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Jefferson vs Lincoln: America Must Choose
Tenth Amendment Center. ^ | 2010 | Josh Eboch

Posted on 03/10/2010 6:35:02 PM PST by Idabilly

Over the course of American history, there has been no greater conflict of visions than that between Thomas Jefferson’s voluntary republic, founded on the natural right of peaceful secession, and Abraham Lincoln’s permanent empire, founded on the violent denial of that same right.

That these two men somehow shared a common commitment to liberty is a lie so monstrous and so absurd that its pervasiveness in popular culture utterly defies logic.

After all, Jefferson stated unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence that, at any point, it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…

And, having done so, he said, it is the people’s right to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Contrast that clear articulation of natural law with Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, where he flatly rejected the notion that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Instead, Lincoln claimed that, despite the clear wording of the Tenth Amendment, no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; [and] resolves and ordinances [such as the Declaration of Independence] to that effect are legally void…

King George III agreed.

(Excerpt) Read more at southernheritage411.com ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: 10thamendment; abrahamlincoln; confederate; confedertae; donttreadonme; dunmoresproclamation; greatestpresident; history; jefferson; lincoln; naturallaw; nutjobsonfr; statesrights; thomasjefferson
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To: ALPAPilot; wolfcreek; central_va; Bigun
“The “Will to Power” already has a home: www.democraticunderground.com”

Your other hangout?

In regards to your claims about the South. Independence was the motivating factor.If slavery was to be Perpetual - They could have stayed ‘in Union’ ......

Let's be honest. They didn't want to be in 'Union' with a pack of Marxist.

Similarity's are shocking compared to current political climates.

Yankee Nation = Holier than thou thinking, Lincoln cult attending,Obama worshiping,sniveling ,Constitution bending,abortion loving,firearm hating,'progressive' packs of pus,Basically, DAMNyankee

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution, namely:
ART. 13. No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

—12 United States Statutes at Large, 36th Congress, 2nd Session, 1861, p. 251.
http://ghostamendment.com/

181 posted on 03/12/2010 1:40:24 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: Non-Sequitur
It never ceases to amaze me that people who claim to hate what Obama is doing to the UNITED STATES then claim that states should have left this same United States and formed another government. The Union is perpetual. Secession or Nullification are NOT the answer. If Congress passes a clearly unconstitutional law, then the people have the final right of Revolution. But to brake up the UNION would simply play into the Globalists hands as other countries could take us over.
Can the “Lost Cause Brigade” not see this. A divided American Republic would have been picked off by other countries.
No, the solution is either the Supreme Court,a Constitutional Amendment or failing those two a Revolutionary overthrow of a Government that has become tyrannical.
182 posted on 03/12/2010 1:51:38 PM PST by cowboyusa
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To: central_va
Revolution is the option. We don't have to destroy the UNION to overthrow an Uncosnstitutional Government.
183 posted on 03/12/2010 1:54:58 PM PST by cowboyusa
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To: cowboyusa

If the USA wants to have a mutual defense treaty with the New Confederacy, I’m good with that.


184 posted on 03/12/2010 2:14:45 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org)
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To: cowboyusa; cowboyway
“It never ceases to amaze me that people who claim to hate what Obama is doing to the UNITED STATES then claim that states should have left this same United States and formed another government. The Union is perpetual. Secession or Nullification are NOT the answer. If Congress passes a clearly unconstitutional law, then the people have the final right of Revolution. But to brake up the UNION would simply play into the Globalists hands as other countries could take us over.”

The Union is VOLUNTARY. If your get married,does that act,permit you, abuse upon, your spouse? No

They seceded from that ‘perpetual’ Government.

185 posted on 03/12/2010 2:28:00 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: ALPAPilot; central_va

The Yankee Problem in America
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html
Since the 2000 presidential election, much attention has been paid to a map showing the sharp geographical division between the two candidates’ support. Gore prevailed in the power- and plunder-seeking Deep North (Northeast, Upper Midwest, Pacific Coast) and Bush in the regions inhabited by productive and decent Americans. There is nothing new about this. Historically speaking, it is just one more manifestation of the Yankee problem.


186 posted on 03/12/2010 2:40:56 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: wolfcreek
That argument about it being all about about slavary has wore thin

It's not MY argument. Slavery was the STATED reason in the Secession Resolution of every state that left, backed up by the large majority of the speeches made in favor of the resolutions.

It reminds me of those who claim the War on Terror isn't about Islam. The terrorists keep saying it is. Why argue. The South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi Legislatures etc. said it was about slavery in their authoritative documents. They wrote them and passed them not me. As for the song I'm singing, It's the principle of the Declaration of Independence. Governments are instituted to protect our unalienable rights. How that can be a long way from Live Free or Die escapes me. I've haven't argued against secession. I've argued that secession as a right cannot be exercised in order to deny natural rights to others. It's like I'm arguing with a bunch of Palestinians - they make the same arguments for independence.

187 posted on 03/12/2010 3:00:52 PM PST by ALPAPilot
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To: ALPAPilot

Sick and F-ing tired of your insults. Ok, I get it, we down here are a bunch of rednecks, the south would be the third world without the North who did them a favor by forcing them to stay in the Union. It was about slavery for the South and somehow there is a Palistinian connection. You want to know why I know the Republic is finished? Look in the mirror.


188 posted on 03/12/2010 3:26:35 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org)
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To: ALPAPilot
It reminds me of those who claim the War on Terror isn't about Islam.

Dribble. No less from a yankee living in a commie state.

Read the South Carolina Secession Declaration It discusses private property which is protected by the Constitution.

"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows:

[p18] "No person held to service or labor 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 labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

[p19] This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made."

Whether you like it or not, African slaves were considered private property when the Constitution was ratified and the Southern states maintained that the federal government couldn't just willy-nilly take private property from the citizens. Therefore, if disHonest Abe intended to ignore the Constitution, then the South felt obliged to dissolve the compact that they entered into of their own free will.

It's like I'm arguing with a bunch of Palestinians

And arguing with you damnyankees is like arguing with a bunch of damn Soviets. It's no wonder that we've never gotten along.............

189 posted on 03/12/2010 3:27:29 PM PST by cowboyway
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To: ALPAPilot
“It's not MY argument. Slavery was the STATED reason in the Secession Resolution of every state that left”

All of them? My family didn't own any slaves.

Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

We, the people of the State of North Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by the State of North Carolina in the convention of 1789, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and adopted, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting amendments to the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and abrogated.

We do further declare and ordain, That the union now subsisting between the State of North Carolina and the other States, under the title of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of North Carolina is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.

First. We, the people of the State of Tennessee, waiving any expression of opinion as to the abstract doctrine of secession, but asserting the right, as a free and independent people, to alter, reform, or abolish our form of government in such manner as we think proper, do ordain and declare that all the laws and ordinances by which the State of Tennessee became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America are hereby abrogated and annulled, and that all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of said laws and ordinances were conveyed to the Government of the United States, and to absolve ourselves from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred thereto; and do hereby henceforth become a free, sovereign, and independent State.

An act declaring the political ties heretofore existing between the State of Missouri and the United States of America dissolved.

Whereas the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and

190 posted on 03/12/2010 3:35:25 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: central_va; ALPAPilot
Ok, I get it, we down here are a bunch of rednecks, the south would be the third world without the North

If it wasn't for the Southern voting block the north would have become a communist country years ago.

ALPAPilot and his northron 'comrades' ought to be kissing our Southern asses in thanks for their continued freedom.

191 posted on 03/12/2010 3:37:19 PM PST by cowboyway
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To: cowboyway
Worth Repeating:

If it wasn't for the Southern voting block the north would have become a communist country years ago


192 posted on 03/12/2010 3:41:28 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org)
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To: Idabilly

From South Carolina

n the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor 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 labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.


193 posted on 03/12/2010 3:46:59 PM PST by ALPAPilot
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To: Idabilly

From Mississippi

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.


194 posted on 03/12/2010 3:49:18 PM PST by ALPAPilot
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To: ALPAPilot

The litany of secession:
If a state or states causes you to live in socialism, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to remain a republic maimed and crippled than to stay a collective whole and to be thrown into eternal Bolshevik fire.

And if your federal government causes you to sin, secede from it, peacefully hopefully, but secede just the same. It is better for you to enter into liberty a smaller sovereign state than to be thrown into fiery collective hell

And the original Mathew 18:8

If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.


195 posted on 03/12/2010 3:49:45 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org)
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To: ALPAPilot; cowboyway; Idabilly

The litany of secession:
If a state or states causes you to live in socialism, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to remain a republic maimed and crippled than to stay a collective whole and to be thrown into eternal Bolshevik fire.

And if your federal government causes you to sin, secede from it, peacefully hopefully, but secede just the same. It is better for you to enter into liberty a smaller sovereign state than to be thrown into fiery collective hell

And the original Mathew 18:8

If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.


196 posted on 03/12/2010 3:50:58 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org)
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To: Idabilly

From Georgia

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees it its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer the practice of our Government for the first thirty years of its existence in complete refutation of the position that any such power is either necessary or proper to the execution of any other power in relation to the Territories. We offer the judgment of a large minority of the people of the North, amounting to more than one-third, who united with the unanimous voice of the South against this usurpation; and, finally, we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive that we have never surrendered this right. The conduct of our adversaries admonishes us that if we had surrendered it, it is time to resume it.

The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.

A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility. The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.


197 posted on 03/12/2010 3:55:55 PM PST by ALPAPilot
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To: Idabilly
Over the course of American history, there has been no greater conflict of visions than that between Thomas Jefferson’s voluntary republic, founded on the natural right of peaceful secession, and Abraham Lincoln’s permanent empire, founded on the violent denial of that same right.

Wow, does somebody get it and they're not afraid to say so, or what!

198 posted on 03/12/2010 3:59:02 PM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: ALPAPilot

State Of Maryland
Legislative Resolution

Whereas, The war against the Confederate States is unconstitutional and repugnant to civilization, and will result in a bloody and shameful overthrow of our institutions; and whilst recognizing the obligations of Maryland to the Union, we sympathize with the South in the struggle for their rights-for the sake of humanity, we are for peace and reconciliation, and solemnly protest against this war, and will take no part in it:—
Resolved, That Maryland implores the President, in the name of God, to cease this unholy war, at least until Congress assembles; that Maryland desires and consents to the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States. The military occupation of Maryland is unconstitutional, and she protests against it, though the violent interference with transit of Federal is discountenanced; that the vindication of her rights be left to time and reason, and that a convention, under existing circumstances, is inexpedient.


199 posted on 03/12/2010 4:03:42 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: Idabilly

Speech of E. S. Dargan, in the Convention of Alabama, Jan. 11, 1861

I feel impelled, Mr. President, to vote for this Ordinance by an overruling necessity. Years ago I was convinced that the Southern States would be compelled either to separate from the North, by dissolving the Federal Government, or they would be compelled to abolish the institution of African Slavery. This, in my judgment, was the only alternative; and I foresaw that the South would be compelled, at some day, to make her selection. The day is now come, and Alabama must make her selection, either to secede from the Union, and assume the position of a sovereign, independent State, or she must submit to a system of policy on the part of the Federal Government that, in a short time, will compel her to abolish African Slavery.

Mr. President, if pecuniary loss alone were involved in the abolition of slavery, I should hesitate long before I would give the vote I now intend to give. If the destruction of slavery entailed on us poverty alone, I could bear it, for I have seen poverty and felt its sting. But poverty, Mr. President, would be one of the least of the evils that would befall us from the abolition of African slavery. There are now in the slaveholding States over four millions of slaves; dissolve the relation of master and slave, and what, I ask, would become of that race? To remove them from amongst us is impossible. History gives us no account of the exodus of such a number of persons. We neither have a place to which to remove them, nor the means of such removal. They therefore must remain with us; and if the relation of master and slave be dissolved, and our slaves turned loose amongst us without restraint, they would either be destroyed by our own hands— the hands to which they look, and look with confidence, for protection— or we ourselves would become demoralized and degraded. The former result would take place, and we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin; and we must, therefore, this day elect between the Government formed by our fathers (the whole spirit of which has been perverted), and POVERTY AND CRIME! This being the alternative, I cannot hesitate for a moment what my duty is. I must separate from the Government of my fathers, the one under which I have lived, and under which I wished to die. But I must do my duty to my country and my fellow beings; and humanity, in my judgment, demands that Alabama should separate herself from the Government of the United States.


200 posted on 03/12/2010 4:06:19 PM PST by ALPAPilot
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