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To: Ditto
You are full of horse hockey. You are implying that amendment said that states couldn't end slavery in their borders if they wanted

Not in the least and I defy you to show otherwise. The amendment stated that slavery could not be ended the way it was ended - by amendment.

With a 3/4 majority necessary for an amendment to the US Constitution, no reasonable person in 1860 ever expected slavery to be ended on a national level via amendment.

No, but it was certainly a future possibility as slavery declined economically and more states abandoned it. Eventually there would have been enough states to abolish it, but The Lincoln's amendment would have prohibited that.

77 posted on 01/24/2003 12:35:11 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
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To: GOPcapitalist
The amendment stated that slavery could not be ended the way it was ended - by amendment.

Show me one example of anyone, even the wildest abolutionist, contemplating ending slavery by amendment in 1860. They all knew then it could only be ended by the states, individually. That is why people like Greeley called the Constitution a pact with the devel.

The war, as wars tend to do, changed the realities. But in 1860, it was beyond comprehension for it to have ended that way. The south knew it, and the people who proposed that amendment knew it. That is why that amendment was a non-starter from the get-go. It was simply a desperation attempt to hold the Union together.

83 posted on 01/24/2003 12:53:13 PM PST by Ditto
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