I don't think it was all that complex when you visualize it properly.
Most of that money belonged to the South. The North wanted to keep it.
Posted on 06/05/2023 8:59:33 PM PDT by grundle
COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School | Thomas Sowell
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
The Constitution is a contract between states as well as states and the federal government. The only way it changes is the amending process. It doesn't "evolve". What matters is what states agreed to at the time that they ratified the constitution. Its clear they intended for states to have a unilateral right of secession. They openly said so at the time.
What about SCOTUS with Texas vs. White (1868)? See here and here.
What about it? This was an after the fact justification by a court the majority of whom were nominated by Lincoln. What did anybody expect them to say - that the federal government had been wrong all along?
I don't think it was all that complex when you visualize it properly.
Most of that money belonged to the South. The North wanted to keep it.
You are mistaken. It is very much written. It is written in the foundational document of the nation; The Declaration of Independence.
It is quite explicit that states have a right to secede. It is in fact the very bedrock of how we justified our own separation from the English Union.
As for the claimed "right" to secede, it fails basic law and logic in that it supposed the Constitution was a contract subject to an unwritten right to secede based on the election of Lincoln because he was against slavery. Yet the contract analogy fails because Lincoln had not acted against slavery, so there was no breach of contract that justified secession as a remedy. Of course, to the degree that the Constitution was a contract, entry into it was a one time thing, not a gate that could be opened or closed as circumstances dictated.
The Constitution is a contract between states and the right to secede is covered by the 9th and 10th amendments. It is a power not expressly delegated by the sovereign states to the federal government and is therefore reserved by the states. The Northern states' violation of the fugitive slave clause was not about the election of Lincoln. They had violated it by the passage of state laws prohibiting the enforcement of that part of the Constitution.
No serious historian buys into the Lost Cause myth that secession was prompted by tariffs and other economic issues.
No PC Revisionist "historian" you mean. Of course, no serious historian buys into any of the Revisionist Politically Correct Leftist interpretation of history put forth starting in the 1980s which includes such things as the "all about slavery" myth.
The historical record is plainly to the contrary, with Confederate secession based on the determination of the South's slave owning elite to maintain slavery.
The historical record shows the Southern states' legal justification was that the Northern states had violated the Constitution via their refusal to enforce parts of the constitution and in some cases, their overtly hostile acts toward the Southern states - such as refusing to prosecute the sponsors of terrorism.
What you said earlier, I say now. "What I've put forth is better evidence, and more authoritative."
Unless there is a new ruling overturning Texas v. White, it is authoritative.
-PJ
The Slavery issue was only part of the power struggle between the regions. Other issues were the centralization of power vs states rights and of course, the economics.
Your view of the Klan as a political ploy against Republican governments after the Civil War is entirely too benign.
It wasn't a political ploy. It was a resistance movement. People were furious that they had been disenfranchised and that the corrupt occupation governments literally taxing them out of house and home and then stealing whatever money was raised by these hefty taxes.
And the Klan era after the Civil War saw not just the political disenfranchisement of blacks but also the adoption of segregation and general racial oppression against them.
Blacks had never been enfranchised before the Civil War. What you mean is that Blacks got the right to vote and most voters in the Southern states were simultaneously disenfranchised during the Occupation. When the Occupation came to an end after 12 years that was reversed. The Southern states then adopted the same "Black Codes" that had long been on the books already in the Northern states.
Why devote such attention to this subject? Simply put, realism and historical accuracy matter. Without them, people tend toward fantasy and mythologizing. That is part of how the Old South foolishly let slavery define its future, leading it to Civil War and devastation for its preservation, with an enduring race issue in the aftermath. We ought to see that clearly as a discipline toward seeing the present and future clearly as well.
I do not agree that the Southern states "let slavery define their future". Slavery was not what they seceded over and fought for. They could have ensured the preservation of slavery effectively forever had they wanted that, by simply agreeing to the Corwin Amendment.
You mean the collective people of all the United Kingdom? Should the rest of the United Kingdom have gotten a vote as to whether or not the states should secede?
The Declaration of Independence was speaking of the unanimous colonies as "one people" in relation to "another," namely England. It was not speaking of, say, New York in relation to Virginia.
The "One People" must include England to be consistent with your explanation.
It is for that reason I say your interpretation is wrong. The states existed as independent entities before the Revolution, and they only banded together to face their common adversary, the United Kingdom. (Union.)
It wasn't speaking of future generations splitting from the collective, it was speaking of "abolishing" the form of government and creating a new one. It was not abolishing the Union and creating a new one.
It was abolishing the "Union of the Crowns" and creating the "Union of the States". It was separating from an existing Union. Their flag is even called the "Union Jack."
And while we're at it, this seems like a good time to point out that they formed a Confederacy... a slave owning confederacy of slave states.
The Union, (the British) offered freedom to their slaves. (Lord Dunmore's proclamation.) The Confederacy decided they needed a slave owning General from Virginia to lead their armies.
Sounds familiar somehow.
You may be missing his point. I find him quite intellectually curious and open-minded. He says he is an engineering student. Most of engineering folks are not typically interested in history or social studies; but he wants to learn, and seems to break information down the way an engineer looks at things: what are the hard elements, what are the moving parts, and what makes this thing work?
When the kid says, "they never taught us this in school," he is referring to Sowell's explanation that:
• slavery existed in all cultures throughout history;• until recently in human history (since the rise of technology), slavery was primarily practiced against vulnerable people by people of the SAME race, so that skin color wasn't a primary function of slavery;
• whites did not enter the continent of Africa and capture slaves, but rather that Africans from weak tribes were raided, captured and sold by other Africans and Arabs;
• and many other points that most Americans never heard in school.
Most American schoolchildren have been taught the standard “heroic” version:
• Slavery bad, therefore the South bad;
• North noble and good, therefore North ended slavery,
• with Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.
People younger than most of us on FR have also, since the recent rise of BLM and wokeness, been taught that:
• slavery was INVENTED by the U.S.;• our nation was FOUNDED on an intention to propagate the slave system (when in actuality, allowing slavery was passionately debated from the start, and has often been acknowledged as a fatal flaw in our Founding);
• because our Founding was by white males, many of whom had slaves, white people are inherently oppressors of blacks,
• therefore our system is inerently racist, and
• therefore our system must be destroyed.
Sowell's research shows us the missing details and fallacies of those simplistic points of view.
There was no "one people" when it came to the United States.
[the Constitution would be ratified by the people]"not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct independent States to which they respectively belong.." James Madison, the Federalist #39
"An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant." Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist #32
I read a lot of material relating to this subject and I try to condense the summation of all I read into small digestible bites. I have a great memory for a lot of bits and pieces, but there comes a time when I simply cannot tell you everything i've learned off the top of my head.
The bottom line is that the sum total of everything i've so far read on the topic indicates Rhode Island was coerced.
Rhode Island did *NOT* participate in the Constitutional convention. They sent no delegation. The articles of confederation required unanimous consent of all states to make any changes. The framers of the Constitution ignored this requirement.
There are others here who are more familiar with all the details of what happened with Rhode Island. I don't remember exactly who it was, so I pinged a lot of the names I could remember.
I stand corrected. 2/3rds is still a supermajority. It leaves no doubt that the majority of the states' representatives and Senators agreed to this.
Only enough Republicans voted for the Amendment to ensure its passage by the narrowest of margins.
This is what the liberal party always has done with votes it thinks will be unpopular with it's constituency.
Passage and ratifiction of the Corwin Amendment would never have won back the Deep South states which had already seceded, but it was believed that it could have pursuaded those in the Upper South to remain in the union.
Well this assertion is seemingly contradicted by Lincoln's activities in sending notification to the governors of those already seceded states as well as the upper southern states. If Lincoln did not think it would win them back, why did he try?
There was no guarantee that the amendment would be ratified, though.
Pretty good guarantee. William Seward assured everyone that New York would pass it, and if New York passed it, all it's satellite states would have followed suit. Add those to the then existing 15 slave states (later 16 slave states), and it's chances of passage were very good. Five Northern states already passed it.
It was a lock.
You and I will never have to make such difficult and weighty decisions as those in the past did, so it's best not to speak to lightly about the choices that they made when constrained by circumstances we will never have to face.
One of the reasons why I focus so much of my discussion time on the Civil War is because I see the parallels to today. I have reached the point where I think the original civil war never ended, it just went to a slow burn. The issues bedeviling the nation in that era are still bedeviling us today, and Washington DC is still the focus of everything wrong in the nation.
The "One People" must include England to be consistent with your explanation.
No. The Colonies thought of themselves as distinct people from England after 150 years since landing at Plymouth Rock. The "one people" were the people on our side of the Atlantic Ocean who were eight generations removed from England.
The states existed as independent entities before the Revolution, and they only banded together to face their common adversary, the United Kingdom.
The colonies existed as independent entities, but common in people who traveled back and forth and traded amongst them. They didn't "band together" just to face a common enemy (King George III), but also in support of the American idea of "governments... deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
They also believed that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes," and that it should take "a long train of abuses and usurpations" before resorting to "throwing off such Government."
And while we're at it, this seems like a good time to point out that they formed a Confederacy.
What they formed was pre-Constitutional. They gave it up when they ratified the Constitution. Now they have to live within the confines of the Constitution and use Constitutional means to affect changes. A Convention of States for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution should be pursued before resorting to nullification.
-PJ
In other words, you believe the official narrative because Washington DC wouldn't lie to us would they?
There never was going to be slavery in Kansas or any other territory. It wasn't economically viable.
Why does this matter? It's pre-Constitutional. We're not talking about the Articles of Confederation, I thought we were talking about ratification of the Constitution which only required 9 of the 13 states to ratify.
-PJ
As Madison later wrote in the letter in my first post:
It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have imbodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.Also, the 10th amendment says:
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.The 10th amendment clearly separates the United States, the several States, and the People as distinctly separate entities.
-PJ
No Washington no USA. Yes.
If VA/South did not join the war no USA. Yes.
You are asinine.
He still knows how to think despite being indoctrinated as to what to think in the government schools that he most likely attended.
Awesome graphic. It does illustrate the economic aspect rather irrefutably, assuming that the first step before assessing tariff revenues was to cheaply import the goods from the south to the north and then execute the lucrative trade.
It seems slavery would have become increasingly anachronistic as technology progressed. Slavery might work in industries requiring repetitive labor such as cotton picking but would be poorly suited to high-tech jobs requiring high degrees of motivation and skills that were increasingly in demand even in the rural South.
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