Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by LouAvul
....snip......
Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.
.......snip........
Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.
It's also a lie.
......snip.........
Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.
Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.
To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.
......snip.........
One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.
.....snip.........
Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacticket.com ...
The Constitution also gave the Congress plenary authority with respect to the territories: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..."
Congress certainly had the well-established power to "regulate" slavery (i.e. importation of slaves, restrictions on maritime carriers, etc). And it had the constitutional right to establishes regulations and organize governments in the territories. In denying Congress, that authrority, the Taney Court overstepped its bounds.
Prof. Fehrenbacher observed that, "[In Dred Scott] the weakest branch of the Federal government informed Congress, the strongest branch, that it lacked the power to accomplish the will of an emerging sectionalized national majority. The court instructed the nation that the Constitution was indeed a proslavery compact.... The Dred Scott decision, only the second instance in U.S. history of the Court invalidating a federal statute, was built upon both weak legal argument and a misrepresentation of history."
Good idea. I haven't pursued it, but it would seem to be productive of instructive parallels to e.g. Marxism in Russia.
I'm more fascinated by the temper tantrum over our actually having engaged his presentation of factual information with other facts, to challenge his Lincolnian, proto-Marxian synthesis.
Criminals?!
There you go again, talking out of the side of your mouth just to hear yourself slur.
But wait -- maybe you are correct. Tell us, signify to us, what laws did they break, these criminals ? You no doubt have the outcomes of their trials in hand, their criminal records? Speak to us. Back up your lousy mouth with some supporting facts and documentation.
It didn't give Congress the power to abrogate property rights or any of the other rights under the Bill of Rights, under its power to regulate the Territories.
The Bill of Rights, moreover, amended the Constitution to ensure that the Congress didn't do any such thing as exclude people's property from the Territories, which is where Chief Justice Taney came down in Dred Scott.
Please stop pushing that line, it's been refuted.
Oh, humbug, no it did not.
And your boy Fehrenbacher resorts to talking about "an emerging sectionalized national majority" to justify pooh-poohing a reading of the black-letter law of the Constitution. Does that mean that, if I can get 51% of the vote, I can cancel your right to express yourself here or worship on Sundays?
Fehrenbacher is just homering for Lincoln and the freesoilers.
Exactly right.
The issue was new states.
The old states having slavery already, were allowed to keep them, but it was hoped by putting limits on slavery's growth it would soon die.
When the Missiouri Compromise was revoked, Jefferson said it was like an alarm going off.
Now, as Lincoln said very clearly in his Inaugural Address,
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the others believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute
It was referenced earlier in the thread and on another thread too. Circa spring 1860 editorial.
The point remains, and one can argue the hypothetical about the application of slavery to mining, that the southern leadership stilled eyed the southwest.
"You are repeating here a charge which has been previously challenged by my quotation of Rhett's other manifesto, 'The Address of the People of South Carolina, Assembled in Convention, to the People of the Slaveholding States of the United States'."
I have been looking for an old post I made about that a couple of years ago. I have not yet located it. For the moment, I will just say that when Rhett issued his "manifesto" his audience had changed. Prior to that time he was agitating for any sort of secession attempt. His own South Carolina (naturally) had complied, and now he needed to build on the momentum. So the tone of his argument changed in some degree. The message was similar to that being delivered around the South by the "Apostles of Disunion."
The only two quotations from the last three years before the Civil War are Foote's and the knotheaded Sen. Albert Gallatin Brown's -- and the latter was talking about Cuba and Mexico.
In the case of California, I repeat that the State was off the table for any practical purposes -- but I was also unaware of any plan to subdivide it (presumably under Article IV, with the consent of the Congress). It was big enough that that might seem feasible, but I wonder about the lack of population in southern California. My great-grandfather, who once rode for Custer and saw Los Angeles in the 1880's as a train conductor on the Southern (Central) Pacific, commented on how little was there in the beginning. California may not have had sufficient population to subdivide.
In a similar vein, Texas has had the right and approval, since admission, to subdivide itself into as many as four additional States (for a total of five). If executed today, the new States would have anywhere from three or four to six or eight Representatives, adding up to the current total of 32 or 33, and ten Senators. But no movement to subdivide Texas to get the necessary slave States into the Union sprang up at this time, notwithstanding that Texans would presumably have been amenable to having six, eight, or ten Senators rather than two.
Your argument has been that the Southern States in 1861 seceded in order to expand slavery. Your quotes here do not support that argument -- they belong to the earlier period, when the question was one of equity in representation in the Congress, or more to the point, the prevention of the South-bashers' achieving Congressional majorities.
The "Invitation" I posted to you is much stronger evidence than your quotations, coming as it did from the South Carolina secession convention and being addressed to peers in other States, that the South's leadership in 1861 were defensively minded and had given up on expansion of slavery or even, as I posted above, continued participation in the peopling of the Territories and the admission of new slave States.
As I have posted before, secession was Game Over for the subject of organizing new slave States out of the Territories of the United States -- spotting you the exception of New Mexico.
Secession was not about expansion of slavery. It was about defending the social and political order in the Southern States against their adversaries in the North by taking the South out of the Union.
No, it was a defense against invasion.
Seems your position is closer to mine than I thought.
The whole point of secession was to leave the Union -- and whatever was left of Southerners' ambitions for their future as part of that Union.
They left a lot on the table, to be sure.
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/cw_lack.htm
A lack of evidence
Blacks did not fight for the South, despite what Confederate apologists argue By Carroll Wilson Editor, The Times Record Wichita Falls, Texas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2000. The Wichita Falls Times Record, Wichita Falls, Texas. Reprinted and posted with permission of Carroll Wilson, Editor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, July 9, 2000
THE debate in various states, including, to some extent, Texas, on whether to remove reminders of the Confederacy from public display has given rise to a bizarre sub-argument.
It smacks of distortions more sinister than those I mentioned in last weekend's column. Then, I wrote about mistakes popularized by an anonymous document forwarded around the world via e-mail as the Fourth of July approached.
Those distortions were relatively innocuous misstatements about what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence after they affixed their signatures to that bold assertion of freedom.
The sub-argument relative to artifacts from the defunct Confederacy is not innocuous, and one side damages the truth to such an extent that what they have to say simply cannot go unchallenged.
Apologists for the Confederacy are contending that black soldiers served in the army of the South.
The contention is not immaterial to the overall argument about whether the bars and stars should, say, fly over a state capitol, because a part of the overall argument has to do with what the South was fighting for and against.
If you can show that black soldiers fought for the South, you can by extension argue or at least imply that what the South was fighting for was not the perpetuation of slavery but instead something else - state's rights, for example. Because, after all, why would someone enslaved fight to sustain a system the preservation of which would mean only continued enslavement?
And so, by further extension, you are invited to come to the conclusion that slavery was not such a bad thing after all, and that all those singing black folks out in the cotton patches were really, honestly just expressing their jubilation at having found honest work.
This would all be very tidy were it not for the argument's failure to meet any test of reasonableness.
In other words, that there were black soldiers willingly serving in the Southern ranks flies in the face of common sense, based on what we know about the institution of slavery and life in the South at the time.
Unless African Americans are somehow fundamentally different from everybody else, the urge to be free has to rank among the most basic of desires, and the notion that someone institutionally deprived of freedom would take up arms to defend the system that enslaved him defies imagination.
I do not think African Americans are different.
In addition to failing to meet the test of reasonableness, the apologists' argument simply does not stand up to what we know of those times and that war.
Thanks to the efforts of Wichitan Dan Lewandowski, who was so intrigued by the dispute that he spent some time doing research, I've been going through various Web sites and documents related to this ongoing debate.
And the weight of historical fact comes down very heavily indeed on the side of those who say that black soldiers serving in the Confederate military is unquestionably a myth.
James Loewen, a professor of history at the University of Vermont, has addressed the issue, for example, in a couple of books written on historical inaccuracies of this nature.
Loewen, author of "Lies Across America" and "Lies My Teacher Told Me," writes that the historical record simply does not and will not support the contention that blacks served in the armies of the South.
Likewise, Ed Sebesta, who has a Web site devoted to the issue, has compiled tons of information from original documents to dispute the claim.
Sebesta builds a tight and solid mass of evidence showing that if there were any black soldiers in Southern armies at all it was only because they were forced to serve.
Yes, blacks were cooks and teamsters and laborers for the Southern troops, but they were not themselves troops.
The best evidence for those who dispute the apologists comes from the Confederate Congressional Record, the contents of which Sebesta summarizes. The record shows that the congressmen absolutely opposed the use of blacks in their armies right up almost to the very end of the war when they were out of other options. In fact, use of blacks was authorized by the Confederate Congress only a month before Lee signed the war-ending truce at Appomattox. (emphasis added)
Second best evidence cited by Sebesta comes from the fact that there is not one single document anywhere - letter, newspaper article, discharge paper, pay record - nothing from the actual hand of a black man who served as a soldier on the side of the South. In other words, there is not even any anecdotal evidence.
Looking through all this material, you simply have to conclude that what the apologists would have us believe is more mythology than anything else.
And you especially have to come to that conclusion if you believe, as I do, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
What those who assert that blacks willingly served in the Confederate military have doesn't even come close to being ordinary.
Now, before I get jumped on as some kind of Yankee or Yankee-wannabe, let me state this for the record My two great-grandfathers on my father's side of the family both fought in the Civil War. They both fought for the South, one joining up out of Alabama and one out of Tennessee.
I am proud of that fact, but not proud enough to turn history upside down to prove they were in the right.
Carroll Wilson's column appears in this space on Sundays. Wilson, the editor for the Times Record News, can be reached at (940) 720-3435, or with e-mail at wilsonc@wtr.com.
You guys sure do love your myths!
Did Blacks Typically Serve as Confederate Soldiers?
by Henry Robert Burke
Marietta, Ohio
burkeh06@wirefire.com
Did "free blacks" and slaves serve voluntarily as soldiers with the Confederate Forces during the American Civil War? This is a subject that has been brought up from time to time by some American Civil War historians, namely ones who espouse the Confederate cause. The short answer is that the Confederate Forces barred the enlistment of blacks, slave or free, from serving as soldiers. Logic should prevail when this question is brought up.
Why would a person who had been subjugated and brutalized by the institution of slavery wanted to perpetuate their misery? Slaves were forced into service by Confederate military units as civilian laborers, teamsters, cooks, hospital personnel and other non-combat duties, but these people do not fit the description of soldiers. Soldiers are primarily citizens who are enlisted or commissioned by their government. Soldiers are required to take an oath of allegiance. Soldiers are trained to bear and use arms. The pension records of Confederate Forces simply do not show any significant number of black veterans.
While reviewing the Union Civil War records researched and documented by our esteemed local historian, the late Jerry Devol, I came across the name of an ex-slave named Charles Taylor, who enlisted with the Union Army and served with Company C, 27th United States Colored Troops (USCT). Taylor's experience, taken from his own words in his pension records, illustrates my point concerning blacks serving with the Confederate Forces.
The words of Charles Taylor, aged 52 in 1898, when he applied for his pension as a Veteran of the Union Army.- "I first served about 3 months as a cook in the Confederate Army during the summer of 1863. I was put into this service by Charley Jenkins, a son of my old master, Jefro Jenkins. During this time I was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, but when General Butler ordered them to evacuate Norfolk, I went with the Confederate Army, which was in charge of General Longstreet, to Winchester, Virginia. I then got away from the Confederate Army, and went with (Union) General Cook's Army to Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. I remained with the Union Army until I volunteered in Company C, 27th USCT at Marietta, Ohio.
I was then sent to Camp Delaware, Ohio (Columbus) for training, and then back to Virginia, where our regiment and the 4th and 6th Maryland Regiment were brigaded together under General Payne in the 18th Army Corps at Deep Bottom, Virginia.
I had lived with my master, Jefro Jenkins for several years before I was put to cooking for the Confederate Army. I can't give the name of anyone who would have known me prior to my time with the Confederate Army.
I had no settled place to live from the time I came out of the Union Army until 1872, but stayed mostly near Cutler, in Washington County, Ohio. I was then a laborer in Jackson County, Ohio for one year, then I removed to Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. I moved to Athens, County Ohio in 1894, and have lived here since that."
There are several points in the story of Charles Taylor.
He was a slave, and was sent by his master to cook for the Confederate Army, he was not a soldier.
When he had the opportunity, he left the Confederate Army and went with the Union Army at Gulley Bridge, West Virginia.
He finally did become a soldier when he joined the 27th USCT at Marietta, and he drew a pension for his service with the Union Army.
Charles Taylor's story is typical of many ex-slaves who were forced into service with the Confederate Forces. Would Confederates have felt comfortable arming people who had for generations been systematically brutalized under their hands? I do not think so!
Not after Lincoln got elected. That's when the Southerners detonated the explosive bolts and jettisoned everything. Without control of their political destiny, they couldn't do anything.
That, by the way, is what an uncontrolled and unrestricted immigration policy eventually gets you. But that's another thread.
Re Robert Rhett's editorial, I think we have to discern two things, one, its timing well before Lincoln's election (and even before the Republican convention) and two, its intended general audience, which gives it something more in the nature of a political billboard or "dream sheet", than his address to the political leadership of the Southern States that he composed almost a year later, under very different circumstances.
A 7-2 majority of Supreme Court justices say you are wrong. You present no legal argument -- you merely say they were all wrong.
[cr] Prof. Fehrenbacher observed that, "[In Dred Scott] the weakest branch of the Federal government informed Congress, the strongest branch, that it lacked the power to accomplish the will of an emerging sectionalized national majority.
The "will of an emerging sectionalized national majority" does not effect one scintilla of change to the Constitution. Your logic here infers that the Supreme Court should take a poll of "the will of an emerging sectionalized national majority," and rule accordingly. The Court is supposed to interpret the law as it is, not the will of the people.
The legislature should respond to the will of the people. If the people want to change the Constitution or any other law, and they have sufficient support to do so, then that is that they should do.
[cr] The court instructed the nation that the Constitution was indeed a proslavery compact....
Well, duhhhhh... -EVERY- one of the original states ratified it... and at the time there was only -one- state without slavery. You act as if some radical whack job discovered slavery in 1856 and said he was shocked, shocked I tell you to find there is slavery in the country... indeed in the national capital...
U.S. Constitution: "No Person held to Service or Labour 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 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
Near as I can tell, that clause REMAINS in effect today -- but there are no longer any persons (lawfully) held to Service or Labour.
[cr] The Dred Scott decision, only the second instance in U.S. history of the Court invalidating a federal statute, was built upon both weak legal argument and a misrepresentation of history.
The statute had already been repealed.
You offer no legal argument, you merely make empty assertions, yet again.
The Dred Scott case was brought on a deliberately falsified statement of agreed facts by parties in collusion to manufacture a case. John F.A. Sanford was never the owner and there was no valid case. John Sanford purported to purchase Scott from Emerson years after Emerson was dead. The real owners were the Chaffees, a Massachusetts congressman and his wife, the former Mrs. Emerson, and sister of Sanford.
George T. Curtis argued the case for Dred Scott before the Supreme Court while his little brother, Justice Benjamin Curtis sat on the bench.
The original opinion of the court was written by Justice Nelson of New York. It did not touch on the Missouri Compromise. That issue only arose because Curtis and McLean forced it upon the Court.
In the case of The Slave, Grace, the British Court of High Admiralty modified the earlier, but much cited, Sommersett ruling. Grace had gone with her master to Britain and returned to the slave jurisdiction of Antigua and filed suit in Antigua. The Court ruled that the law of the place of physical jurisdiction prevailed and Grace remained a slave.
In New York, in the case of Lemmon v. The People, the Court ruled that the place of physical jurisdiction prevailed and invoked New York law. The slaves went free.
In Missouri, in Scott v. Emerson, the court ruled that the law of the place of physical jurisdiction prevailed and invoked Missouri law. The court ruled that Scott was still a slave.
In 1833, Chief Justice Daggett in Connecticut instructed the jury in the Crandall case:
"Having read this law, the question comes to us with peculiar force, does it clearly violate the constitution of the United States? The section claimed to have been violated, reads as follows, to wit: Art. 4. sec. 2. 'The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.' It has been urged, that this section was made to direct, exclusively, the action of the general government, and therefore, can never be applied to state laws. This is not the opinion of the court. The plain and obvious meaning of this provision, is to secure to the citizens of all the states, the same privileges as are secured to our own, by our own state laws. Should a citizen of Connecticut purchase a farm in Massachusetts, and the legislature of Massachusetts tax the owner of that farm, four times as much as they would tax a citizen of Massachusetts, because the one resided in Connecticut and the other in Massachusetts; or should a law be passed, by either of those states, that no citizen of the other, should reside or trade in that other, this would, undoubtedly, be an unconstitutional law, and should be so declared.
"The second section was provided as a substitute for the 4th article of the Confederation. That article has also been read, and by comparing them, you can perceive the object intended by the substitute.
"The act in question provides, that coloured persons, who are not inhabitants of this State, shall not be harboured and boarded for the purposes therein mentioned, within this state, without the consent of the civil authority and select-men of the town. We are, then, brought to the great question, are they citizens within the provisions of this section of the constitution? The law extends to all persons of colour not inhabitants of this state, whether they live in the state of New-York, or in the West-Indies, or in any other foreign country.
"In deciding this question, I am happy that my opinion can be revised, by the supreme court of this state and of the United States, should you return a verdict against the defendant.
"The persons contemplated in this act are not citizens within the obvious meaning of that section of the constitution of the United States, which I have just read. Let me begin, by putting this plain question. Are Slaves citizens? At the adoption of the constitution of the United States, every state was a slave state. Massachusetts had begun the work of emancipation within her own borders. And Connecticut, as early as 1784, had also enacted laws making all those free at the age of 25, who might be born within the State, after that time. We all know, that slavery is recognized in that constitution; and it is the duty of this court to take that constitution as it is, for we have sworn to support it. Although the term 'slavery' cannot be found written out in the constitution, yet no one can mistake the object of the 3d section of the 4th article: 'No person held to service or labour 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 labour, but shall be delivered, upon claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.'
"The 2d section of the 1st article, reads as follows: -- 'Representatives and direct taxes, shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included in this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.' The 'other persons' are slaves, and they became the basis of representation, by adding them to the white population in that proportion. Then slaves were not considered citizens by the framers of the constitution.
"A citizen means a freeman. By referring to Dr. Webster, one of the most learned men of this or any other country, we have the following definition of the term -- 'Citizen: 1. A native of a city, or an inhabitant who enjoys the freedom and privileges of the city in which he resides. 2. A townsman, a man of trade, not a gentleman. 3. An inhabitant; a dweller in any city, town or country. 4. In the United States, it means a person, native or naturalized, who has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise, and of purchasing and holding real estate.'
"Are Indians citizens? It is admitted in the argument, that they are not; but it is said, they belong to distinct tribes. This cannot be true; because all Indians do not belong to a tribe. It may be now added, that by the declared law of New-York, Indians are not citizens; and the learned Chancellor Kent, says 'they never can be made citizens.' Indians were literally natives of our soil; they were born here; and yet they are not citizens.
"The Mohegans were once a mighty tribe, powerful and valiant; and who among us ever saw one of them performing military duty, or exercising, with the white men, the privilege of the elective franchise, or holding an office? And what is the reason? I answer, they are not citizens, according to the acceptation of the term in the United States.
"Are free blacks citizens? It has been ingeniously said, that vessels may be owned and navigated, by free blacks, and the American flag will protect them; but you will remember, that the statute which makes that provision, is an act of Congress, and not the constitution. Admit, if you please, that Mr. Cuffee, a respectable merchant, has owned vessels, and sailed them under the American flag; yet this does not prove him to be such citizen as the constitution contemplates. But that question stands undecided, by any legal tribunal within my knowledge. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to determine that question.
"It has been also urged, that as coloured persons may commit treason, they must be considered citizens. Every person born in the United States, as well as every person who may reside here, owes allegiance, of some sort, to the government, because the government affords him protection. Treason against this government, consists in levying war against the government of the United States, or aiding its enemy in time of war. Treason may be committed, by persons who are not entitled to the elective franchise. For if they reside under the protection of the government, it would be treason to levy war against that government, as much as if they were citizens.
"I think Chancellor Kent, whose authority it gives me pleasure to quote, determines this question, by fair implication. Had this authority considered free blacks citizens, he had an ample opportunity to say so. But what he has said excludes that idea: In most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free coloured persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights. The African race are essentially a degraded caste, of inferior rank and condition in society. Marriages are forbidden between them and whites, in some of the states, and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting, and regarded as an offence against public decorum. By the revised statutes of Illinois, published in 1829, marriages between whites and negroes, or mulattos, are declared void, and the persons so married are liable to be whipped, fined and imprisoned. By an old statute of Massachusetts, of 1705, such marriages were declared void, and are so still. A similar statute provision exists in Virginia and North-Carolina. Such connexions in France and Germany, constitute the degraded state of concubinage, which is known in the civil law. But they are not legal marriages, because the parties want that equality of state or condition, which is essential to the contract.' 2 Kent's Comm. 258.
"I go further back still. When the constitution of the United States was adopted, every state, (Massachusetts excepted,) tolerated slavery. And in some of the states, down to a late period, severe laws have been kept in force regarding slaves. With respect to New-York, at that time, her laws and penalties were severe indeed; and it was not until July, 4th, 1827, that this great state was ranked among the free states.
"To my mind, it would be a perversion of terms, and the well known rule of construction, to say, that slaves, free blacks, or Indians, were citizens, within the meaning of that term, as used in the constitution. God forbid that I should add to the degradation of this race of men; but I am bound, by my duty, to say, they are not citizens.
They were called "Cabinet Meetings."
No, I do not think the South seceded because they wanted to expand slavery, they seceded because they did not want anyone telling them they could not expand it.
Now, there were plans for expansion of slavery into othe areas of the nation, but the primary reason for secession was the South's determination to keep the slavery they had, at all costs.
If the North was going to begin putting a limitation on slavery, it would imply that something was wrong with it, and that is what stuck in the South's throat.
As for the 'South's basher's , the advantage that the South had in Congress was counting slaves (which they regarded as property) as 3/4 people.
Now, we can go through an entire of array of tyrannical acts done by the South to keep tyranny going in the South, the gag rule, restriction of mail, pursuing slaves to the North and dragging them back.
Lincoln had great sympathy for the situation that most Southerners found themselves in having slaves.
The problem was that slavery was now seen as a positive good rather then an evil that somehow must be done away with.
They were "mining" for senators.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.