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 was the end result? They closed the southern plantation, and opened the federal plantation....from the yankee point of view...
There is no right to leave the Union.
The final right (which Lincoln agreed with) is the right of revolution found in the Declaration.
A document, which, by the way, the Confederate South held in contempt, since it spoke of 'all men being created equal'
BUMP.
If it weren’t for the disgrace done to the conservative cause, I could love this just for the sheer silliness.
Oooh, Lincoln was a tyrant! And the Confederate States psychically foresaw that fact, so they gave him valid grounds by attacking the Union army!
No, there’s nothing tyranical about the brutal submission to chains and whips of an entire race of people! Nothing at all! No, tyranny lies in allowing the Western states the free determination to abolish such a practice! To arms, men, to arms! For that Northern scum would rather we be permitted to develop our economic systems to mechanization and diversification than continue an obsolete and medieval practice of absolute brutality, held alive by our own fears of just vengence against us by our victims! To arms! How profane and hideous that they would permit self-determination in the Western lands, and hold us to that social contract to which we pledged our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honors!
Come on: the only claim to the tyranny of the North is their conduct in a war in which the Confederacy attacked first.
Balderdash. Post-reconstruction mythmaking. The South didn’t try to work within the system, but chose war, immediately, completely illegitimizing any claim of “Northern aggression.” You actually have to wait for the North to attack before you can call them the aggressors.
No U.S. Army unit switched over to the Confederacy.
And, thogh many southern officers went over to the rebels, hardly any southern enlisted men did so.
And this brings us to what we have now.... a constant battle with the Feds over states rights and the ability of the FedGov to usurp the Constitution for the good of the few. (namely themselves)
Blah blah blah blah. Try refuting the basis of what I said, before leaping to intemperate rhetoric. If the Civil War represented any victory for King George, it was that the South destroyed the union and immediately set forth to war before even trying to work out their differences. If anything of Republicanism was lost to Nationalism, it was because the North was forced to salvage Democracy after the South had defeated it.
Who said, Lincoln? That right, the right to consent to your government is Perpetual - Unlike the federal Constitution.
In your forgetfulness, you've forgotten who created the General Government. It was Sovereigns. What right does a Sovereign have?
Certainly more than their agent, the Federal Government...
“And that differs him from any Southerner you care to name how?”
In regards to his attitudes towards blacks, perhaps not at all. However, unlike many Southerners, he was no ideologically committed to slavery and certainly valued preservation of the Union over preservation of slavery. Thus, it would be hard to view him and Jefferson Davis as 2 peas in a pod, for example.
Unfortunately, we never got to test whether any state had the right to leave the Union, since the Confederacy attacked the Union.
But if there WAS a right to leave the union, why have a 3/4th majority necessary for a Constitutional amendment? Why not unanimous? Why allow a mere supermajority to change the fundamental contract without the consent of any one state?
The Confederacy had several options available to them should Lincoln actually make any change of law which would be intolerable:
1. Appeal to the federal courts. But on what grounds?
2. Nullification. But it was the South trying to impose the Refugee Slave Act on the North, and the Institution of Slavery as a requirement for statehood on the West.
3. Negotiation. The North was claiming that Fort Sumter was the property of the United States, and could not be seized by the Confederate States. So why didn’t the South make an offer?
4. Attrition. So the North passes a law the South doesn’t like. There was no federal police force in the 1860s. Who will enforce the law. (This is subtly different from Nullification in that the law would remain in force in the South, but would be unenforced.)
Options 2, 3 and 4 went out the window when the South attacked the North.
In the terms you chose, racism, perhaps that's correct. The views of men like Davis and Lee would have to be considered much worse.
From the loser point of view you mean. From the Yankee point of view we preserved the Union, undivided, as our forefathers had left it to us.
Texas was allowed to secede from Mexico but was not allowed to secede from the U.S.
No, y'all preserved Federal tax revenue. Your beloved fedzilla was never sovereign, like the States. Bottom line, son
The North was obliged to obey the rule of law. Contrary to the myths of the Terrorist States of the Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln did not feel he had the authority to free slaves in territory which was not in rebellion. That would have to come later, with the consent of the governed, according to due legislative process. However, since the Terrorist States lacked a legitimate state government as they were in open, treasonous rebellion, Lincoln could ban slavery in the the occupied lands.
The rebellion WAS purely about slavery, not self-determination, because the immediate cause of the rebellion was the North granting self-determination to the Western states, and to themselves to not recognize the institution of slavery within their borders.
Say what? Texas broke away from Mexico following a successful rebellion. Remember the Alamo?
ROTFLMAO!!!! You guys crack me up every time.
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.