resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any sub-division of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it.” [19 U.S. 264] 1821

[JoeRender]

Yep.

[JoeRender]

Anyone knows that ending slavery was not the only reason. That is aside from the fact that one of the reasons why the south fought was to preserve slavery.

[JoeRender]

Thanks and well said.

[jeffersondem]

“Anyone knows that ending slavery was not the only reason. That is aside from the fact that one of the reasons why the south fought was to preserve slavery.”

There were slaves in the Confederate States. And there were slaves in the United States.

The Confederate States’ constitution enshrined slavery. The United States’ constitution enshrined slavery.

The President of the Confederate States swore an oath to uphold its pro-slavery constitution. The President of the United States swore an oath - twice - to uphold its pro-slavery constitution.

After the Emancipation Proclamation one President added a slave state to his nation. Do you know which one?

[jeffersondem]

“Anyone who has spent any amount of time studying the 19th century is aware of colonization efforts that existed early on. . . Why is it such a surprise to you?”

I didn't say it was a surprise; I wrote that it was not talked about too much in my school's history classes.

It has been awhile; I don't remember for sure if the teachers even brought up the subject. One of the students may have brought it up.

This was during the early days of the federal takeover of local public schools so I'm not sure what was, or was not, permitted to be said by Washington D.C. authorities.

[jeffersondem]

“I will volunteer to come out of retirement and grab an M-4 and teach you the error of your ways.”

It is always sad when holiday eggnog containing distilled spirits, combined with discussions of civics, results in aspirational talk of shooting people.

[jeffersondem]

“I just thought it was funny. Not as humorous as some of your posts perhaps, but amusing.”

Who doesn’t enjoy a good joke about the Saturnalia of squirrel scatology.

[jeffersondem]

“Won’t agree to your stipulation. Lincoln’s objective was to restore the Union. . . He did not outlaw slavery in any state that remained loyal to the Constitution and the Republic.”

If that it true, and it very well may be, then we can forever dismiss the notion that Lincoln and the North fought for the high moral principle of “freeing the slaves.”

But the North did fight and for good reasons: it was in their economic and political best self-interest.

[Guenevere]

He brought the South to her knees......
.....killed and pillaged and burned......starved the people, destroyed the crops
...burned them out of their homes

A horrible man!.....

[Bull Snipe]

“War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunderstorm. I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are.” William T. Sherman

[Bull Snipe]

Don’t disagree. Bringing the seceded states back in the Union was Lincoln’s primary objective throughout the war. Ending slaver became one of Lincoln’s objectives later in the war. Through the Emancipation proclamation, the Union Army freed about 3,000,000 slaves before the war ended. Lincoln strongly pushed for the second XIII Amendment before his death. He realized that once the war ended, it would have to be a nation without chattel slavery.

[Who is John Galt?]

OIFV: I will volunteer to come out of retirement and grab an M-4 and teach you the error of your ways.”
jd: It is always sad when holiday eggnog containing distilled spirits, combined with discussions of civics, results in aspirational talk of shooting people.

Not making excuses for any threats (alcohol-fueled or otherwise), but apparently he pictures me as some kind of Earth First!er or Maoist. (Which is actually kind of funny, since I've probably been voting for conservative candidates longer than he's been alive!) Guess he missed my Post #133, where I noted that resorting to the 'right of revolution’ is "hardly a desirable approach, since it could easily destroy the republic, in an effort to save it."

[BroJoeK]

TheNext: "The Civil War was caused by Northern slavery against the South.
The South was paying 75% of the nation’s taxes which was a holdover from the War of 1812."

Despite constant repetition on these threads, your number "75% of the nation's taxes" paid by "the South" is fiction.
The original Confederate South had only one major export, and it was a big one -- cotton represented roughly 50% of total US exports in 1860.
Nothing else Southern came even close and all others together added only a few more percent.

Of course 50% is nothing to sneeze at, so cotton planters could rightly claim to be a major factor in the nation's prosperity.
Further, for every dollar Southerners exported they also "imported" a dollar's worth of goods from the North, the major items being woolen goods, shoes, woven cotton goods, silk and iron related products.

All these products were protected by tariffs, but so were all Southern exports, from cotton to sugar.

And contrary to the impression often left on these threads, tariffs before 1861 were never set just by Northerners for Northerners.
Indeed, when the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" passed, Congress was ruled by Jacksonian Democrats, who supported it, with New Englanders and Deep South members in opposition.
Point is: that tariff was not a North vs. South thing.

In 1846 tariffs were substantially reduced by Democrats (President Polk from Tennessee) and again in 1857, again by Democrats (Doughfaced Northern President Buchanan).
So the original Morrill tariff proposed to raise the 1857 tariffs back to roughly their 1846 rates -- for one example, Iron products' tariffs were 30% in 1846, 24% in 1857 and back to 29% under Morrill.
Cotton tariffs were 25% in 1846, 19% in 1857 and back to 25% under Morrill.

The original Morrill tariff did not "double" any rates.
It was simply "politics as usual" and not considered by anybody at the time as justifying secession.

[OIFVeteran]

These lost losers always like to claim Lincoln didn't give a crap about the slaves. Any cursory research on Lincoln will show he was anti-slavery from the very beginning of his political career, and had been anti-slavery from a young age. These lost losers like to point to his letter to Horace Greeley to show all he cared about was preserving the Union, but they conveniently leave off the last paragraph of the letter;

Executive Mansion, Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley: Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

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.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours, A. Lincoln.

The bottom line is that the Republican Party, and Lincoln, wanted to put slavery back on the path of extinction. The same path the founding fathers believed they had put it on. The southern fire eaters were scared by this and thought the best way to protect slavery was to rebel and form their own country. One that would actually enshrine slavery in the constitution by actually using the word slavery. Contrast that with the US constitution were the founding fathers were so embarrassed by slavery they wouldn't even use the word.

But the law of unintended consequences smack the slavocracy in the face. Their rebellion gave Lincoln and the US Congress the power to do the very thing they were afraid of.

I believe the war was a just war. That the deaths of 300,00 men were a small price to pay to get rid of slavery. I actually am glad that the fire-eaters rebelled because if they wouldn't have they could have blocked most efforts by the republicans to restrict slavery. I think slavery would have lasted well into the 20th century and made a mockery of our founding and belief "that all men are created equal."

[jeffersondem]

“Don’t disagree(we can forever dismiss the notion that Lincoln and the North fought for the high moral principle of “freeing the slaves”).”

It is fine that we don’t disagree but you can expect to hear many contend that in some way Lincoln was “fighting to free the slaves” - - and even that the war was fought for high moral purposes.

That, by the way, is not a new idea. It was part of the spiel to keep Britain and France from coming into the war on the side of the South and continued well after the construction began of huge, segregated urban ghettos (unspeakable conditions) in the North that would be fully stocked with poor laborers displaced by the war and needed to create industrial wealth.

[Kalamata]

>>OIFVeteran wrote: "Presidents set precedents, Jackson and Buchanan set the precedent that secession was illegal. They based this on the Federalist view of the Constitution."

In other words, on the doctrine of secession they promoted a "Living Constitution." May as well throw the Constitution in the trash can.

Legal documents, such as the Constitution, are themselves precedent. Additional constructions that give the general government powers not specifically authorized by the Constitution constitute usurpations of power, which is tyranny. A common form of usurpation is called Stare Decisis, or judicial precedent.

Regarding secession, this is what I consider to be the correct understanding of the natural right of secession:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit."

Do you agree, or disagree?

*****************

>>OIFVeteran wrote: "That the constitution was adopted by all the people, not a subset of people in a state. Where did this idea come from? It came from the Constitution where it states “We the people...”. It came from the writings of the founders at the constitutional convention. This view was also upheld by the U.S. Supreme court as early as 1821 in the Cohens vs Virginia decision;"
>>“The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake, resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any sub-division of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it.” [19 U.S. 264] 1821"

The phrase "We the people" has been treacherously abused, and especially by that ruling which was just another power grab by the Marshall court. The original Preamble read:

"We the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitution for the Government of Ourselves and Our Posterity."

It was soon realized that some of those states might not ratify the Constitution; so the preamble was changed to the more generic form, "We the people." The claim that the Constitution was adopted by "the whole people" is false.

Madison expounded the Preamble in Federalist No. 39:

"On examining the first relation, it appears, on one hand, that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a federal act."

"That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution."

[James Madison, Federalist No. 39, in Bill Bailey, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.178]

A difficult Amendment process, which requires requires ratification by at least three-fourths of the states, was included in the Constitution as the lawful avenue of change.

Mr. Kalamata

[OIFVeteran]

Not a living constitution but there certainly is implied powers within the constitution.

Stare Decisis is not a usurpation but has been a part of our English common law and our legal system from prior to the adoption of the US Constitution, the same as judicial review.

I do believe in a natural right to rebellion. It is what the founding fathers did in our revolution. However, they were under no delusion that what they had legal authority under the British system and expected to be hanged if it failed.

Yes, I agree the Lincoln quote you posted. However, there is one big caveat in that quote that I have bolded and underlined for you.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Abraham Lincoln

Now just because you have a natural right doesn't mean you will use it for a good purpose. People can rebel for good or bad reasons and we, as moral creatures, can look at the reasons they rebelled and decide for ourselves if it was for a good cause or not.

Your wrong. The constitution was adopted by all the people and no subset of the people can break it. The Supreme Court ruled on this as early as 1821.

“The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake, resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any sub-division of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it.” [19 U.S. 264] 1821

James Madison, the father of the constitution, did say that. He also said this in a letter to Alexander Hamilton.

From James Madison to Alexander Hamilton

N. York Sunday Evening [20 July 1788]

My Dear Sir

Yours of yesterday is this instant come to hand & I have but a few minutes to answer it. I am sorry that your situation obliges you to listen to propositions of the nature you describe. My opinion is that a reservation of a right to withdraw if amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification, that it does not make N. York a member of the New Union, and consequently that she could not be received on that plan. Compacts must be reciprocal, this principle would not in such a case be preserved. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some of the articles only. In short any condition whatever must viciate the ratification. What the New Congress by virtue of the power to admit new States, may be able & disposed to do in such case, I do not enquire as I suppose that is not the material point at present. I have not a moment to add more than my fervent wishes for your success & happiness.

James Madison