Posted on 09/07/2010 12:43:35 PM PDT by gjmerits
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at wolvesofliberty.com ...
What dodge? A stubborn streak perhaps, but obdurate? Nah.
And your reply demonstrates that the point I made totally went over your head. Those with better comprehension skills understood that I was saying that most Southerners AND Northerners believed “...slaves weren’t men or people..” The poster was trying to establish some kind of Northern moral superiority...but obviously was too ignorant of history to understand that slavery existed in both North and South and that it existed under the Union flag before AND after it existed in the Confederacy. The poster’s preceding sentence that you refer to makes no difference to that fact nor does it have any relevance to my point...as already stated to you. Sorry for you, your comments are now twice as illogical and irrelevant.
Unfortunately, I've seen all too often how droolingly irrational neo-confeds can get when confronted with things like "the dictionary." I just can't seem to work up any sense of amazement at your lamentably predictable response.
Again, please show me the wording in the U.S. Constitution which declares secession to be revolt against the established government.
Definitely obdurate - and dishonest to boot.
The supporting evidence for your statement?
I could post links from here to Grant's tomb and back to refute every word in your absurd post but it's all been here before. As a matter of fact, I started to ignore your buffoonish post but I just couldn't let you get away with that arrogant, condescending pomposity and revisionist history that you yankees are so eager to put on display whenever one of these threads is started and post #264 is another great example of buffoonery, arrogance, condescention and pomposity.
You can go back to watching cartoons now.
And you can go back to reading your History for Politically Correct Neo-con Yankees comic book.
You're arguing with the dictionary. You lose.
More like ESP or mind reading because nowhere in your comments do you even begin to intimate this thought.
It must me nice to think to yourself that you were trying to make this point.
Either way, there was still a big enough group, the Abolitionists in the NORTH, that believed slavery was evil and should be outlawed that had enough of a moral argument to pursuade their leaders to their cause as opposed to the SOUTH which didn't. Therein lies a moral superiority of the NORTH in general, regarding slavery.
Not to mention the fact that the reason the South seceded after Lincoln's election, was that they realized the jig was up: the abolition of slavery was inevitable.
South Carolina minced no words on the matter:
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.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
It's amazing, the lengths to which some folks will go to maintain their self-delusion....
Your own dodge & weave display
Yep, your main confusion appears to be whether to scratch your watch or wind your ass.
Sorry to burst your little bubble, methane boy.
Have you returned the neighbors cat... yet?
Wow. Even Hitler acknowledge the countries he invaded existed. Even the Sudetenland, although annexed, was considered sovereign prior to his trickery. Your position out 'facists' Hitler.
Since their acts of secession were illegal then their status as part of the U.S. had not changed.
The CSA was a sovereign nation. Too much Lincoln koolaid for you?
Not a single nation in the world recognized the confederate states as a sovereign nation. In their eyes they were always a part of the U.S.
Nothing imaginary about the CSA. She bled for four years.
The Southern rebellion lingered for four years. Before being put down.
Because they were sovereign nations.
Even the Sudetenland, although annexed, was considered sovereign prior to his trickery.
The Sudetenland was looked on by the rest of the world as part of Czechoslovakia.
Your position out 'facists' Hitler.
Your position is as loopy as most of your positions are.
The New York ratification document says what the ratifiers believed the Constitution to mean. Those who argue that the Constitution doesn't mean that have not provided any contemporary statement that I know of that says the New York ratification was incorrect and thus rejected because their clarifying statements were wrong. If you know of any, please provide them.
In any event, the Tenth Amendment basically codified that statement of the NY ratifiers. Secession was not prohibited by the Constitution. It was not prohibited to the states, who had just seceded from the "perpetual" Articles of Confederation. Therefore (pardon me while I channel Jefferson Davis), it must remain in the reserved powers of the states.
By the way, as you no doubt know, for a while North Carolina and Rhode Island went it alone after the other states formed the new Union. The first Congress responded by taxing imports from those independent states like they taxed imports from any other foreign countries.
Thank you, NS. You just reminded me what I couldn't remember that I'd been trying to say. Think that sounds confusing?! Welcome to my day:) LOL!!!
What I've been trying, unsucessfully, to ask is: Please point out where the U.S. Constitution declares secession unconstitutional.
Not a single nation in the world recognized the confederate states as a sovereign nation. In their eyes they were always a part of the U.S.
The CSA was well aware of it's sovereignty.
The Southern rebellion lingered for four years. Before being put down.
The CSA had one heckuva struggle for four years.
Looks like I'm gonna have to put myself down for the day, if I can't get my head in the game:)
Never pick a fight with the dictionary, son. It just makes you look stupid.
Merriam Webster on insurrection: "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government"
Sir, if secession had been prohibited by the Constitution, it would indeed have been a revolt to secede. However, secession was not prohibited by the Constitution. It remained in the reserved powers of the states. The states who seceded exercised their reserved power under the Tenth to resume their own governance, consistent with the ratification statements of several states. Secession was not a "revolt" against civil authority or the established government, but an exercise of powers reserved to the states by the document that was the basis of the established government. The seceded states were taking their ball and going home.
After the states seceded, the Constitution still applied to those states that remained in the Union. The Union government still had authority over those states wishing to remain in the Union and even over some states that might have seceded if pro-Union forces had not invaded the state or arrested state legislators so that they couldn't vote to secede.
I wish I had said that!
Where does your patience come from when you are dealing with these brainwashed fascists? I wish I could learn that...
If the Constitution meant anything at all, it meant that secession was an act of insurrection against the government formed by the Constitution.
But then ... the Constitution really didn't mean anything to your boys, did it?
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