Posted on 02/25/2007 7:43:34 AM PST by OrioleFan
Lee was an avid reader of Northern newspapers smuggled across the lines. From them he gleaned not only bits of military intelligence but also – and more important in this case – information about Northern politics and the growing disillusionment with the war among Democrats and despair among Republicans. One of Lee’s purposes in the Maryland invasion was to intensify this Northern demoralization in advance of the congressional elections in the fall of 1862. He hoped that Confederate military success would encourage antiwar candidates. If Democrats could gain control of the House, it might cripple the Lincoln administration’s ability to carry on the war. On September 8 Lee outlined his ideas on this matter in a letter to Davis. “The present posture of affairs,” Lee wrote, “places it in our power…to propose to the Union government…the recognition of our independence.” Such a proposal, coming when “it is in our power to inflict injury on our adversary…would enable the people of the United States to determine at their coming elections whether they will support those who favor a prolongation of the war, or those who wish to bring it to a termination.”
This desire to influence the Northern elections was one reason Lee gave serious thought to resuming the campaign in Maryland even after Antietam. That was not to be. Democrats did make significant gains in the 1862 congressional elections, although Republicans managed to retain control of Congress. But morale in the Army of the Potomac and among the Northern public plunged to rock bottom in the early months of 1863 ...
Antiwar Democrats in the North – self-described as Peace Democrats but branded by Republicans as treasonable Copperheads – became more outspoken and politically powerful than ever. Lee followed these developments closely.
No, just repeating a position you Southron supporters have claimed for years.
The Constitution doesn't "explicitly forbid" the practice of decimation, either. Want to add that one.
Yeah it does. Fifth Amendment, no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. You might want to try reading the Constitution before jumping on your asinine examples.
What does that have to do with the Tenth Amendment, by the way? Are you trying to conjure a State power of the members of the Union to expel other States?
It says that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. You Southron types always take that to mean powers not explicitly denied to the states. So conjure nothing. Show me where the Constitution explicitly says a state cannot be expelled.
Expulsion of a State by the Union is not something either explicitly empowered by the Constitution nor implicit in the discharge of other responsibilities given the federal government by its terms.
And the right to unilaterally secede and walk away from debt and obligations, loaded down with all the federal property you can get your hands on is not something explicitly empowered by the Constitution either. And in spite of numerous implication that this is not permitted, you all keep clinging to it as a sacred right.
True. So under its provisions there was no such thing as a runaway Southern slave, they were all free anyway. But that apparently did not stop Lee's army from grabbing every black person in sight.
Strictly speaking, it was a provincial decree, a praetorian decree for the conquered, and certainly one that Lincoln had no constitutional authority to issue in or for any State of the Union under ordinary circumstances, if only because it was an executive order, and also because it was an uncompensated taking without due process.
On the contrary, it was entirely legal. The Confiscation acts said that property used to support the Southern rebellion could be seized without compensation. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in Lincoln's role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, was an offshoot of that.
Is something going on in Fredicksburg?
Jefferson thought that the Erie Canal was idiotic and refused to help pay for it, so the New York footed the bill. And the Chesapeake and Delaware was a private corporation which the federal government invested in, but their share was less than one-fifth of the cost. And at the same time the Southern slavocracy had seen to it that the Mississippi and connecting rivers were kept open to traffic, completely on the federal dime.
On the other hand, what was threatening to the Northern interests was the possible establishment of a low-tariff regime at the lower Mississippi. That was what rang alarm bells in the boardrooms of New York and put on foot warlike editorials in the New York papers -- enhanced access to the sea!
Why would that be a threat?
It's worth noting that the Texans make the specific claim, as if it were fact (which it may have been), that Northern political figures had enunciated a plan by which the exclusion of slavery from the national Territories was to be worked into a plan to admit sufficient new "freesoil" States, to allow the amendment of the Constitution to abolish slavery altogether, in contradiction of the constant assurances and statements of moderation issuing from Lincoln and his circle during the 1860 campaign.
Keep in mind that, in practical economic terms, emancipation would have meant, for Texas, the annihilation of a nominal store of value estimated by Texas historian T. R. Fehrenbach at $160,000,000 gold (on a standard of $16/oz.) on the eve of the Civil War, a sum, he tells us, greater than that of all the improved real property in the State.
The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former as one of the co-equal States thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harrassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.
When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that [of] a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holdings States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.
They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a "higher law" than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.
They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offences, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.
They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.
In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons--We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.
SOURCE: Winkler, Ernest William, ed. Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas 1861, Edited From the Original in the Department of State.... Austin: Texas Library and Historical Commission, 1912, pp. 61-65.
It should also be noted that the idea for building the canal was developed by Dewitt Clinton and a group of NYC business types, most likely in the backroom of some Manhattan publick house. So much for conspiring against the people.
The canals ensured that traffic from the Old Northwest would continue, under the United States, to flow to the Eastern seaboard entrepots -- which was why the canals were dug. (So typical of you to niggle over the financing, as if that were the issue. That's one of the key fallacies, btw -- illicit minor, I think, or one of those. You do it all the time. "But Monica's dress was blue! Don't you see?")
The economic value of the Minnesota and Michigan mines accrued, and continued to accrue, to Eastern interests.
Access to the East Coast was not threatened by Southern secession. The South in no way threatened to impair the ability of the East to enjoy the fruits of their extractive and value-stripping middleman activities in the Upper Midwest.
Point.
And what did the Mississippi's remaining open have to do with federal dimes (under the Constitution, I might add), that rainfall in Minnesota and Wisconsin did not accomplish on its own?
The Southern "slavocracy" had damn-all to do with the navigability of the Mississippi. It was wide. It was deep. It was long. It was navigable.
Why would that [a low-tariff regime on the lower Mississippi] be a threat?
Competition for New York. New Yorkers said they thought so, anyway.
..and I will assume that you are not trying to compare Hunter's actions in the Shenandoah with the holacaust itself. My point was that Hoke relies so heavily on CSA general officer's writing in this matter that you might as well quote the Generals directly, which I see you've done extensively.
You're twisting and construing and fabricating again. You were educated by Jesuits, weren't you? I recognize the odor.
I already answered your question. I explained about delegated powers and quoted Marshall on implied and incidental powers. Expelling a State from the Union is not an implied power. It isn't an "incidental" power. And we agree it isn't a delegated power. It just isn't a power, period.
If the Constitution doesn't say a state can't do something then they can. Isn't that your interpretation of the 10th Amendment?
Yes. That's right. But it doesn't work that way for the federal government, because power isn't AC -- it's diodic. It originates from the People and flows out from them through their embodiment in the States. Latent powers do not have their fons et origo in the federal government. If they did, Hillary would be Catherine the Great by now.
Stick a fork in yourself. You're done.
The Union spent what it took to fight the war forced upon them by the Southern insurrectionists. Again, not something they had a coice on.
Thin beef in the first place, considering the South did offer to negotiate. Extra-thin, when you regurgitate your complaints about Lincoln's having to suffer the indignity of actually recognizing the Confederacy as the price of negotiation. My heart breaks, to see old Abe prostrated so! To think he'd actually have to take his coat off! But he took his coat off to make war, didn't he?
Complete falsehood. Did the South offer to negotiate a settlement before they walked out on the debt and obligations, and before they stole everything they could get their hands on? No. So now you expect us to believe that they were prepared to make a good faith settlement after the fact? Where was this offer made? Certainly not in the representatives that Davis sent to meet with Lincoln. They were there to obtain recognition of the legitimacy of the acts of secession and establish relations between governments. They were there, in other words, to allow Lincoln to surrender. And only after Lincoln had done so was there a vague offer to discuss 'matters and subjects interesting to both nations'. What a crock of manure. The fact is that your claim that the rebel government would have negotiated a settlement in good faith is not at all supported by the evidence. You say that they would, and I'm wondering why? They had what that wanted without paying anything. Wouldn't suddenly offering to do so be an admission that their earlier actions were wrong?
No, they mean what they mean. They aren't a whiffenpoof, as you would prefer they be.
No way to discredit yourself like comparing Abe Lincoln to Hitler.
It was constantly changing. It was full of snags and debris. It needed constant maintenance to keep it navigable. The Federal Government paid for it.
Competition for New York. New Yorkers said they thought so, anyway.
Why would it compete? Are you suggesting that those bringing goods destined for U.S. consumers which had previously entered the country at New York would somehow decide it would make more sense to land them in New Orleans? Why would that happen?
That's better.
All of the other thrashing around you and others do on the topic is moot. Slavery was the issue.
And he wasn't talking about planters, although he well knew what planters were. He was talking about businessmen, your buddies and exemplars.
And as I've explained before it's clear from the Constitution that the need to obtain the approval of the other states before leaving is implied. No, no, no, you say. It has to be explicit. Well using your own standards where does it explicitly say a state cannot be expelled?
Yes. That's right. But it doesn't work that way for the federal government, because power isn't AC -- it's diodic. It originates from the People and flows out from them through their embodiment in the States. Latent powers do not have their fons et origo in the federal government. If they did, Hillary would be Catherine the Great by now.
We're not talking about the federal government, that non-entity you dismiss in the face of almighty state sovereignty. I have stated all along that it is the otherr states expelling the one state. Does that make it more palitable for you now?
If they did, Hillary would be Catherine the Great by now.
Let's see. Nazi's. Commies. Jesuits. And now Hillary. Yep, looks like that makes the sweep. You've managed to include what I think are all your pet hates in your posts to me, in some vain attempt at insult no doubt. But don't go politically correct on us. Toss in some ethnic comments while you're about it.
I'm not so sure about that.
The issue wasn't really slavery. It was the industrialists' drive to get power to remake the society and government to their liking. Personalities like that will kill anything and anyone that gets in their way. They won't take "no" for an answer.
Slavery was the wedge issue to split off the West from the South, break the agricultural bloc, and make the South "doable" as they say in business. They did it, it worked.
Flatly not true. Blatant falsehood -- blatant, huge horrendous. Don't make me get those editorials out -- we don't need to go through that galvanizing process the Yankee editors and businessmen and President put the public through.
Get over yourself -- rejecting this one! Just rejecting your statement as 100% false. War was elective, and Lincoln and the business wing of the Republican Party did the electing.
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