Posted on 04/14/2005 6:40:53 PM PDT by kellynla
At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into a paralyzing disarray.
On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]--the South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, he died--the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.
I am sure that you (both) are much more versed in Hitler's writings than am I. And I'll leave it to the small minded to make those sort of comparison.
As I recall the context of that quote, written from a prison cell, your Fuhrer was writing about German nationalism. I have no doubt that your Fuhrer admired the strength of the American nation, as compared to the defeated German confederation. Evil people will attempt, at least, to incorporate an element of truth in their cockamamie political theories. Even then, in the passage you cite, he didn't get it right. But who was he writing for? - evidently the budding national socialist movement - and possibly you lost causers.
Let's start with your tag line - second part: "Quoting Lincoln OR JimRob is a bannable offense."
The first part stems from the banning of nolu chan. Your tag line changed within a couple of days of that momentous event to read "Quoting Lincoln is a bannable offense." Even as it changed, you and others were posting that neither nolu nor the other neo-rebs had "any idea" why he was banned. Hmmmm.
Your excuse for nolu is a classic rationalization. Unable to accept that he was banned for something he did or wrote, you create a story in which the innocent nolu was tricked into posting supposed Lincoln quotes. It's somebody else's fault! Your southern separatists must have a rationalizer gene or something.
But worse, you prevaricate by (justifiably) claiming ignorance on one hand, but providing a cover story on the other hand. So which is it?
With regard to the second clause, that first appeared the day after GOPc disappeared. You apparently attribute his short time-out to an alleged quote from the boss. But you knew full well that GOPC was caught in several ... shall we say ... mistruths. They had been plainly posted. And even if he was suspended for such a post, the root of the problem remains that neither he nor you know the full extent and ramifications of his false and sordid claims.
Whether he was timed-out for quoting the owner, or because the moderators just got sick of his incessant whining, "Mommy - he's talking to me!", may never be known. And I couldn't care less.
So you see, I have nothing to retract.
You got that wrong. It was John Calhoun who denied the fundamental truths of the Declaration, and who stated that Jefferson never meant to include free or enslaved Africans in the phrase, "All men are created equal." Lincoln correctly recognized the difference between natural, revolutionary rights - afforded all people - and the so-called, bastard states' rights.
I noticed that tag line, too, capitan. The second part is as about in your face to the owner of this forum as one can get.
But, then, the preening dandies that make up the Lost Cause Squad have never cared a fig about the rules of FR as far as those rules might apply to them, as any sentient observer of their behavior well knows.
They only spring into action as exacting taskmasters of every jot & tiddle of those rules when one of their scummy own is on the verge of getting his/her/it's pweshish feelers hurt--and they then uniformly proceed to have a good hanky cry all around amongst each other, accompanied by convulsive hissy fits directed towards the perceived tormentor of their little Stars & Bars sewing circle so hysterical and unhinged as to make a cat laugh.
And this from the self-appointed latter day defenders of "Chivalry"...*snicker*...
[You, in reply] Were they sovereign, in the accepted sense of the term? A sovereign state exercises complete control over its territory and its actions. Did states? Could they carry on relations with other sovereign nations and states? No. Could they acquire territory or expand their influence? No. Could they raise armies, coin money, set their trade policies? No, no, and no. Could they decide their own form of government? Hell, no. The Constitution allows the states to run things within their own borders, within the restrictions and controls placed on them. They could no more unilaterally leave the Union than they could unilaterally join.
Leaving aside for the moment the fact which our friend 4ConservativeJustices has pointed out, that your view of State sovereignty on the eve of ratification happens to coincide very uncomfortably with that of a hideously notorious commentator, I'll simply cite another authority to answer yours -- Harry Jaffa, and Lincoln, and the long-ago Constitutional law scholar on whom Lincoln relied for his view of the Union and the relation of the States to the Union.
The ultimate authority of the society was distributed, in all its attributes, among each and every one of the several States: -- as such, it could make and unmake any constitution, and create or destroy any Union. And this authority continued to exist after it was exercised, as it still exists to this very day, because sovereign power in and of itself represents the undying permanence which underlies all civilized government. The right of a State to secede from the Union, therefore, was not abolished but transferred from the legislatures to the people in convention, -- from the limited and ordinary power of enacting statutes, to the supreme and irresistible power of doing anything in law not naturally impossible in each and every one of the several States. The right of secession was in this way made more difficult to exercise, and, consequently, there was "a more perfect Union."The people in convention of each and every State retained the lawful discretion to ordain secession from the Union launched in 1789. This power was never meant to be exercised for light and transient causes. The gravity of the circumstances which might justify such exercise of sovereign power had been illustrated in history: -- the obnoxious and unlawful usurpations of James II, the cunning subversion of the British Empire and deliberate wreckage of the prosperity of the American colonies by the powers of high finance behind the East India Company and the Bank of England, and the obtuse refusal of Rhode Island to permit urgently needed amendments of the old Confederation.
--John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession (2002), p. 104.
Graham introduces several contemporary statements supporting the retention of various sovereign powers by the States, including that of John Marshall in the Virginia ratification convention in 1788 which our friend 4ConservativeJustices researched and quoted to you, and which I've quoted to you myself at least twice, so that you are surely not unfamiliar with it; it is of the same temper as the Hamilton quote above: what the People do not delegate, they retain until delegated by some other grant, or not at all. That includes the power to secede.
Graham also cites and quotes the passage in Hamilton's Federalist No. 9, in which he quotes Montesquieu, which I quoted to you recently, and with which therefore you are also fully conversant. But lest you think I'm piking -- or lest you complain loudly that I'm piking -- let me quote the major substance of Federalist 9 for you, including the quote in extenso from Montesquieu, which I've edited to remove the repetitive quote marks in the copy I repaired to, and present Montesquieu's comments as a block quote, in color.
The utility of a Confederacy, as well to suppress faction and to guard the internal tranquillity of States, as to increase their external force and security, is in reality not a new idea. It has been practiced upon in different countries and ages, and has received the sanction of the most approved writers on the subject of politics. The opponents of the plan proposed have, with great assiduity, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. But they seem not to have been apprised of the sentiments of that great man expressed in another part of his work, nor to have adverted to the consequences of the principle to which they subscribe with such ready acquiescence.When Montesquieu recommends a small extent for republics, the standards he had in view were of dimensions far short of the limits of almost every one of these States. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, nor Georgia can by any means be compared with the models from which he reasoned and to which the terms of his description apply. If we therefore take his ideas on this point as the criterion of truth, we shall be driven to the alternative either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of splitting ourselves into an infinity of little, jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing discord, and the miserable objects of universal pity or contempt. Some of the writers who have come forward on the other side of the question seem to have been aware of the dilemma; and have even been bold enough to hint at the division of the larger States as a desirable thing. Such an infatuated policy, such a desperate expedient, might, by the multiplication of petty offices, answer the views of men who possess not qualifications to extend their influence beyond the narrow circles of personal intrigue, but it could never promote the greatness or happiness of the people of America.
Referring the examination of the principle itself to another place, as has been already mentioned, it will be sufficient to remark here that, in the sense of the author who has been most emphatically quoted upon the occasion, it would only dictate a reduction of the SIZE of the more considerable MEMBERS of the Union, but would not militate against their being all comprehended in one confederate government. And this is the true question, in the discussion of which we are at present interested.
So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a confederate republic as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism.
"It is very probable," (says he)
that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC.This form of government is a convention by which several smaller STATES agree to become members of a larger ONE, which they intend to form. It is a kind of assemblage of societies that constitute a new one, capable of increasing, by means of new associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the united body.
A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.
If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.
Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.
As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies.
I have thought it proper to quote at length these interesting passages, because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments in favor of the Union, and must effectually remove the false impressions which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to make. They have, at the same time, an intimate connection with the more immediate design of this paper; which is, to illustrate the tendency of the Union to repress domestic faction and insurrection.
A distinction, more subtle than accurate, has been raised between a CONFEDERACY and a CONSOLIDATION of the States. The essential characteristic of the first is said to be, the restriction of its authority to the members in their collective capacities, without reaching to the individuals of whom they are composed. It is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as example will go, that there is no absolute rule on the subject. And it will be clearly shown in the course of this investigation that as far as the principle contended for has prevailed, it has been the cause of incurable disorder and imbecility in the government.
The definition of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC seems simply to be "an assemblage of societies," or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the members be not abolished; so long as it exists, by a constitutional necessity, for local purposes; though it should be in perfect subordination to the general authority of the union, it would still be, in fact and in theory, an association of states, or a confederacy. The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government. [Caps in original. Emphasis in bolding and underlining added.]
Link: Federalist Papers at Constitution.org. Discussion:
The subject at hand is the existence of sovereignty in the States that formed the Union, sovereignty they certainly didn't possess when they assayed rebellion and war to obtain it, but which by 1783 they assuredly did possess, by the concession of George III by the Treaty of Paris, to each of the States individually, by name, and seriatim in the text of the treaty. This is the status quo ante, under the Articles of Confederation, of which I speak. This was the sovereign condition of the States before the Constitution was written, as conceded disconsolately by Hamilton in Federalist 15:
In our case, the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is requisite, under the Confederation, to the complete execution of every important measure that proceeds from the Union.
But if Hamilton conceded the reality of State sovereignty on the eve of ratification, contradicting the implied answers of your recitation of rhetorical questions suggesting that State sovereignty was impaired or nonexistent, then on what authority do you say that sovereignty was lacking, and Hamilton was wrong?
The larger question which looms over your claims of federal authority is, if the Union was entitled to the presumption of preclusive sovereign authority, and the States clearly subordinated to it in the Articles of Confederation, then why was the Constitution felt to be necessary by its friends?
And the final question is that, if the States were sovereign under the Articles of Confederation, where was the grant in the Constitution that conferred the final aliquot, the last reserved power -- the power to resume delegated powers -- in the provisions of the Constitution?
If Sovereignty existed in the States before ratification, it is incumbent on adherents of your theory -- Jaffa's and Lincoln's -- to show how and where the Constitution stripped them, or they divested themselves, of the powers not delegated. You can't; as I said previously, and as you continue to fail utterly to show, those powers were never destroyed, and neither were they conveyed; but as John Marshall said in the Virginia ratification convention, they remained with the States; and the Tenth Amendment seals it in stone, that they remain there, ready for use by the People.
Concurring bump.
If nolu chan was a "racist", then so was Mother Teresa. Your statement is correct, that he was expelled for quoting Abraham Lincoln's country language about blacks.
He wasn't banned when he quoted Lincoln in 2003. He wasn't banned when he quoted Lincoln in 2004. He was banned in 2005, when a vindictive, aggressive flatulator from Beantown went after him for having the temerity to prove what the Brotherhood of Flatulators had denied to the last ditch: that by his language and by inspection of his policy, Abraham Lincoln was indeed a man of his century on the subject of racial relations.
You never make 'em madder than when you prove they're lying. They'll get you for that!
Thank you for the timely reminder.
I certainly hope you're right. Because otherwise, they'll all be here on the next bus.
As for Detroit, I did take a trip there once.....to pick up a car. While I was there, I got a chance to "test drive" an orange Lamborghini Espada that had once belonged to "Papa Doc" Duvalier. His sterling brandy flasks were still in the little compartments built into the armrests in the back seat. The car won a design award at an Italian auto show in 1970, I think.
Gritty town, Detroit. Although the Ren Cen was pretty swell -- and new then, too. Nice little conversation pits scattered all over the place, and a voluminous and cool central space.
"Surrender" is the wrong word -- "delegate" is the right word, but then you knew that.
All this is true when the People are pleased to continue their association with the Union. Ratification, as I patiently explained to you once before, with scholarly support, was not a threshhold, one-time event. The consent tendered by the States is a perpetual consent, continuously renewed by the People for as long as they please to maintain the Union.
As you know, the People have the right to terminate the Union at any time. They did it once before, when they walked away from the Perpetual Union of the Articles of Confederation, which they did when they ratified the Constitution.
You just don't want to admit that the People is a State. You want to use other States to checkmate the People, to tie them down and make them your thralls, like Lincoln and the Republicans did, to make some States subserve the others. But I'm determined to keep this civil, so we won't go into your motives and pyschology.
We killed 620,000 men on the battlefield, and nearly a million people overall -- or about 5% of our population -- over these questions. And the wrong guys won.
[You, squirming helplessly] BS
Yes, I do have a BS degree, in the earth sciences. But in your case, it stands for "Busted, Shirley!"
Or, as applied to my argument, it stands for basis solidissima.
Hi, Garbage_truck. Here to pick up what's left of Non-Sequitur?
But you've just got to tell me, I'm dying of curiosity -- who the hell is Emille LaGasse?
You don't mean Emeril LaGasse?
What a maroon!
But you're right, I thought he was Orleanian -- French name, restaurant in the American Quarter, huge clientele. Who knew?
Non-Sequitur doesn't count. He ran out and did a search, hoping to find something, anything, to avert the incoming repayment of his moral crudities.
But he's still stuck. Because knowing Who's Who in America doesn't address the foundational problem of his animus against the South and Southerners, which is so deep and abiding he won't even visit a Fall River boy struggling to keep an eatery open in deepest, darkest Louisiana.
Lentulusgracchus you are a mean drunk and an ugly troll. Perhaps when you sober up you'll realize what a horse's ass you've been. Until then, shut yer yap.
Aw, Garbage_truck, you're so cute when you're being libelous and vile. Keep it up, okay? It's part of your.....essence.
Interesting theory, but the people of Rhode Island and North Carolina did not. How do they fit into your theory?
But they did. The people in North Carolina ratified it in November 1789 and the people in Rhode Island ratified it in May of 1790.
Who had Capitan_refugio in the pool?
All of that meaningless babble is just reflective of the barely-coherent intensity of the semi-educated.
One could refute such pedestrian epistles, word-for-word and in order. But why waste time?
The only thing that sort of effort tends to generate in response is endless appeals to footnotes, obscure references, and otherwise useless irrelevancies that ultimately dribble off to nowhere on increasingly arcane tangents.
It's the oldest game played by the relentlessly scummy & smarmy poseurs among us in the world: Party x asserts A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and Party y refutes EVERY letter of it, point by relentless point. Party x then proceeds to ignore and/or slink away from, with various puling evasions, their refuted original premises, and immediately launches into a game of but what about H-I-J-K-M-N-O-P? hmmmn? hmmmn?.
In the interim, they moan, slobber and weep to Higher Authority to squelch the debate by cutting off their intellectually superior opponents by appealing to exacting rules of discourse they themselves disdain to even acknowledge, insofar as those rules might apply to them.
This, in a nutshell, has been the longstanding modus operandi of the squealing, mentally foppish, and intellectually dishonest Lost Cause Squad for about as long as any decent person can remember.
And it continues anew, here, in the continuous Sisyphean march of the terminally silly as it is embodied in your ignorant, pleading post.
It's not, as one wag once noted, one #@%! thing after another. It's the same #@%! thing over and over.
You're welcome to that dubious legacy--and the scummy company it consistently seems to keep.
Non-sense. The government was created upon the ratification of 9 states. There were, it seems, four left, who's "people" didn't create it, as you said.
When you "delegate" the right to set your own government, pass any laws you want, control your own borders, and regulate your own commerce then how much "sovereignty" do you have left?
As you know, the People have the right to terminate the Union at any time.
But the People did not decide to terminate the Union, the people of south entered into rebellion.
You just don't want to admit that the People is a State.
No, because we were founded by the People of the United States of America, not the people of Virginia or South Carolina. The People are the United States not a State.
You want to use other States to checkmate the People, to tie them down and make them your thralls...
What I want, what I realize even if you don't, is that the people of the remaining states have rights. They have interests that deserve to be protected. The only way for that to happen is for them to have a say in when another state wants to leave. You want a tyranny of the minority, I want agreement of the majority.
One she taught me:
"Yat": a poor New Orleanian white guy from the Irish Channel. So called from their universal greeting: "Hey baby, wheh' y'at? Wanna fool aroun'?"
Also, "Yat talk": the "dialect" of Yats. Thought by some people to be the authentic New Orleans accent, it's actually one of about seven distinct accents found in the city, three or four black and the rest white. The Garden District or "silk stocking" accent, however, is actually a Carolina planter's accent -- and audibly so, with a few small differences. It's the "dialect" of society Orleanians, Tulane men, and the people who serve on the old-line Mardi Gras krewes.
An Amendment needs the approval of 3/4ths of the states to become part of the Constitution. Are you saying that the 39th or 40th or 41st state to vote on an amendment don't ratify it just because it became part of the Constitution before their vote? Just because the Constitution met the stated requirement before New York and North Carolina and Rhode Island and Virginia voted to ratify it does not mean that they didn't create the United States. They were represented in Congress when the Constitutional Convention was authorized. They were represented in Congress when Congress voted to send the New Constitution to the states. They had a voice in the creation of it.
So, you're angry because I do my research and check my facts before posting and you don't?
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