Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
Over the years I've heard many rail at the South for seceding from the 'glorious Union.' They claim that Jeff Davis and all Southerners were really nothing but traitors - and some of these people were born and raised in the South and should know better, but don't, thanks to their government school 'education.'
Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 deals in some detail with the question of Davis' alleged 'treason.' In referring to the Northern leaders he noted: "They believed the most logical means of justifying the North's war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded from the Union; so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate."
Although this was the way the federal government planned to proceed, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn't keep his mouth shut and he let the cat out of the bag. Stevens said: "The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy...This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war...No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union..." And, although he did not plainly say it, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be 'reformed' into something more compatible with his beliefs. No matter how you look at it, the feds tried to have it both ways - they claimed the South was in rebellion and had never been out of the Union, but then it had to do certain things to 'get back' into the Union it had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the 'history' books never seem to pick up on this?
At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while it had him in prison. Mr. Conner has observed that: "The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'." According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government's evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case. He said he had 'grave doubts' about it. Not to be undone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should just be satisfied with that. In other words - "you won the war, boys, so don't push your luck beyond that."
Mr. Conner tells us that: "In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally." None of these bright lights from the North would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It's not that they were dumb, in fact the reverse is true. These men knew a dead horse when they saw it and were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O'Connor, became the legal counsel for Jeff Davis - without charge. That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that refused to touch the case, told the federal government that they really had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner.
Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." At one point the government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he ask for one. Davis refused that and he demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial, or admit that they had dealt unjustly with him. Mr. Street said: "He died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." If Davis was as guilty as they claimed, why no trial???
Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional they would have done so in a New York minute. The fact that they diddled around and finally released him without benefit of the trial he wanted proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, both North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest over something that the South did that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet they claim the moral high ground because the 'freed' the slaves, a farce at best.
And Clinton's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of a modest middle class tax cut to the faithful who voted for him. He tried. He never tried to do anything so hard in his life. He even bit his lip. But he just couldn't.
On February 22, 1864, Lincoln's Louisiana commander, General Nathaniel P. Banks, held a state election, with Lincoln's consent, based -- you won't believe this -- on the prewar slave state constitution. the electorate was confined to "free White males" who had taken the Lincoln oath pledging future loyalty. White Union soldiers could also vote. What about the Black Union soldiers, the heroes of Port Hudson and other battles? They were barred from the election because of their race. so were the ten thousand free Blacks in New Orleans, many of whom were literate, some of whom were wealthy.
Michael Hahn, who ran a racist campaign based on his opposition to Black citizenship and Black voting, and who was supported by General Banks and, presumably Abraham Lincoln, won the election and was immediately anointed by Lincoln in a letter addressed to "His Excellency, Governor Michael Hahn."
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p.605
...[Lincoln] ... urged a gesture, saying to Michael Hahn, the newly elected White governor of Lincoln's White state:
I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in -- as for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. (CW 7:243)
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p.604
... Lincoln authorized another quickie White-only election, based again on the slave constitution, for members of a constitutional convention. The convention, dominated by conservatives, passed, under military pressure, a resolution banning slavery but balked at demands for Black suffrage, voting overwhelmingly for a provision which said "the legislature shall never pass an act authorizing Negroes to vote, or, to immigrate into this state under any pretense whatever."
Pressured by Banks, the members passed a vague resolution which permitted but did not require the legislature to extend the suffrage to "such persons, citizens of the United States, as by military service, by taxation to support the government, or intellectual fitness, may be deemed entitled thereto." To no one's surprise, the legislature decided that neither intelligent Blacks nor well-to-do Blacks nor Union veterans were entitled to vote. Joe Gray Taylor, the authority on Louisiana Reconstructed, said the convention "had no intention of giving the vote to any Negro," and that it was "a safe assumption that a legislature elected by white Louisianians would never do so" (47-8). Shall we go further and say that it is a safe assumption that Abraham Lincoln knew that a legislature elected by unreconstructed white Louisianians was not going to give Blacks the suffrage without overwhelming pressure applied overwhelmingly?
The signs were there for all to see, but Lincoln ignored them and went to his death saying that he believed -- preposterously -- that the Louisiana constitution was one of the best constitutions ever written.
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p.605-6
I'm not sure what your point is since you quote a newspaper of the old Confederacy. You seem to be offering that a Southern editorial was advocating tyranny. Is that it? If so my response is: SO? The monument on the courthouse square in my town declares that these men of the Confederacy took it upon themselves to shake off the bonds of tyranny and put their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on the line; inasmuch as the contract between the govenment and the governed had been broken. Would that we had the guts this day and age.
[Walt] Later he said:
[Walt] "When you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood..."
[Walt] It just seems impossible that you could be striving for a fair interpretation of these events when you won't consider the whole record.
Alright. The whole record, both sides.
"As for his steady refusal to sanction the death penalty in cases of desertion, there was far more policy in the course than fine feeling. . . . . As Secretary Chase said at the time, 'Such kindness to the criminal is cruelty to the army, for it encourages the cowardly to leave the brave and patriotic unsupported.' "
The Real Lincoln, Charles L.C. Minor, p.23
The ya go, Abe at his most generous and forgiving.
But now it is back to a quote from Lerone Bennett, Jr.
Still more unmistakable evidence of Lincoln's orientation can be found in his failure to provide equal pay and equal protection for Black soldiers, who were promised thirteen dollars a month, the same pay as White privates, and were insulted with an offer of seven dollars. Many Black soldiers refused to accept the seven dollars. When the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill providing the six dollar difference, the state's Black soldiers refused to accept the money, saying they were fighting for a principle, not money.
Pressing that issue, Black and White abolitionists organized a national campaign in favor of Black soldiers, but Lincoln refused to budge. When his conservative attorney general Edward Bates told him that it was his constitutional duty to order equal pay, he sat on the opinion until Congress rebelled. Before Congress rectified Lincoln's error, a brave Black sergeant named William Walker, who participated in a protest against Lincoln's policy, was arrested and charged with mutiny. At his trial, he pleaded in extenuation that "nearly the whole of his regiment acted in like manner as himself," that "when the Regiment stacked arms and refused further duty .... I did not then exercise any command over them" and that "I carried my arms and equipment back with me to my company street."
Ignoring this testimony and pleas from major leaders, including some Union officers, a military court sentenced Sergeant Walker to death. Although Lincoln repeatedly overruled the death sentences of White soldiers, he looked the other way when, on February 29, 1864, at 9 o'clock in the morning, Sergeant William Walker of Company A, South Carolina Volunteers, was "shot to death with musketry" in the presence of his brigade (Berlin 392-4). A biting footnote was added by Massachusetts Governor Andrew, who said that "the Lincoln administration which found no law to pay Walker except as a nondescript or contraband, nevertheless found law enough to shoot him as a soldier" (Pearson 109).
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 543
But in 1848, as a congressman, he wrote legislation that would have barred slavery from the District of Columbia.
Consider this text from the AOL ACW forum:
"It is useful when thinking about Abraham Lincoln's attitudes toward slavery and Blacks to remember that Lincoln was a Southerner born in a slave state to parents born and raised in slave states. His family shared some of their culture's bias toward individual Blacks, but opposed the institution of slavery. This background and the early move of the family to a free state shaped Lincoln's attitudes early in his adult life. Now consider several facts about Lincoln's political career:
1. While Lincoln was building political strength in local Illinois politics, he opposed the war with Mexico as inexpedient for several reasons, including that it was waged to increase the power of slave states in the institutions of Federal government.
2. During Lincoln's first term as U.S. congressman from Illinois in the late 1840's, he continued to criticize the Mexican war and worked out a bill (never introduced) calling for a referendum in the District of Columbia designed to free the slaves in that Federal enclave and compensate their owners.
3. His reentry into national politics in 1854 was clearly for the purpose of opposing the expansion of slavery into the territories under the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He had his heart and soul involved with the idea of gradual emancipation to bring the fullest meaning to the words of Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.
4. From 1854 to his nomination for the presidency in 1860, as James McPherson noted in his DRAWN WITH THE SWORD, "the dominant, unifying theme of Lincoln's career was opposition to the expansion of slavery as a vital first step toward placing it in the course of ultimate extinction." In those years he gave approximately 175 political speeches. McPherson notes that the "central message of these speeches showed Lincoln to be a "one-issue" man - the issue being slavery." Thus, Lincoln's nomination to the presidency was based on a principled opposition to slavery on moral grounds, and that position was clear to voters both in the South and the North.
5. In his early speeches and actions as president-elect and president, he was clear in his opinion that he had no legal authority to interfere with slavery in the slave states. However, he was persistent and consistent in his efforts to encourage and aid voluntary emancipation in the loyal Border States, territories and the District of Columbia. These efforts predated his publication of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
In summary, I think one can safely say that Lincoln was clearly a gradual abolitionist from the beginning of his political career.
[end]
Walt
They are not in conflict, correct.
Amendment IX
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
One of the enumerated rights -clearly- is that the laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land.
Amendment X
"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."
Now, one of the powers delegated to the United States lies in the supremacy clause, which reads:
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
The fact is that United States law is supreme to any state right, or even of the people.
This is because the -people- make the laws.
The 9th and 10th amendments have absolutely nothing to do with the legality or lack thereof of secession. They don't even come into play. This is because the --laws--of--the--United--States-- include the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Militia Act of 1792.
Those laws are supreme -- no state law, ordinance, or document can budge them -- just as the Supreme Court said --unanimously-- in the Prize Cases.
Walt
That is simply -not- what the supremacy clause says.
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
You are trying to put the 10th amendment above the supremacy clause, when any fair reading will show that if anything, the opposite is the case.
The only way the Courts can read this issue is to say that the Constitution AND the laws made in pursuance (that is to say, constitutional laws) are --equal-- in their power. That is clearly how it reads.
Walt
Lerone Bennett, Jr., has also addressed this Lincoln apology.
One reads everywhere or almost everywhere that Lincoln had to talk like a racist and vote like a racist because of the racist atmosphere of the time. This apology overlooks the relatively large number of white politicians who acted and voted for freedom despite racism.
In Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens, the future leader of the wartime House of Representatives, singlehandedly defeated an attempt to bar Black immigration and refused to sign a constitution that limited voting to White males (Woodley, 108-12).
In Massachusetts, in 1849, Charles Sumner inaugurated the century-long public school struggle, arguing in Roberts vs the City of Boston against segregated schools.
In New York, Senator Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, spoke out for Negro suffrage.
Will someone say that these men lived in the liberal East and that they didn't face the problems White politicians faced in the Midwest? What then are we to say about the great Ohio trio -- future senator and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, future Senator Benjamin Wade, and Congressmen Joshua Giddings -- and their brilliant campaigns in the 1840s and 1850s for Negro suffrage and repeal of the Black Laws that Lincoln supported in Illinois. In 1845, Chase called for equal suffrage and denounced "the whole policy of our legislature in relation to the colored population." Four years later, in 1849, the year Congressman Abraham Lincoln opposed an anti-slave trade resolution, Chase drafted a bill to repeal Ohio's Black Laws.
Nor was he alone.
In Michigan, Civil War Governor Austin Blair backed Negro suffrage. In the same state, DeWitt Leach, a future congressman, supported Negro suffrage at the constitutional convention of 1850.
Indiana and Illinois were in a dead heat in the contest for the worst Northern state, but three delegates who later became congressmen, Schuyler Colfax, William Dunn, and David Kilgore, opposed Negro exclusion at the Indiana constitutional convention of 1850, and another future congressman, George W. Julian, led the fight against Black Laws.
There was even some action in Illinois where John M. Palmer, Jesse O. Norton, James Knox and even Lincoln's conservative friends, David Davis and James Matheny, opposed the Negro Exclusion Act at the constitutional convention of 1847.
Year by year, while Lincoln remained silent, deprecating their efforts, sensitive Illinois representatives presented petitions calling for integrated schools, repeal of the Black Laws, and an end to taxation without representation.
With the election of the first abolitionist state representative, Owen Lovejoy, brother of the martyred Elijah Parish Lovejoy, "a new sound," Edward Magdol said, "was heard in the House" and "a new spirit breathed into the language and precepts of Jefferson and Paine," a new spirit, one might add, that was never heard in the legislature in Lincoln's day and was certainly never heard from Abraham Lincoln (121).
Elected in 1854, Lovejoy lost no time in raising the banner of freedom, introducing a bill to repeal the Black Laws that denied Blacks the right to testify in courts. The bill was tabled, but Lovejoy, undaunted, continued to raise the issue, and people came from all over on February 6, 1855, one month after Lincoln called for the colonization of Blacks, to hear him make the first abolitionist speech in the Illinois General Assembly in support of three resolutions that would have instructed Illinois representatives and senators in Congress to oppose the extension of slavery and to vote for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. Lovejoy said the new Republican Party had opened a new era in American life. It "had stepped forth like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, full grown, and fully equipped for the battle, and has already indeed gained no inconsiderable victories."
Lovejoy went on to say that the Fugitive Slave Law, which Lincoln supported, was degrading to all Americans and that he, an elected official of the state of Illinois, would not obey that law, even if it cost him imprisonment or death.
When Lovejoy finished, there was resounding applause, and some people cried. A boundary of sorts had been crossed in the state of Illinois, and the Springfield correspondent of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "This has been a great day for the state and the cause of Humanity. For the first time in the history of Illinois, a regular Abolitionist, in his place in the Hall of the House of Representatives, has made a speech in defense of his principles, and hundreds of persons heard for the first time, the enunciation of such principles from one whose history and character are a guaranty that he would nothing extenuate." People said later that "Lovejoy ... made the greatest speech ever made in the State House... " (Magdol 121-6, italics added).
One would have expected someone to say that about one of Lincoln's speeches to the legislature if the Abraham Lincoln of mythology had been real and if he had lived in Illinois in those days.
But, unhappily, there was no Abraham Lincoln in Illinois in Abraham Lincoln's time.
Forced into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., pp. 198-201.
Bennett could easily have quoted President Lincoln on this subject.
The facts are exactly the opposite of what he relates:
"As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows.
In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it.
From about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, Gen. Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known. Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government.
As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest. But I have not yet been so convinced. I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction.
We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.
The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all, if it contained fifty, thirty, or even twenty thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.
Still the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, "Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?" "Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining, or by discarding her new State government?"
Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants--and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse--we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.
I repeat the question, "Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each state, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same state; and withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive, and inflexible plan can be safely prescribed as to details and colatterals [sic]. Such exclusive, and inflexible plan, would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
--A. Lincoln 4/11/65
From this speech, his last, Lincoln's aceptance of the Louisiana constitution is clearly conditional.
It is, as he said on another occasion, not what we -think- we all can imagine, but what we ALL can definitely accomplish.
I don't know what Bennett was trying to get by writing this book -- money, I suppose. It has been thoroughly discredited by legitimate historians, and rightly so, as the except at the top of this note -- clearly at variance with President Lincoln's true attitude, shows.
Walt
Yes Walt. It IS what the supremacy clause says.
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land."
You are trying to put the 10th amendment above the supremacy clause, when any fair reading will show that if anything, the opposite is the case.
Nonsense. The 10th amendment AS PART OF THE CONSTITUTION is, by definition, also part of the supreme law of the land.
Can you translate that for me? How is the supremacy clause a right?
Now, one of the powers delegated to the United States lies in the supremacy clause, which reads
The supremacy clause does not delegate a power. It states that laws made pursuant to the delegated powers have authority over overlapping state statutes.
No state, as President Lincoln said, can get out of the Union on its own mere resolve. Acts, ordinances and documents to that effect are legally void. They have no force.
Walt
That is not true. Feeling in the north generally, and in the army, was that it would sully the noble cause of fighting for democratic government to bring emancipation into the equation.
"``What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there? And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us. And suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw themselves upon us, what should we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a multitude? Gen. Butler wrote me a few days since that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his command. They eat , and that is all, though it is true Gen. Butler is feeding the whites also by the thousand; for it nearly amounts to a famine there. If, now, the pressure of the war should call off our forces from New Orleans to defend some other point, what is to prevent the masters from reducing the blacks to slavery again; for I am told that whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they immediately auction them off! They did so with those they took from a boat that was aground in the Tennessee river a few days ago. And then I am very ungenerously attacked for it!"
Of course when Lincoln wrote those words, he had every intention of issuing an emancipation proclamation as soon as he felt the country would support it.
Walt
Dr. McPherson says that Lincoln's stance in the 1850's was at variance with as much as 2/3 of the electorate. But he still maintained that stance.
The one incident that should shut up Mr. Bennett -- lord knows why anyone would quote him -- is this incident where he was urged to rescind the EP:
He said, according to [David] Donald, "But now, if he followed their advice, he would have to do without the help of nearly 200,000 black men in the service of the Union. In that case 'we would be compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks.' Practical considerations aside, there was the moral issue. How could anybody propose 'to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee to their masters to conciliate the South?' "I should be damned in time and eternity for so doing,' he told his visitors (Gov. Randall, and Judge Mills, both from Wisconsin). "The world will know that I keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.'"
Lincoln was prepared to lose the election of 1864 rather than go back on his word.
Walt
Lincoln opposed slavery throughout his entire public life.
"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.
They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.
They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.
They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that that power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District.
The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions, is their reason for entering this protest."
Dan Stone,
A. Lincoln,
March 3, 1837
Walt
One deosn't read that everywhere because it is not true.
"...there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
August, 1858
Lincoln did not make what would now be called racist statements. He never said anything stronger than that he didn't -know- if blacks were the moral or intellectual equal to whites.
This is all so ridiculous. Lincoln clearly spoke well of blacks and black soldiers, and he clearly wanted them to have the vote.
People who attack Lincoln are pushing some other agenda.
DEAR FRIEND,
... It was about 8 o'clock A.M., when I called on the president. Upon entering his reception room we found about a dozen persons in waiting, among them two colored women. I had quite a pleasant time waiting until he was disengaged, and enjoying his conversation with others; he showed as much kindness and consideration to the colored persons as to the whites -- if there was any difference, more. One case was that of a colored woman who was sick and likely to be turned out of her house on account of her inability to pay her rent. The president listened to with much attention, and spoke to her with kindness and tenderness. He said he had given so much he could give no more, but told her where to go and get the money, and asked Mrs. C---n to assist her, which she did.
The president was seated at his desk. Mrs. C. said to him, "This is Sojourner Truth, who has come all the way from Michigan to see you." He then arose, gave me his hand, made a bow, and said, "I am pleased to see you."
I said to him, Mr. President, when you first took your seat I feared you would be torn to pieces, for I likened you unto Daniel, who was thrown into the lion's den; and if the lions did not tear you into pieces, I knew that it would be God that had saved you; and I said, if he spared me I would see you before the four years expired, and he has done so, and now I am here to see you for myself.
He then congratulated me upon having been spared. Then I said, I appreciate you, for you are the best president who has ever taken the seat. He replied: 'I expect you have reference to my having emancipated the slaves in my proclamation. But,' said he, mentioning the names of several of his predecessors (and among them emphatically that of Washington), 'they were all just as good, and would have done just as I have done if the time had come. If the people over the river [pointing across the Potomac] had behaved themselves, I could not have done what I have; but they did not, which gave the opportunity to do those things.' I then said, I thank God that you were the instrument selected by him and the people to do it. I told him that I had never heard of him before he was talked of for president. He smilingly replied, 'I had heard of you many times before that.'
He then showed me the Bible presented to him by the colored people of Baltimore, of which you have no doubt seen a description. I have seen it for myself and it is beautiful beyond description. After I had looked it over, I said to him, This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book. And for what? Let them answer who can.
I must say, and I am proud to say, that I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln, by the grace of God president of the United States for four years more. He took my little book, and with the same hand that signed the death-warrant of slavery, wrote as follows:
For Aunty Sojourner Truth October 29, 1864
A. LINCOLN
As I was taking my leave, he arose and took my hand, and said he would be pleased to have me call again. I felt that I was in the presence of a friend, and now I thank God from the bottom of my heart that I always have advocated his cause, and have done it openly and boldly. I shall feel still more in duty bound to do so in time to come. May God assist me. "
Found this:
"We feel curious to know what the deluded people of the North think of the present unprecedented high prices of slaves in the South. Just at the very time when Lincoln declares that they are to be emancipated, they command higher prices than ever before. Could anything demonstrate more satisfactorily the futility of his infamous proclamation? The people of the South never felt that the institution of slavery was ever safer than at the present time. The futility of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation eclipses that of the "Pope's bull against the comet," but differs in this, that the Pope's bull against the comet exhibited no evil design, whilst Lincoln's proclamation shows that he was impelled by a motive of a fiendish character. The Pope was innocent of crime, Lincoln was not. The Pope was ignorant of astronomy, Lincoln ignorant of Southern character. The Pope was a fool, Lincoln both fool and knave."
The [Staunton, VA ]Spectator, January 6, 1863, p. 2, c. 2
Quite a contrast.
Walt
You stated that the supremacy clause was a "right." How does the supremacy clause confer a right? What right is that?
You also claimed that the supremacy clause was a 'delegated power.' How is the supremacy clause a "delegated power" as you stated? What power is it delegating? To whom?
Now, are you going to lay down some reasoned response, or just toss back another Partisan-esque, "Your opinion is moot"?
[Walt] One deosn't (sic) read that everywhere because it is not true.
It is true. Your brother GOP said it right here:
[GOP] Those Lincoln quotes ignore the political context, in which he was trying to win elections in a very racist, predominately (sic) Democrat Illinois.
It was not until his last two years that expediency turned him into a pimp.
"Negro equality. Fudge! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" ~Lincoln~
"Send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit this." ~Lincoln~
"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet." ~Lincoln~
Yeah. He opposed it by biting his lip. Lincoln and your other hero, Bill Clinton, are good at the lip-biting thing.
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