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Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by Caipirabob
What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?
While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.
Stars with bars:
Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.
Some things are better left dead in the past:
For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.
Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.
Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:
So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?
Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.
This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.
Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.
At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.
So what do you think of this movie?
"Implied powers" is an excuse for killing a million people because somebody did something your friends in New York and Chicago didn't like? Who the hell are you, Sam Giancana?
"Implied powers" certainly doesn't include Lincoln's war, or his use of the war to defy the Courts, arrest Congressmen, judges, and state legislators for their opinions, and suspend both the habeas writ and the Bill of Rights.
Lincoln was a dictator. There is no "implied dictatorship" in the Constitution.
Yes, we understood it.
You don't. Wilfully.
Because it's inconvenient.
Nowhere, but I'm not that kind of guy.
"Where in the Constitution does it explicitly say I can't be President-for-Life?! The situation certainly calls for it -- and I detect the penumbra of an Implied Power! Yes, yes! It's all implied!!"
The 22nd Amendment. My God, you really have never read the Constitution, have you?
Lincoln's blockade was a preference. He ordered the Navy to divert ships and cargoes from the ports of one State to those of another, just like it says in the article.
Nonsense. It was a valid action taken to combat the rebellion under the authority granted him by the Militia Act.
Obviously not, since contrary to your claim the 10th Amendment makes it clear that there are powers prohibited to the states.
Yes, the people can unmake it. ALL the people. Not just the ones in the southern states.
You saying the other States had to leave the Union, too, for secession to have been legitimate? Smell the coffee, dude -- that's just Lincoln theorizing to a) get his war on and b) get his tariff revenues back. Surely you are familiar with the politically convenient theory? That's what Lincolnism was. Only Lincoln killed hundreds of thousands of people to do his. We aren't talking the New Deal or the American System here -- we're talking mountains of dead people.
The Southern States were within their rights to leave the Union if they wanted to. It was the essence of freedom. It is a measure of the hatefulness of Northern opinion, which surely adumbrated sectional abuses parallel to, and of similar severity to, those which were actually visited on the South by Reconstruction (now, there is a political euphemism!), that the People of the South very correctly chose to leave, rather than allow themselves to be so abused by the political power of a faction founded on sectional hatred, hypocritical moral contempt, financial greed, and political philippic.
No, actually they were not, as common sense and several Supreme Court decisions demonstrate.
Slavery existed in Illinois despite the Northwest Ordinance and the first two state constitutions because of slaves brought in when the state was under French rule and rules in the early days of statehood allowing slaveholders from other states to circumvent the law by placing slaves under forcible servitude until a certain age (35 for men, 32 for women) if they settled in Illinois. However, later laws forbade any African-Americans, slave or free, from settling in Illinois. By 1850, the US Census reported no slaves in the state. It would not appear that any such condition continued until 1865. In fact, Illinois was the first state to adopt the 13th Amendement after it was submitted to the states.
[You] Nowhere, but I'm not that kind of guy.
Well, there it is! -- and yeah, you are. You cheer for Lincoln and all those dead Southerners all the time.
See how you are?
Common sense: common sense says you don't stay in a union with a wife-beater or the kind of people who mourn a man like John Brown just because his prey was you.
As for the Supreme Court, we've discussed that, and they were not competent on the issue of State secession, since the States' sovereignty, being the People's sovereignty, was a matter they cannot touch, given the Court's subordinate relationship to the People.
Secession, ratification, election results, and, I would hazard, jury verdicts, being sovereign Acts of the People, are ultra vires the Supreme Court and untouchable.
Probably interacial marriage. There were different levels of acceptance over centuries. What may have been common in one generation was probably totally unacceptable in another era. Just guessing, though. Just like divorce and polygamy. God meant for man to have only one wife and for life but that isn't followed just like when King David reigned, they had hundreds of wives and thousands of concubines. (Busy man.) But that didn't make it acceptable to God.
One more thing, King Soloman never married the Queen of Sheba. That is a myth. As a matter of fact, nothing in the bible even says they were lovers. She had heard of his wisdom and riches and came to see for herself and to make a long story short. She came, she saw, she asked questions, she approved and went home. Anything else is just assumption and God cautions us about that.
It probably was. They had big plantations and had to have labor to work them but back then, it was a way of life to buy and own your employees. Again I don't condone slavery, but there is a chapter in the bible devoted to slavery. It instructs slaves about loyalty to their masters and it instructs slave owners about the treatment of slaves and instructs them to free their slaves after I think 7 years and if the slave doesn't want to be freed, then he is to be tatooed and belong to the employer for life. Also the master was responsible for his slaves. He had to take care of them and if after 7 years of work, he wanted to go free, then the master had to let him and his family go. Its in the bible.
They were competent and, more importantly, they were obligated to rule on secession, and they ruled that unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states was illegal. Sorry, but there it is.
It's no matter of guess to read the plainly stated texts of both documents, non-seq. Even if the convention was approved by congress unanimously, the document it produced was not and did not even have the participation of all 13 states in its creation. The unavoidable answer is that the Constitution replaced and supplanted the supposedly "perpetual" Articles, meaning they weren't so perpetual after all.
Agree to disagree....:)
So what is it that makes YOUR sources more credible?
Could it be the fact that NORTHERN historians didn't write them?
They were obligated to rule, because they were trying to give a cloak of legality to their illegal war of coercion.
Same reason Jeff Davis wasn't tried for Treason.
So I see :)
Just wish you guys had a hero I could respect....like Joshua L. Chamberlain, for example :)
Keep trying, shill. Maybe a lurker somewhere, somewhen, will actually take you seriously.
[You, quoting me] Lincoln's blockade was a preference. He ordered the Navy to divert ships and cargoes from the ports of one State to those of another, just like it says in [Article I, Section 9].
[You] Nonsense. It was a valid action taken to combat the rebellion under the authority granted him by the Militia Act.
Nonsense. There was no rebellion.
More specifically, Virginia's secession convention voted on April 17, 1861, in favor of secession. This was a secession act, but it was not final until ratified by a referendum of the People on May 23rd. It is worth noting as an aside that the vote by the convention delegates favored secession (after earlier rejecting it) by a ratio of 8:5. The plebiscitary majority in May was 3:1.
In the interval between Virginia's convention vote on April 17th and their plebiscite on May 23rd and North Carolina's secession convention vote on May 20th, a number of things happened while both States were still legally members of the Union, North Carolina not having yet even taken up the question of secession.
On April 15th, two days before Virginia's convention vote, Lincoln issued his proclamation that usurped authority to federalize the Militias of all the States, and called for an army to crush South Carolina.
Four days later, and two days after Virginia's convention voted, the Sixth Mass was already transiting through Baltimore with Pennsylvania regiments that were yet unarmed. The next day, the 20th, the Fourth Mass arrived at Fort Monroe, and Colonel Robert E. Lee had his interview with Winfield Scott and received, and declined, an offer from Lincoln of command of the Union armies -- this, after traveling all the way from San Antonio. Which makes one wonder, how soon was Lee summoned to Washington for this purpose? It had to be well in advance of the bombardment of Sumter and the Union landings at Fort Pickens, both of which incidents were aggressive moves by Lincoln, who had already stated days earlier that, if Sumter were evacuated, he would retake it by force.
It's very evident from this timeline that even before Lincoln's extension of the blockade to Virginia and North Carolina on April 27th, Lincoln was preparing to wage general warfare on all the Southern States. Even before the Virginia plebiscite, Union forces twice engaged Virginia Militia posts on Chesapeake Bay: on May 9th, the U.S.S. Yankee bombarded a Virginia Militia battery on Gloucester Point, and on May 18th Union forces attacked another Militia battery at Sewall's Point, which is near the Norfolk Navy Yard in Hampton Roads. The blockade of Virginia was completed on the same day with the sealing off of the Rappahannock River.
Waging war on a State over political differences is a pretty grave breach of whatever it is you keep insisting that the States are supposed to share.
Sez you. On the other hand maybe they ruled as they did because unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states was unconstitutional.
Same reason Jeff Davis wasn't tried for Treason.
So you keep saying.
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