Posted on 04/11/2011 7:51:03 AM PDT by Davy Buck
"The fact that it is acceptable to put a Confederate flag on a car *bumper and to portray Confederates as brave and gallant defenders of states’ rights rather than as traitors and defenders of slavery is a testament to 150 years of history written by the losers." - Ohio State Professer Steven Conn in a recent piece at History News Network (No, I'll not difnigy his bitterness by providing a link)
This sounds like sour grapes to me. Were it not for the "losers" . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at oldvirginiablog.blogspot.com ...
why would they be seeking to negotiate an end to secession? that’s your argument? that was lincoln’s cause. you’ve never refuted the years of evidence presented that such an act was illegal, yet the fact that the south was trying to speak with his to prevent a WAR is of no consequence.
i guess war is justified when the stakes are political boundaries.
in all the years northern states threatened secession, no one ever brought up a legal, constitutional argument they couldn’t. it was always practical, as in if X secedes it will empower the british and hurt the union, or empower the french and hurt the union, etc. (your “interpretations” not withstanding)
explain the significance of continuing to argue that the south wanted to preserve the institution of slavery, when LINCOLN wanted to preserve the institution in those same states. is that supposed to be some sorta gotcha?
as for the electorate results (assuming you mean the first one), many people voted for him based on his platform of AVOIDING conflict. but poor ‘ol lincoln took no time claiming he had no choice but to go to war. many northerners went to fight for the south when they realized what was up, and many left the army after the emancipation because that was the cause anyone got involved for. we don’t really need to discuss the re-election, do we?
george h.w. was crucified for going back against a promise on taxes. lincoln went back on his word not to kill half a million people. but you’re cool with that, right?
why accept a challenge when you already concede i can find examples. how many does it take to satisfy the term “many” such that your absolutism that the party didn’t favor secession? their platform wanted slavery ABOLISHED, but they ALSO didn’t want blacks to remain in the U.S. either!!! is that the case you want us to find so morally or constitutionally superior to the argument of the millions who were attacked over it?
and i didn’t concede, which is why i used the term “may concede”. you seem so intent to dismantle every sentence to your favor, such that “with these qualifications” means anything after can be ignored, yet “may concede” means everything after is absolute? good stuff.
“seizure of U.S. property” is bogus. if they never seceded, then it always was U.S. property and no one seized anything. if they were separate, then the U.S. had no business keeping forts in those states’ territories. the south conceded international water forts like dry tortugas, but maintaining land in “enemy” territory was simply antagonizing.
g.w.’s address was “practical” not legal as i mentioned already. at a time when they just won independence, we warned we may not last if we didn’t stay united (and the war of 1812 validated his fear). but WHY give such a warning if it wasn’t even on the table as you insist??? what southern state had raised the issue at that time? i “challenge you” to name one.
i’ve seen the jefferson quote you can’t find cited at least 3 times (exact quote or source to find quote). sounds like a personal problem that you still can’t find it.
Rhode Island ratification ordinance, May 29, 1790:
The United States shall guaranty to each state its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to the United States
It's called reassuming their own governance. The limited authority that they delegated to their agent - is - repossessed. As Jeff Davis correctly stated:
Now, sir, we are confusing language very much. Men speak of revolution; and when they say revolution they mean blood. Our fathers meant nothing of the sort. When they spoke of revolution they meant an unalienable right. When they declared as an unalienable right the power of the people to abrogate and modify their form of government whenever it did not answer the ends for which it was established, they did not mean that they were to sustain that by brute force. They meant that it was a right; and force could only be invoked when that right was wrongfully denied. Great Britain denied the right in the case of the colonies, and therefore our revolution for independence was bloody. If Great Britain had admitted the great American doctrine, there would have been no blood shed. . . .
If the Declaration of Independence be true (and who here gainsays it?), every community may dissolve its connection with any other community previously made, and have no other obligation than that which results from the breach of an alliance between States. Is it to be supposed; could any man . . . come to the conclusion that the men who fought the battles of the Revolution . . . in order that they might possess those unalienable rights which they had declared—terminated their great efforts by transmitting posterity to a condition in which they could only gain those rights by force? If so, the blood of the Revolution was shed in vain.
The Formation of the American Republic 1776-1790:
In an ultimate sense, the Constitution confirmed the proposition that original power resided in the people—not, however, in the people as a whole, but in them in their capacity as people of the several states. In 1787 the people were so divided because, having created or acquiesced in the creation of state governments, they were bound by prior contracts. They could create more local or more general governments, but only by agreeing, in their capacity as people of the several states, to relocate power previously lodged with the state governments. All powers not thus relocated, and not reserved by the people in explicit state constitutional limitations, remained in the state governments. In short, national or local governments, being the creatures of the states, could exercise only those powers explicitly or implicitly given them by the states; each state government could exercise all powers unless it was forbidden from doing so by the people of the state. But in the Constitution the states went a step further, and expressly denied to themselves the exercise of certain powers, such as those of interfering with the obligations of private contracts, passing ex post facto laws, and refusing to honor the laws of other states. This is the essence of the American federal system.
To the Hartford Convention:
Federalists concluded from these propositions that since the states had negotiated the Constitution, the states alone could determine when a national law violated the compact, when its obligations under the Constitution ceased, and when to denounce it. From this it irresistibly followed that if a state nullified a law, interposed its authority between the people and the national administration, or in the extremity seceded, it would not commit treason. The state would merely assume to itself its full sovereign powers as a republic, a remedy “prescribed by the law of nations.
Pales in comparison? LOL! No Congressional debates over 30 years about anything other than slavery? Internal improvements and tariffs discussed in Congress, in secession conventions and documents, but they don't count. Four states seceded over Lincoln's call for troops, but they don't count. You're batting average isn't looking too swell, Bubba.
"A confederacy of Slaveholding States." Capitalized, even.
Those caps show that their punctuation was better than mine is at times. Anything else I'm supposed to notice?
Well, then I guess what happened was inevitable. The south wanted more than the rest of the United States--the ones who voted Lincoln into office by a huge electoral margin--were willing to give.
The South wanted more? LOL! The South was tired of the rest of the country wanting more out of their pocket.
So – you concur with Mr. Madison’s statements at the conclusion of Federalist No. 43?
;>)
As for Mr. Madison’s “other writings,” you would be much more correct to specify “private correspondence, written decades after ratification” – so as to avoid confusion with his voluminous public writings in support of ratification, and in defense of State’s rights. (As usual, when Madison's later writings are mentioned by some Union enthusiasts, there's a bit of context missing... ;>)
The southern demand wasn't simply for the protection of slavery within their borders. That's why they weren't interested in the Corwin Amendment. They wanted assurances that slavery would be able to expand into the new states to the west. There are any number of quotations from southerners showing why they feared a stop to the territorial expansion of slavery, but this example, from a Virginia's county's resolution in support of a secession convention is not untypical:
It is shown in their openly avowed determination to circumscribe the institution of slavery within the territory of the States now recognizing it, the inevitable effect of which would be to fill the present slaveholding States with an ever increasing negro population, resulting in the banishment of our own non slaveholding population in the first instance, and the eventual surrender of our country to a barbarous race, or, what seems to be desired, an amalgamation with the African.many northerners went to fight for the south when they realized what was up, and many left the army after the emancipation because that was the cause anyone got involved for.
Far more southerners fought for northern armies than northerners fought for the southern army. As for soldiers leaving after that emancipation proclamation, that was because their enlistments were up. Unlike the confederacy, the United States army did not force men to stay in uniform after their initial enlistments were up.
lincoln went back on his word not to kill half a million people.
And when did Lincoln say that?
I'll make it simple for you. The south seceded primarily because of the threat to slavery's future that they perceived in Lincoln's election. Lincoln went to war to preserve the union and after the south shelled US forces at Ft. Sumter, doing so under the powers granted to him under the Militia Act, since the laws of the United States were being "opposed or the execution thereof obstructed." And as for jumping around, I'm just trying to keep up with you. You've been all over the place.
Three statements by Republican leaders would do it.
is that the case you want us to find so morally or constitutionally superior to the argument of the millions who were attacked over it?
Well, yes. I do find emancipation and colonization to be morally superior to slavery. Maybe you find those to be morally equivalent. I don't.
“seizure of U.S. property” is bogus. if they never seceded, then it always was U.S. property and no one seized anything.
That's an odd legal theory. Apparently you feel that anyone can take any government property they want, as long as they remain US citizens.
George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts:
The Federalists are dissatisfied, because they see the public morals debased by the corrupt and corrupting system of our rulers. Men are tempted to become apostates, not to Federalism merely, but to virtue and to religion and to good government. . . . the principles of our revolution point to the remedy--a separation. That this can be accomplished, and without spilling one drop of blood, I have little doubt. . . . The people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West. The latter are beginning to rule with a rod of iron. . . .
A Northern confederacy would unite congenial characters, and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the Southern States, having a similarity of habits, might be left "to manage their own affairs in their own way." If a separation were to take place, our mutual wants would render a friendly and commercial intercourse inevitable.
George Tucker, also said a state had the right to secede. Tucker’s 1803 edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, which he annotated to American law, was widely used for the teaching of law in the United States for years. Here are some of his thoughts:
But the seceding states were certainly justified upon that principle; and from the duty which every state is acknowledged to owe to itself, and its own citizens by doing whatsoever may best contribute to advance its own happiness and prosperity; and much more, what may be necessary to the preservation of its existence as a state.30 Nor must we forget that solemn declaration to which every one of the confederate states assented . … that whenever any form of government is destructive of the ends of its institution, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government. Consequently whenever the people of any state, or number of states, discovered the inadequacy of the first form of federal government to promote or preserve their independence, happiness, and union, they only exerted that natural right in rejecting it, and adopting another, which all had unanimously assented to, and of which no force or compact can deprive the people of any state, whenever they see the necessity, and possess the power to do it. And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, as unquestionable, we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess.
But what did he know, right?
Ditto!
ok, so your whole argument is this...
The South SECEDED for reasons X, Y, and Z (reasons irrelevant to your argument, but we just need to know that secession is a LOCK as being unconstitutional despite your being able to show us how)...
and PER SUMTER - which was a northern fort in southern territory; which Lincoln mobilized for war with arms, warships, and men despite his assurances to southern governors to abandon it peacefully like every other fort had been abandoned prior (and breaking peace treaties is not an act of aggression or war in your book, but i’m sure that you’ll argue the opposite for our entry into WWI or just about any conflict in asia since); which WASN’T even the first battle of the war (unfortunately even the slanted AP acknowledged that shot was in Florida this week (by another treaty-breaking mission authorized by lincoln, but we’ll stick to your myth of sumter starting the ball rolling for now for now); and so on -— per THAT event, AND THEREFORE...
Under the militia act - which you haven’t explained WHO FROM WHAT STATE called for his help to authorize its use yet per my previous post (yet you’ll still call it’s use constitutional since that’s how we roll around here i guess)...
With ALL THAT in mind, it’s an open and shut case that Lincoln had no other choice than to declare war? That’s your whole argument???
How does one dispute such claims? I sure don’t know.
Excellent job Bubba! You’ve stayed reasonable and rational while your opponents have been increasingly condescending, contradictory, and convoluted.
I applaud your efforts.
Thank you for making my point ;-)
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