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

Wanted to add a follow up comment on what you mention here about Kalamata claim about knowing Marines that think Lincoln was a tyrant. I served almost 21 years in the US Military. Started in the Marines and retired from the Army. Served both active duty and reserves, enlisted and officer. Over that time I met exactly two people that believed Lincoln was a tyrant and the south was justified in seceding. They were my roommates for awhile when I was lower enlisted in the Marines. One from Virginia and one from Tennessee, both white. They were also the two most racist people I’ve have ever had the misfortune to meet in real life. (Sadly I’ve met even more racist people on line.)

They always liked to say the south will rise again. I got sick of it one day and retorted “and the north will kick your a*^ again!” That shut them both up.

Of course for both of us this is all just anecdotal evidence.

Lost causers always like to claim Lincoln was a tyrant. Congress had recessed prior to the firing on Fort Sumter. Lincoln called Congress into an extraordinary session and they met on July 4th, 1861. Hardly the actions of a tyrant. If he was the tyrant they claim he would not have called this session nor even let them assemble.

The 37th Congress, with both houses now controlled by Republicans due to the seceding states representatives leaving, then approved all actions President Lincoln had taken up to that time as necessary to preserve the Union. They then began passing laws to help win the war. One of these being the confiscation act of July 1862.

Congress also exercised its constitutional duties of overseeing the process of the war. Many of these committees were very acrimonious to Lincoln and defeats of the Union army on the battlefield. The congressional record shows that even democratic copperheads were given their turn to talk.

Lincoln was far from a tyrant. He, and the 37th congress, were exercising their constitutional powers to suppress the largest insurrection in the countries history.

>>Kalamata wrote: “I don’t recall James McPherson mentioning Davis being captured in a dress in his book, ‘Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief.’”
>>Joey wrote: “Our Lost Causers love to cackle & crow over Lincoln’s incognito 1861 sneak through Baltimore into Washington, DC, in which it was sometimes alleged Lincoln travelled dressed as a woman.”

I have read about the Lincoln rumour, but never mentioned it. However, I have noticed that the progressives love to cackle & crow about the Davis rumour.

Mr. Kalamata

>>DoodleDawg wrote: "Mr. Olive is also a young earth Creationist so I’d be curious as to just what kind of scientist he is supposed to be."
>>Joey wrote: "For what it's worth, the word "kalamata" is Greek for "reed" as in "weak reed arguments", and can also be read to sound like "good eyes" as in "refuses to use his good eyes to see what is". >>Joey wrote: "As for which branch of science is his expertise, I think I can guess, based on his posts here, he must have advanced training, degrees and long experience in the sciences of propaganda and denial. It could also be "Biblical Science"..."

Joey doesn't understand science, but he can fool the non-scientist with his slick, Lincoln-like rhetoric.

A scientist is obliged to follow the data where ever it leads him. Ideologues, like those in the Evolutionism Orthodoxy that have hijacked science education, reject anything that doesn't fit their ideology. For example, this is the Evolutionary Biologist and devout Marxist, Richard Lewontin of Harvard University:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." [Lewontin, Richard C., "Billions and Billions of Demons: Review of Sagan's 'The Demon Haunted World'." New York Review of Books, 1997]

The first highlighted sentence should read,

"We take the side of EVOLUTION in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs."

That is anti-science. Scientists do not take sides; pseudo-scientists do. Scientists simply follow the data.

Mr. Kalamata

Kalamata: "Joey cannot provide any examples."

Every post from Kalamata is an example.

Kalamata: "Joey has been hanging around progressives so much he no longer recognizes conservative thought."

Daniel Kalamata, the Danny Child, defines both "science" and "conservative" as: whatever Kalamata believes.

Kalamata: "I love and cherish the Constitution, Joey, something you are obviously ignorant of.
You have been brainwashed by your progressive buddies into believing it is living constitution, rather than a legal document."

All lies, the words of a propagandist, not a scientist or conservative.

Kalamata: "Joey cannot point to any lies, because he is the liar."

I've seen virtually nothing honest or truthful sounding in any Kalamata post.
It's all just propaganda lies.

Kalamata: "My statements are 100% accurate, Joey; but you are too brainwashed to consider them."

Excepting your quote posts, which I've not caught you faking, none of your statements are 100% accurate and some are 100% false.

Kalamata: "Under the Constitution of the United States (something Joey cannot comprehend,) the Confederate States were a foreign nation at the time Lincoln declared war on them on April 15, 1861.
This is Davis:

[the Unioin] "will inaugurate a war of extermination on both sides..."

Sure, and some Confederates called Lincoln's March 4, 1861 Inaugural Address a "Declaration of War".
Some even today call Lincoln's "war fleet" to "attack Confederates" around Fort Sumter an "act of war".
In your quote Davis called Lincoln's April 15 proclamation of rebellion a "declaration of war".

But then the first declaration of war would be President Buchanan's, in February 1861 when he announced publicly he wouldn't give up Fort Sumter without a fight, and Jefferson Davis ordered Confederate General Beauregard to prepare to reduce the fort.

The truth is that Confederates began waging low-level war against the United States from Day One in December 1860 -- seizing Federal properties (forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), threatening Federal officials, authorizing a 100,000 man Confederate army to oppose the 16,000 man Federal army, and firing on Union ships.
None of these Confederate acts of war provoked a serious Union response until Fort Sumter, after which Confederates quickly labeled Lincoln's response a "declaration of war" and so issued their own formal declaration of war, May 6, 1861.

Bottom line: the choice for war belonged to Jefferson Davis at Fort Sumter and, having chosen war it's most interesting to notice that Davis himself from Day One labels it, "a war of extermination on both sides".
"Extermination"?
We have to wonder what that word "extermination" implied in 1861?
We know in 1941 Hitler called his invasion of Russia a "war of extermination" and we now know what that implied, but could Jefferson Davis have meant the same thing in 1861?

And what did he mean by "on both sides" -- did he imagine a "war of extermination" against the Union?
If so, that would help explain the aggressive nature of Davis' military strategies, whenever possible.

Kalamata: "Joey is such a child."

Danny K. is such a child.

Kalamata: "The truth is never a smear, Joey.
It can cause hurt, and even anger, but it is never a smear.
Your lies, however, are smears."

I can't think of an example where you've told the truth.

Kalamata: "You are aware that four slave states did not secede, are you not?
Are you also aware that Lincoln's so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" didn't apply to them.
In fact, it didn't free a single slave.
And, of course, there is that pesky Corwin Amendment that would have made slavery in the slave states permanent."

Now there's a typical example of a Kalamata package of propaganda lies.
In fact, Lincoln's commander-in-chief authority covered only states in rebellion, but that included roughly 3.5 million of the nation's four million slaves.
Of those the estimates range from 20,000 to 70,000 were freed immediately on January 1, 1863.
By war's end all but a relative handful of slaves in Kentucky & Delaware remained to be freed by the 13th Amendment.

As for Corwin, it was not what our Lost Causers like to pretend.

The fact remains, deny it if he will, Kalamata agrees with everything Jefferson Davis did to defend his slave-republic and opposes everything Lincoln did to defend the Union and free its slaves.

Kalamata: "No, Joey. It is all true."

I've seen no Kalamata post which is "all true".

Kalamata: "His Haitian experiment failed because the person he chose to run the operation, Bernard Koch, embezzled most of the appropriated funds."

The truth is that American freed blacks began "recolonizing" Liberia around 1820 and over the decades many thousands did so.
The project was supported by large Federal and state appropriations, but results were always disappointing -- it cost too much per person, too few volunteered and too many of those died before becoming established in Liberia.

Like previous presidents, Lincoln supported recolonization and in 1862 Congress voted $600,000 for it.
However those projects were also unsuccessful and very little of the appropriated money was actually spent.
In the end:

"Some scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea by 1863, following the use of black troops.
Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed that Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for the U.S. and then to remove them to Africa after their military service.
Others, such as the historian Michael Lind, believe that as late as 1864, Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney General Edward Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to the emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks".[48]
Mitchell, a former state director of the ACS in Indiana, had been appointed by Lincoln in 1862 to oversee the government's colonization programs.

By late into his second term as president, Lincoln had publicly abandoned the idea of colonization after speaking about it with Frederick Douglass,[49] who objected harshly to it.
On April 11, 1865, with the war drawing to a close, Lincoln gave a public speech at the White House supporting suffrage for blacks, a speech that led actor John Wilkes Booth, who was vigorously opposed to emancipation and black suffrage, to assassinate him.[50] "

Kalamata: "I am not so sure about that, Joey I have read several sources that imply Lincoln was considering colonization until his death."

Possibly, voluntary recolonization.
And yet John Wilkes Boothe murdered Lincoln for advocating full citizenship voting rights for freed blacks, here in the USA.

Kalamata: "I seriously doubt slavery was John Wilkes Booth's motives.
The reign of terror on the South by Sherman and Sheridan was the more likely motive."

Any yet Boothe said it was Lincoln's speech on voting rights for ex-slaves which did it.

Kalamata: "Lincoln signed it, Joey, which was unheard of for an Amendment proposal since that was strictly a congress-states matter. "

President Buchanan signed it, it was his baby.
Lincoln merely transmitted it to the states without much comment.

Kalamata: "No doubt he was an accomplished liar, but he said over and over again that the "union" was his goal, with or without slavery."

Lincoln was anti-slavery all his life.
It turned out, during the Civil War the Union could best be preserved by abolishing slavery, and so he did.

Kalamata: "Lincoln's ultimate goal was getting filthy rich (along with his friends) using the power of the federal purse, fiat currency, and crony capitalism."

So that explains why Lincoln died such a wealthy man?
</sarcasm>

Kalamata: "No, Joey. All of my friends are devout conservatives and patriots.
You, on the other hand, support the ACLU when it sues financially-strapped communities for the sole purpose of maintaining evolution as the established religion taught in public schools."

By definition, your friends are not patriots when they support Democrats' opposition to the US Constitution, including their 1860s, ah... unpleasantness.

President Trump reminds even his Deep South audiences that we are the party of Lincoln, regardless of Democrat lies about him.

As for evolution in Dover Area schools, the Republican judge and Dover voters agreed that evolution is science and Intelligent Design is religion, regardless of Kalamata's opinions.

Kalamata: "I was brainwashed about Lincoln until early this century, while in my mid 50's."

So you've suffered from dementia for nearly 20 years?

Kalamata: "Lincoln's goal with blacks was colonization, Joey, resulting in a white America"

Federal & state policies since about 1820 were to offer recolonization to those freed blacks who wanted it.
It didn't work well, but Lincoln tried it again, on a larger scale before deciding to offer freed blacks full citizenship instead.

That's why Boothe killed him.

Kalamata: "Nance was never a slave, Joey, so Lincoln was representing a free woman."

In a previous case, in 1828 she was ruled a slave who could be sold.
In the 1841 retrial the Illinois court reversed itself.

Kalamata: "Lincoln didn't free anyone, Joey. "

Well... except for those 4 million slaves and, we could argue, their white "slave owners".

Kalamata: "He turned a republic into a crony-capitalist police state, and sentenced blacks to a century of segregation and 2nd-class citizenship, and worse.
The Jim Crow North was certainly no friend of the blacks."

See, this is how I know you are just a Democrat at heart -- born, bred & raised Democrat, you can't get over it and you're are all about the Big Lie turning reality on its head.
In baby-Danny's Democrat mind, Lincoln is to blame for Jim Crow!

Honest to goodness, many people have remarked that being a Democrat is a form of mental illness, but it seems that even when people think they've rejected their old Democrat hearts, it turns out they're still trying to blame everyone but themselves for their own sins & transgression.

That's mental illness, FRiend.

Kalamata: "I guess you missed the hypocrisy, Joey.
Lincoln sought to put the family back in slave irons."

At the time of the trial Anthony Bryant was still a slave and being held in jail pending outcome of the trial.
I suspect it's possible Lincoln intended to lose the case and thus set Bryant's family free.
That is what happened.

Kalamata: "Lincoln had nefarious motives, Joey.
It wasn't about slavery as much as he wanted the territories to be lily-white."

Says Democrat-at-heart Kalamata projecting his own feelings onto Lincoln.

Kalamata: "Try to follow the narrative, Joey. A mere 6 years after supposedly being tormented by seeing slaves in slave irons, Lincoln represented a slaveholder with the sole purpose of putting the black family back in irons.
He was a con-man, Joey.
All he cared about was power and money and living among whites."

If Lincoln "conned" anyone, it would be Bryant's slaveholder Matson, into thinking Lincoln could get Matson's slaves returned after living two years in Illinois.
The fact that Matson refused to pay Lincoln might tell us Matson felt cheated by Lincoln, and, who knows, maybe he was?
I think that's really what got you so teed off about Lincoln.
The rest of your comment above is just nonsense.

Kalamata: "Are you claiming Lincoln lost on purpose, Joey, or are you trying desperately to salvage his reputation?"

I suspect he may have lost on purpose -- why else take on such a flawed case?
But the facts are not clear, so will reserve judgment.

Kalamata: " I have read that only about 25% of southerners owned slaves OR belonged to a slave-holding family.
That would place the actual number of slaveholders below 25%."

Sure, 25% is a rough overall average reported at the time.
But anybody at all familiar well understands this went from much higher than 25% in the Deep South to much less than 25% in the Border South.
How much?
Studies suggest between a third and half in Deep South states, 10% and less in Border States.

This difference explains why some states were quick to secede and others refused, even after Fort Sumter.

Kalamata: "Lincoln was all of those, and much more, Joey."

Your loathing for Lincoln seems to me far too broad & deep to have come out of some late-in-life conversion experience.
Rather it sounds more like something you learned with your mother's milk and bouncing on your Dad's knee, Danny.
But it's irrational nonetheless, if not entirely insane.

Lincoln was far from a tyrant.

I wonder what the Maryland Legislature would have thought about that.

Arrest of the Maryland Legislature, 1861

“Lincoln signed it, Joey, which was unheard of for an Amendment proposal since that was strictly a congress-states matter.”

I believe you are incorrect in your statement. Lincoln did not sign the joint resolution of congress to amend the constitution (aka Corwin Amendment). President James Buchanan signed a copy of the joint resolution on March 2 1861 and left it on the desk in the White House. On March 16th of 1861, Lincoln signed a cover letter to the joint resolution and forwarded it to the Governors of all the states, including the seven states that had seceded from the union.
The one paragraph cover letter states he is forwarding an unsigned copy of the a Joint Resolution of Congress to amend the Constitution of the United States. signed by President Buchanan for their consideration.

https://www.lib.niu.edu/2006/ih060934.html
This link shows the only copy of Lincoln’s cover letter. It was sent to the Governor of Florida.

I wonder what the Maryland Legislature would have thought about that.

They were trying to take Maryland into rebellion against the U.S. What should have happened to them?

Seems tome that Lincoln is not the only tyrant here.

>>Kalamata wrote: "No, Joey. I am anti-Junk Science, such as the junk science of evolutionism."
>>Joey wrote: "Naw, you're anti-science period. You oppose any branch or ideas of science which conflict with your own theories of "Biblical science"."

Don't let Joey fool you: evolution is his religion, On the Origin of Species is his holy book, and Darwin is his prophet.

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

>>Kalamata wrote: "No, Joey. I trust science as presented by scientists when it is verifiable. I distrust junk science, such as evolutionism, because there is no evidence to support it."
>>Joey wrote: "Nonsense, you deny all science, not just evolution theory, which conflicts with your own ideas of "Biblical science"."

I asked Joey for evidence of evolution, and all he could deliver were highly-imaginative museum mockups based on highly-fragmented fossils. The ENCODE Project Report of 2012 exposed the myth of Junk DNA that the evolutionist so heavily relied upon, so they are now desperately trying to keep the evolution myth alive.

Scientists know there is no empirical evidence for evolution -- none; and more and more scientists are speaking out, despite a credible threat to their careers by the modern-day Inquisition of the evolutionism orthodoxy.

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

>>Kalamata wrote: "Joey is always making up stories, like a good little evolutionist. That seems to be all the evolutionist knows how to do is make up just-so stories. There is certainly no evidence that supports it."
>>Joey wrote: "Like any propagandist, rather than confess the truth, Kalamata switches over to personal attacks."

Child.

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

>>Kalamata wrote: "I, personally, have been a Christian for most of my life; but I was an evolutionist and an old-earther until this decade when I saw contrary evidence for the first time. When I realized the evidence pointed to a global flood, I didn’t discard it like a religious fanatic would. I followed the evidence wherever it led me. That is what scientists are (supposedly) trained to do."
>>Joey wrote: "Naw, you deliberately followed fake evidence which lead you to a predetermined conclusion, "Biblical science"."

The geological column is not fake evidence, Joey. It is there for all to see, world-wide. The evidence within the column for a global flood is multi-fold:

1) The column is composed of thick, homogeneous, sedimentary rock layers.
2) The rock layers are found world-wide and sometimes cross continents and oceans.
3) There is limited bioturbation within the layers.
4) There is limited erosion between the layers, even adjacent to a missing layer.
5) Fossil species exhibit abrupt appearance, followed by stasis
6) Fossil species demonstrate disparity before diversity.

All of those characteristics contradict the theory of evolution. Worse for the theory, all of the major animal Phyla showed up in the earliest sedimentary rock layers, called the Cambrian. That is what you would expect in a flood, but not in a gradual evolution of life.

This is world-famous evolutionary paleontologist, James Valentine, trying to explain the abrupt appearance of the Phyla:

On the Origin of Phyla - Interviews with Dr. James Valentine

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

>>Kalamata wrote: "Again, I am a counter-puncher."
>>Joey wrote: "Naw, you don't wait to "counter-punch", you're in there with personal attacks & smears whenever things get even a little... dicey for you."

Again, I am a counter-puncher. If you have contrary evidence, please present it.

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

>>Kalamata wrote: "I was blessed to be able to attend five great universities, Joey."
>>Joey wrote: "I am impressed with your research skills, but not your honesty or reasoning ability."

Joey reminds me of the proverbial "children in the marketplace."

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

Kalamata wrote: "Joey will not provide an example of me “making a scientist like Stephen Gould sound anti-science,” because he cannot."
>>Joey wrote: "You've posted any number of quotes from Gould and used them to argue your own anti-science opinions."

I know you cannot provide any examples, Child. For the rest of you, these are the kinds of scientific quotes from devout evolutionists that outrage (and scare the daylights out of) the evolutionism ideologues:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

"[Quoting Darwin] The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory."

"[Gould, again] Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution directly. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never "seen" in the rocks."
[The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change (Reprinted from Natural History 86:5, 'Evolution's Erratic Pace', May 1977, p.14), in Stephen Jay Gould, "The Panda's Thumb." W. W. Norton & Company, 1980, Chap.17, p.181]

You see, according to the evolutionism ideologues, scientists are supposed to be evolutionists FIRST! Gould had a tendency to be a scientist first, as did Dr. James Valentine (linked above). Just sayin' . . .

Mr. Kalamata

Seems tome that Lincoln is not the only tyrant here.

And Kalamata is not the only person here with a hyperactive imagination.

A simple question for you Kalamata. Please read the South Carolina declaration of the causes of secession below and then tell me what you think the primary reason for South Carolina seceding was?

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."

They further solemnly declared that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments-- Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article "that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."

Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: "ARTICLE 1-- His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof."

Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.

In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.

The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.

If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were-- separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "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."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860

>>OIFVeteran wrote: "I must admit your citing abilities are impressive. Also, though you do not outright lie you are a master at spinning and twisting the facts."

All you know is what your brain has absorbed from decades of left-wing/neo-conservative propaganda; and it appears you have no desire to hear an alternate view. I, personally, seek to read and hear both sides. Nothing personal; it is just the way I am.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "The truth is that Lincoln had always been against slavery. His parents were abolitionist and he was raised in an abolitionist church. He regularly spoke out and acted against slavery from early in his political career. In 1837 he was one of only six Illinois legislators to vote against a resolution affirming slavery's constitutionally protected status and condemning the spread of abolitionism."

Lincoln was a politician and a white supremacist, so he was obliged to speak out of both sides of his mouth from time to time. For example, Lincoln supported the Illinois Black Codes, and the Illinois Constitution which prohibited the immigration of blacks into the state. This paragraph mentions Lincoln's remarks on the Dred-Scott decision:

"Although many northern political leaders and newspaper editors assailed [Chief Justice] Taney's decision [on Dred Scot,] they indicated much more concern about its repudiation of the Missouri Compromise than about the constitutional rights of Negroes. After all, the Chief Justice had told the Republican party that the major plank of its political platform - resistance to the further expansion of slavery-was unconstitutional. Few Republicans, on the other hand, had ever defended the rights of free Negroes. Had the Chief Justice confined his argument to the question of Negro citizenship, he might have gone virtually unchallenged, for it merely confirmed existing state and federal practices sanctioned by both major political parties."Now my opinion," Abraham Lincoln observed, "is that the different states have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it." Lincoln's colleague, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, was even more explicit. What prompted him to repudiate the Dred Scott decision, he told the Senate, was its attempt to limit congressional powers over slavery in the territories. As for Negro citizenship, he could by no means agree to the doctrine that the Constitution required the states to place blacks and whites on an equal footing." [Litwack, Leon F., "North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860." University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp.62-63]

I believe Lincoln was saying that if Illinois had the power to grant citizenship to a fugitive slave, he would oppose it. Is that what you read? Illinois did, after all, restrict the immigration of blacks into the state:

"Three states - Illinois, Indiana, and Oregon - incorporated anti-immigration provisions into their constitutions. The electorates, voting on these provisions separately, indicated their overwhelming approval at the polls. Voters indorsed the Illinois constitutional clause barring the further admission of Negroes by a margin of more than two to one, most of the opposition coming from northern counties in which there were few Negroes. Indianans gave a larger majority to the restriction clause than to the constitution itself, and Oregon approved exclusion by an eight-to-one majority. The popular mandate thus seemed clear. "The tendency, strong and irresistible, of the American mind," an Indianan declared, "is finally to accomplish a separation of the two races." [Ibid. pp.70-71]

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "His views on slavery did not change, his views on race did. He went from believing that black could and should not be political equals to whites to believing some blacks should have the right to vote."

There is no evidence his views changed. That is not to say his politics did not change from time to time, depending on how the wind blew.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "The bottom line up front is that the southern slave holders didn't like the results of a freely held election in our constitutional republic and decided to resort to the bullets instead of the ballot box."

The historical facts are, the secessionists tried to leave the United States in peace, and Lincoln would have none of it. The South would have been better off in East Berlin: at least they would known their rights.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "They could have stayed in the republic and attempted to enact laws to allow peaceful secession, they did not. Unlike our founding fathers who endured years of abuses and usurpations upon their rights as English men."

"Laws to allow peaceful secession?" You are unfamiliar with the history of secession, the constitutional and ratification convention debates, and the constitutionally-enshrined concept of retained rights. The states had power over secession, until the tyrant Lincoln usurped it. That is also a historical fact.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "The reason they rebelled is perhaps one of the worst reasons any group of people have rebelled against their current government, to protect their property in humans. This is an indisputable fact because the southern slave owners at the time of their rebellion stated this fact over and over again."

It was all about economics -- Hamiltonian's mercantilistic economics to be exact -- as adopted by Henry Clay and the Whigs. Slavery was merely a part of that economy. The Whig principles of high protective tariffs, fiat currency, and corporate welfare (crony capitalism,) that so infuriated the South (and some in the North) for decades, were later adopted by the Republicans when the Whig party faded away. Lincoln was certainly a chameleon on race and slavery; but he was as constant as the rising sun on his promotion of Henry Clay and Whig principles.

The Republican Party of today -- the Party of Reagan -- is a far cry from the Party of Lincoln, which was the party of economic plunder and white supremacy.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "From their declarations of secession to their speeches and letters to other slave states in efforts to get them to rebel against the constitution. Here is just one example our of 100s that I could show you."
>>OIFVeteran quoting Toombs: "In view of such effects and consequences here from the mere possession of one branch of Congress we ought not to shut our eyes to the effects of the possession of the government in all of its departments by any Black Republican. It would abolitionize Maryland in a year, raise a powerful abolition party in Va., Kentucky, and Missouri in two years, and foster and rear up a free labour party in [the] whole South in four years. Thus the strife will be transferred from the North to our own friends. Then security and peace in our borders is gone forever. Therefore I deeply lament that any portion of our people shall hug to their bosoms the delusive idea that we should wait for some "overt act." I shall consider our ruin already accomplished when we submit to a party whose every principle, whose daily declarations and acts are an open proclamation of war against us, and the insidious effects of whose policy I see around me every day. For one I would raise an insurrection, if I could not carry a revolution, to save my countrymen, and endeavor to save them in spite of themselves." – Letter from Senator Robert Toombs to Alexander Stephens-February 10, 1860"

Have you read this speech by Toombs made later that year in November?

"It is true... that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction— a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure [e.g., crony capitalism;] and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill—the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South. Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its ordinary and most favorable action, bounties and protection to every interest and every pursuit in the North, to the extent of at least fifty millions per annum, besides the expenditure of at least sixty millions out of every seventy of the public expenditure among them, thus making the treasury a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands. [Senator Robert Toombs, speech before Georgia legislature on the Morrill Tariff, November, 1860, in Stampp, Kenneth M., "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, pp.64-65]

Senator Toombs sounds furious, and rightly so!

Again, it was all about economics, which was centered around the tariff. If slavery alone was the issue, Lincoln would have not waited several years before making a big deal out of it; and he would never have appointed a slave-holder and/or slave-benefactor as the commander of the armies he was sending to wipe out the slave-holders and non-slave-holders of the South.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "As far as the reason the common southern soldier was fighting? It really matters not. No matter what your personal reason for serving your country you are in actuality fighting for the aims of that government. But even considering that many southern soldiers knew exactly what they were fighting for, and expressed this in letters."
>>OIFVeteran quoting: "The vandals of the North . . . are determined to destroy slavery . . . We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights and southern liberty." [Lunsford Yandell, Jr. to Sally Yandell, April 22, 1861 in James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, p. 20]

I believe it matters a lot that the soldier understands what he is fighting for; and, of course, anyone can compile a series of cherry-picked quotes and pretend they are relevant. Many of the things said about race in your quotes could be heard among the northern armies, as well. In fact, many northern soldiers were aghast when Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, protesting that they joined to preserve the Union, not to help abolish slavery. The result was over 200,000 deserted, and many others evaded the draft. This is McPherson:

"[P]lenty of soldiers believed that the [Emancipation] proclamation had changed the purpose of the war. They professed to feel betrayed. They were willing to risk their lives for Union, they said, but not for black freedom. The proclamation intensified a morale crisis in Union armies during the winter of 1862-1863, especially in the Army of the Potomac. The removal of McClellan from command, the disaster at Fredericksburg, and the fiasco of the Mud March had caused morale in that army to plunge to an all-time low. Things were little better in Grant's army on the Mississippi, where the first attempts against Vicksburg had come to grief.
"Desertion rates in both armies rose alarmingly. Many soldiers blamed the Emancipation Proclamation. The "men are much dissatisfied" with it, reported a New York captain, "and say that it has turned into a 'nigger war' and all are anxious to return to their homes for it was to preserve the Union that they volunteered." Enlisted men confirmed this observation with a blizzard of bitter comments in letters home. "I am the Boy that Can fight for my Country," wrote an Illinois private, "but not for the Negros. A private in the 66th Indiana wrote from Mississippi in February, 1863, that he and his messmates "will not fite to free the niger... there is a Regment her that say they will never fite untill the proclamation is with drawn there is four of the Capt[ains] in our Regt sent in there Resingnations and one of the Liutenants there was nine in Comp. G tride to desert." At the end of 1862 another Illinois soldier with a wife and children reflected on the "cost of freeing the Black Devils. No less than 300,000 of our own free white citizens have already been sacrificed to free the small mite that have got their freedom.... I consider the life & Happiness of my family of more value than any Nigger."
[James M. McPherson, "What they fought for, 1861-1865." Louisiana State University Press, 1994, p.63]

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: "So instead of worrying so much about the mote in President Lincoln's eye you should be worrying about the beam in the eyes of the southern leaders."

And don't forget to mention the beam in the eyes of the northern leaders and populace:

"While stressing this incompatibility of free and slave labor, most Republicans also denied any intention to extend political rights to free Negroes and expressed revulsion at the idea of social intercourse with them. Full legal protection should be accorded both races, but according to Republican logic, it did not necessarily follow that Negroes should be granted the right to vote, sit on juries, or testify in cases involving whites. To the Negro, this must have been a strange logic indeed. In many areas, party leaders contended that any concessions to Negroes would constitute political suicide. In 1860, for example, an Ohio leader declared that a poll of the Republican party in the Old Northwest would not find "one in every thousand" favoring social and political rights for Negroes. Even such a firm and outspoken abolitionist as Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio hesitated to commit his party too far on this potentially explosive issue. "We do not say the black man is, or shall be, the equal of the white man," Giddings declared in 1859, "or that he shall vote or hold office, however just such a position may be; but we assert that he who murders a black man shall be hanged; that he who robs the black man of his liberty or his property shall be punished like other criminals." And few Republicans were as radical as Giddings on this question! Meanwhile, Republican-dominated legislatures and constitutional conventions made few efforts to extend political rights. If their conservatism required any further demonstration, a New York City Republican proudly noted that of the 32,000 who voted for Lincoln in 1860, only 1,600 indorsed the state Negro-suffrage amendment." [Litwack, Leon F., "North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860." University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp.270-271]

So much for the so-called party of freedom.

Mr. Kalamata

>>Kalamata wrote: “No, Joey. I trust science as presented by scientists when it is verifiable. I distrust junk science, such as evolutionism, because there is no evidence to support it.”
>>Joey wrote: “OK so you don’t trust Geology, Physics, Zoology, Biology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Botany, Anthropology, Archeology, or Paleontology. Perhaps an easier question might be what scientific disciplines do you trust?”

I trust the evidence gather by all of those disciplines, Joey.

Mr. Kalamata

>>DoodleDawg wrote: “Lincoln wasn’t a blood-thirsty, power hungry tyrant because people said he wasn’t. How’s that?”

People also say he was. I am now one of those.

I am not too proud to admit I was wrong. I used to be one of yours.

Mr. Kalamata

I trust the evidence gather by all of those disciplines, Joey.

I wrote it, not BroJoeK, and as a YEC the idea that you trust any of them is ridiculous.

People also say he was. I am now one of those.

Not surprising. People say a lot of things - 300 newspapers closed, tens of thousands of political prisoners - and you accept that unquestioningly. Why should this be different?

I am not too proud to admit I was wrong. I used to be one of yours.

LOL! I await evidence of that with baited breath.

>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Wanted to add a follow up comment on what you mention here about Kalamata claim about knowing Marines that think Lincoln was a tyrant. I served almost 21 years in the US Military. Started in the Marines and retired from the Army. Served both active duty and reserves, enlisted and officer. Over that time I met exactly two people that believed Lincoln was a tyrant and the south was justified in seceding. They were my roommates for awhile when I was lower enlisted in the Marines. One from Virginia and one from Tennessee, both white. They were also the two most racist people I’ve have ever had the misfortune to meet in real life. (Sadly I’ve met even more racist people on line.)”

I see you are still playing the moral-superiority card. I thought you were done with that.

You have lived a very sheltered life. I ran into many racists in the military, but admittedly I served long before you. The most racist people I have ever experienced were the town’s people of a Pennsylvania college I attended, but that too was long ago.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “They always liked to say the south will rise again. I got sick of it one day and retorted “and the north will kick your a*^ again!” That shut them both up.”

The South has already risen again. Many of the more productive and less progressive northerners have moved or retired to the South, like me. That migration will slow down, or possibly reverse, now that Trump has brought the jobs back; but for now the labels are “Progressive North; Conservative South.”

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Of course for both of us this is all just anecdotal evidence.”

Of course.

Mr. Kalamata

K: No, Joey. I trust science as presented by scientists when it is verifiable. I distrust junk science, such as evolutionism, because there is no evidence to support it.
DD: OK so you don't trust Geology, Physics, Zoology, Biology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Botany, Anthropology, Archeology, or Paleontology. Perhaps an easier question might be what scientific disciplines do you trust?

There are a lot of different ways in which one can view 'science'. However, for any view to be even marginally realistic, I would suggest that the possibility of change must recognized. Simply put, 'science' changes on a daily basis; new discoveries are made, established knowledge is revised or reinterpreted, and mistakes are (hopefully) corrected. Speaking of the latter, erroneous or fraudulent research is a real problem (for example, see https://retractionwatch.com ). A doctor of my acquaintance confided in me recently, that he tries to stay current (again, 'science' changes daily), but he doesn't know what published research is real, and what is fraudulent.

When I meet people who claim to base their lives on 'science', I often ask: "Is that yesterday's science, today's science, or tomorrow's science?" (The question can produce some lively discussion! ;^)

>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Lost causers always like to claim Lincoln was a tyrant.”

I am not a lost-causer, but Lincoln WAS a tyrant.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Congress had recessed prior to the firing on Fort Sumter. Lincoln called Congress into an extraordinary session and they met on July 4th, 1861. Hardly the actions of a tyrant. If he was the tyrant they claim he would not have called this session nor even let them assemble.”

Perhaps you misunderstand the definition of tyranny. A common definition is the usurpation of power, which Lincoln exercised over and over again.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “The 37th Congress, with both houses now controlled by Republicans due to the seceding states representatives leaving, then approved all actions President Lincoln had taken up to that time as necessary to preserve the Union. They then began passing laws to help win the war. One of these being the confiscation act of July 1862.”

No doubt the republican-controlled congress rubber-stamped Lincoln’s usurpations.

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Congress also exercised its constitutional duties of overseeing the process of the war. Many of these committees were very acrimonious to Lincoln and defeats of the Union army on the battlefield. The congressional record shows that even democratic copperheads were given their turn to talk.”

I have read that Lincoln micro-managed the war. Check out: James M. McPherson, “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.” Oxford University Press, 2008

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>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Lincoln was far from a tyrant. He, and the 37th congress, were exercising their constitutional powers to suppress the largest insurrection in the countries history.”

The only insurrection in those days was by Lincoln and his merry band of thugs against Union citizenry.

When are you going to support and defend the Constitution, rather than usurpations against it? Just curious . . .

Mr. Kalamata