Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
Strangely enough, I believe these two issues do actually fall under the stewardship of the State. They represent, for the most part, victimless crimes.
Got a live one here.
I believe it would have eventually happened over some issue...maybe abortion or gay marriage? Heck, there are people clamoring for secession today because they don't like the results of the election! I would have to believe that it wouldn't have resulted in the death of 2% of our population though.
The Ten Amendment is part of the Constitution. What the Constitution doesn't give to the federal government, it gives to the people. Let people and the states decide for themselves in most cases. They know what is best for them. As a side note: slavery is not good for anyone. But it's still going on, even here in the U.S. If we fought for slavery, we haven't won yet. Because state's rights were adversely affected, we've lost the war by winning a battle.
That's true.
South Carolina seceded in December 1860. By the time the Morill Act was passed, seven southern states had seceded, removing 14 key southern senate votes against higher tariffs.
I highly respect Dr. Williams, but he;s misrepresenting the South Carolina Secession Convention if he is suggesting they secdeded in response to the Morill Act or even the immediate prospect of its passage. They seceded because Lincoln won the election of 1860 - and because they could not stomach any of Lincoln's program. And that included restricting slavery, not just high tariffs or a homestead act.
I mean fight to eradicate slavery, not for it.
Because his original intent was to preserve the Union.
Why did he not include those slaves in nearby Maryland's Eastern Shore????
Because he was prohibited by the US Constitution from doing so.
-btw the number of question marks used is normally one per sentence, unless the writer is experiencing keyboard lock. If you'd care to express yourself do so directly so there is no misunderstanding.
Great article! BTTT
The rights given (reserved) for the States don't trump the individual rights endowed by the Creator. Don't get me wrong. I am fully aware that the Federal Government may have overstepped their bounds...and no one wants a smaller Federal Government than I do. Unfortunately, this issue has been, and will always be, gray.
Absolutely, the war had to do with economics. Period. Follow the money trail
The creation of the individual states is attributable to, and therefore all states are beholden to, the common principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence.
Just because each state charts their own course within the confines of a larger Republic, they have no precedent to abridge those rights that the Republic considers inalienable.
Because the President had no constitutional right to unilaterally eliminate what had been at that time a class of property, as he was merely an executor of the law, not its author and Congress had not yet chosen to act.
However, as a war measure, he could unilaterally order the confiscation of any material which could aid the rebels under his power as commander-in-chief. Thus, he could free slaves, but only those in areas under rebel control, because those were the only ones which could have been useful to the confederacy. This is why freed blacks were often referred to as "contraband."
I find it interesting that Southern lore has it that Lincoln was a dictator, yet, at the same time, attempts to portray him as insincere for not freeing the slaves in Union-held territory with the Emancipation Proclamation. This distinction, in fact, showed a recognition of the limitations of the powers of a President.
We basically went from:
The United States "Are", to
The United Stated "Is".
In his opinion, which is to be expected since he apparently crafted the definition to suit his purposes. But the dicitionaries also present another definition which happens to be an accurate description of what happened. And they do not say the same thing, because they leave out the 'control for the same government' clause that Dr. Williams includes.
Re-read what you wrote, and what Walter Williams wrote, and then do something the "Now" generation was not taught to do: THINK
I have. I do. And I still disagree with Dr. Williams.
Live free or die - get government out of my life.
Well: there is no way to prove what's only speculation one way or the other, obviously. All we DO know is that secession and war did happen, and they happened in the context of, among other things, a vicious sectarian dispute over the morality of chattel slavery.
The economic dimensions can't be overlooked. But then that makes for a full circle since slavery was part and parcel of the southern economy. Southerners supported the institution with increasing fervency in the 1830's not only because of reading too much Walter Scott or native racism but also because slavery had become very much in their economic interest.
I think far too much of the history of the 1850's has to overlooked to dismiss the central salience of slavery as the cause for the war. Charles Sumner wasn't beaten sensesless on the senate floor over internal improvements. Dred Scott and the Lincoln Douglas debates weren't argued over tariffs. John Brown did not attack Harpers Ferry over the homestead act. Bleeding Kansas wasn't fought out over the question of a central bank.
But I take on board the irony of your comment: "Heck, there are people clamoring for secession today because they don't like the results of the election!" That is, in esence, exactly what South Carolina and its six Deep South sister states did in December 1860 to February 1861 (the four border states, you could argue, seceded more immediately over Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers after Fort Sumter to suppress the Confederacy). And I say that with as much dislike as Dr. Williams for the insanity perpetrated daily by the leviathan of Big Government.
Indeed. Slavery was very profitable for southerners. Any perceived threat to that insititution was certainly serious in their view.
Seems to me that it's a bit of semantic argument. Allow me to suggest there are different kinds of civil wars. In some, such as the English or Russian Civil Wars, war is fought among countrymen for control of the whole country and its government. In others, it is a war of secession, such as in the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the war in the Sudan today.
But in each case it is citizens of the same country fighting each other. And Dr. Williams seems to have a problem with that.
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