Posted on 06/25/2010 4:31:27 PM PDT by central_va
Open Message to Mr. Beck (self proclaimed historian). Tonight on your TV show you said that you read the Confederate Constitution and I paraphrase "it had slavery written all over it, all about slavery blah blah blah". You are incorrect sir, I did a word search on the document and the word slavery appears "one" time. Everyone can try it for themselves at the link provided below.
Can never trust a Yankee, even a goofy entertaining one.
Someone less informed might think you'd made that association yourself, but nutjob Southern revisionism is all the rage at Lew Rockwell, where your quote is prominent amongst the copy & paste elite.
You're late to the party, yes, but comic relief is always welcome. Hysterically funny of you to think we'd be impressed!
That link up there has a lot of big words, billy, so I'll save you the trouble by spoiling the ending:
There's no doubt about it. He was an elitist and admirer of the pre-war Southern arisocracy. But, I am not sure Mencken would want to be claimed by today's neo-Confederate movement. Its members are not genteel enough.
In other words Mencken (who despite what you've been told was no friend of blacks or Jews or the unwashed like you) would think you're kinda trashy.
What else ya got?
The southerners, losers to those that made America great...
Let's see - Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were "southerners," and helped make "America great." Without them, in fact, "America" might never have existed as a free and independent republic. In other words, you're wrong.
...[Southerners] can’t stand facts.
Actually, you can not stand the facts (please see the above, and the following).
You are in denial. Beck was correct. The war was about slavery.
Actually, the war was about secession - as Mr. Lincoln himself noted on multiple occasions. Furthermore, the northern congress proposed the following amendment to the Constitution on March 2, 1861:
"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."
Gosh - doesn't look to me like the north was focused on the immediate elimination of slavery. But perhaps Mr. Lincoln was, personally? On December 1, 1862, Mr. Lincoln himself proposed the following constitutional amendment:
``Every State, wherein slavery now exists, which shall abolish the same therein, at any time, or times, before the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand and nine hundred [1900], shall receive compensation from the United States as follows, to wit:
``The President of the United States shall deliver to every such State, bonds of the United States, bearing interest at the rate of --- per cent, per annum, to an amount equal to the aggregate sum of for each slave shown to have been therein, by the eig[h]th census of the United States, said bonds to be delivered to such State by instalments, or in one parcel, at the completion of the abolishment, accordingly as the same shall have been gradual, or at one time, within such State; and interest shall begin to run upon any such bond, only from the proper time of its delivery as aforesaid. Any State having received bonds as aforesaid, and afterwards reintroducing or tolerating slavery therein, shall refund to the United States the bonds so received, or the value thereof, and all interest paid thereon."
In short, the north was perfectly willing to perpetuate human slavery, if it would preserve the union - the war was 'about secession,' not slavery.
The North decided to end it and the South didn’t.
When, precisely, did the north decide "to end it," sport? Before the war, during the war - or after the war? Look up the ratification date of the 13th Amendment. Why did the north wait, if "the war was about slavery?"
So, was slavery a good thing? Was it right. Was it Christian? Did it make slaveholders rich?
Shall government be bound by law, or morality? If morality, who's morality? The President's? The moral judgement of the Speaker of the House, or the Majority Leader in the Senate? Gosh, America is kind of short in those categories right now - but that's obviously your personal preference...
If you answer these questions I think it makes Beck’s point and the reason for the war. The nation under Lincoln could not have endured apart in the most basic of human rights. Lincoln was indeed a great man. Beck makes that point. You can’t face facts.
Actually, as noted above, Lincoln was willing to maintain human slavery in the United States for decades - and you can't face the facts. You're an historical revisionist (and, I suspect, based on your post, a complete idiot)...
;>)
“I’m so sick of people who are still fighting the Civil War.”
That’s what you get when you insist on “uniting” the divisions and denying secession.
“how terrible the Progressives and Marxists and their buddies the Islamofascists will be”
Oh don’t worry about that. The Moslems would never put up with the heathen libertine homosexual nonsense the “progressives” push forth.
They are strange bedfellows, indeed.
Actually, Washington was a Federalist - the best way to describe him. But he was not a “unionist” at all costs.
But the history of slavery in the United States is certainly worthy of comment. The apologists for Lincoln only want to talk about slavery in the South. And mostly in the context of justifying Lincoln's war of aggression against the Southern States. But the end of slavery in the North is most interesting. When slavery became economically unviable in the North due to industrialization you might ask yourself what happened to those slaves? Were they freed? Were they repatriated to Africa? Nope. They were sold to plantation owners in the South. So much for the myth of the noble Yankee, liberator of the black slave. More like greedy Yankee who cared not a wit for the black man except to remove him from his midst, hopefully at a profit.
But an interesting historical thought experiment is to imagine what the reaction would have been had Britain or France invaded the Northern States in the days when slavery was legal and practiced in them ... to free the slaves of course. Would the Northerners have welcomed them as great and moral liberators of the black man? Would they have laid down their arms and welcomed them into their homes? Would they have thanked them for their great moral sacrifice? I think not.
Slavery, as an American institution, did not start in the South. The first slave markets were in New York. So to suggest that slavery or even the defense of slavery is uniquely a Southern institution is to reveal oneself to be ignorant of history. And to see slavery as the sole purpose of the Confederacy and its Constitution is again simple ignorance.
So the next time you feel compelled to try and correct the mispresentations of the defenders of Lincoln remember the words of Mark Twain (oh heavens, a Southerner! who even used the "N" word in his books!!):
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
The bottom line is that the Union solved their slavery issue but the rebel states had to have it solved for them.
Honestly..
Who gives a F about why that war was fought or why those states attempted to secede?
The only people who really keep bringing it up are those who are scared to F’ing death that enough people are getting fed up with the BS that the Marxists are flinging and come to the conclusion that the only way to be rid of them and the F’ing idiots who vote for them is to secede.
F ‘em... Im done listening to the M’er F’ers who continue to issue threats in the form of a “history lesson”.
Secession is what happens when free people choose to disassociate themselves from a government and or another group of people that no longer share their basic values. Secession is a natural right that is NOT mitigated or lessened by any motivation (real or imagined) that you attempt to place on some other secession that happened 100+ years ago.
The only F’ing argument that these people can make that holds any GD water is that their may be war if we do. Ok... That may be... Honestly tho.. That is the case before ANY secession that ever happened (successful and unsuccessful). I guess we will just have to make sure we have that base covered.
CHIP A NAIL?
Bump to facing facts...
Thank you. I deserved that. I lose sight of that sometimes. I agree, I am humbled. I will try to remember what you said in the future, so as to frame every future secession argument that way. No sarcasm.
Do you really think these dang Union uber alles types "are scared to F’ing death that enough people are getting fed up "?
And you base this on what?
Yes, you would.
What? You think that had you not lost the rebellion then maybe you'd own him? Or are you pissed that the 14th Amendment overturned the court ruling that said a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect?
Would free people have the right to choose to disassociate themselves from another group of people by expelling a state or states from the Union?
What everyone forgets about the early days of our republic is that it WAS a republic and the Constitution was taken seriously. So calling someone a Federalist in 1790 is not the same as calling somebody a Federalist in 2010. This does not REQUIRE research, only common sense.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what you overlook is the fact the Washington believed in loyalty to country over loyalty to state or county. I have no doubt that he would be disgusted with the government as it has become. But his solution would not be to tear the country apart and walk out. I believe his solution would be to fight for the whole nation.
Did you channel Washington at your last Coven convention?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.