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 ...
"If"? It was widely understood to be fact.
Here you have Virginia's ratification stating they could resume their own governance.
may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression,
Here is a ratifier from Virginia, John Taylor:
The deputations by sovereignties, far from being considered as killing the sovereignties from which they have derived limited powers, are evidences of their existence; and leagues between states demonstrate their vitality. The sovereignties which imposed the limitations upon the federal government, far from supposing that they perished by the exercise of a part of their faculties, were vindicated, by reserving powers in which their deputy, the federal government, could not participate; and the usual right of sovereigns to alter or revoke its commissions.
Would you care to quote the article and section that says secession is illegal?
Last time I looked at a map of the USA, Ft. Sumter was about 700 miles BELOW the Mason-Dixon.
It differs not a jote from from soft racism practiced by RINOs and liberals. It is this soft racism which allowed a second rate student like Obama to matriculate at Harvard and go on to his affirmative action post at the White House.
The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong.This is as exact an expression of the new pro-slavery radicalism that had infected the South as any I've seen.
Poor cva - still stuck on stupid I see...
Lincoln was a tyrant, his own words and actions prove it.
You can say the “Civil War” was about slavery all you like but the fact remains Nether the Union soldiers nor Lincoln himself had any intention of ending slavery as the objective the war.
Instead they said over and over again that their sole objective was to “preserve and restore the union” by force of arms, rather then respecting the right of the people to govern themselves.
What they did by their own admission was in-itself on face value exactly the same thing the British did against the 13 colonies in the American revolution.
Lincoln was every bit as much a Tyrant as King George, in many ways worse. Because not only was Lincoln betraying the basic rights of his country as proclaimed and demonstrated in the American declaration of independents, as even he understood!
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and their own, of so much territory as they inhabit.” - A. Lincoln, 1848
He justified his actions on the ground of the necessity of his own maintaining power. He actually calmed that the Government could not exist unless it oppressed the people never bothering to recognized that the very reason we have a constitution is to protect the people from governments doing Just this!
Lincoln Squashed free speech(closing down opposition news papers for highlighting his contradictions), suspected the right to habeas corpus with out Congressional authorization(Authorization congress refused to give him when asked), even going so far as attempting to jail Federal Judges that called him out on it.
Lincoln was a Boniface tyrant from almost ever aspect of the term. He wasn’t just waging war upon the south he was waging war upon American’s right to govern themselves as the true origin of Sovereignty.
There is a reason the victors writing the history focused on the moral issue of slavery. That was the one moral evil which the south uniformly shared among itself, and perhaps led to the actual act of secession. But it was not the evil that led to the war, the evil that led to the war was the greed for power and control, that drove the Lincoln fight that basic inalienable right of the people to self-determination.
Let there be not doubt, let the truth be reviled by light of fair judgment of the actions of men not their words. Lincoln was indeed a tyrant.
In 1860, almost all federal tax revenue was collected in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
So why did his political opponents consistently accuse him of being an black-loving abolitionist? Why do all the Declarations of Causes that the southern states issued overwhelmingly cite abolitionism and the threat to slavery caused by Lincoln's election to be their reason for seceding?
In 1860, nearly all federal tax revenue was import tariffs, collected in the ports of New York, Boston and Philadelpha.
One seems to forget that slavery was protected under Federal law, and Northern States were nullifying Federal law. It was their right in my opinion. However, the Southern States interred the Union as Slave States, and the peaceful harmony no longer existed. What was their recourse? Stay in Union and have the Brown's of the world terrorize them, or leave? I'm not conceding to this being the only reason, just one.
I find it entertaining that it was fine and dandy to marry a women with a mole on her face, which conferred a privilege to bitch about it on a later date. Not to mention, the Northern involvement and profit from slavery. Hypocrites
No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South. Toomps
So if the Cubans got a wild hair up and bombarded Guantanamo Bay into surrender you would be there cheering them on?
That is about the most asinine screed I've ever seen a Lost Causer come up with. Congratulations.
I think you replied to the wrong person, but your statement is spot on....
“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 question is if consent of the Governed is a basic requirement of a government then how is it that a mere 3/4th of the States can impose new government upon the remaining 1/4th unless that 1/4th had reserved the right to leave should the choice of 3/4th be so unpalatable to them as to warrant sacrifice the benefits of union.
The same benefits which drove them to join the union in the first place.
And there you have it. While some might enjoy fishing, others golf, and many simply wanting to get together with friends & family for a little football, there is a very small number who seek only to amass power over others.
We may wish to believe this isn't so, that all people have some type of inherent goodness and sociability, but it's a lie. The most obvious of these psychopaths are common criminals, yet the same strain runs through others more crafty & cunning.
While patriots were still fighting the British for independence, you can be assured that some were already gaming potential outcomes. As the poster above noted, Hamilton already had it all figured out before the ink was even dry.
Lincoln may have been acting under what he believed were noble pretenses; so to Confederates. However, it mattered not a whit to those who were hedged regardless of the outcome(s).
The bottom line is that the Constitution was simply not up to the job. We now find ourselves in a situation beyond belief, where a criminal syndicate is openly acting against the citizens.
Amen!!!!
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