Posted on 07/04/2011 6:57:54 AM PDT by jmaroneps37
In his Gettysburg Address, …… Abraham Lincoln found the precise words to describe America’s dire situation. Here they are. Hear them, and savor them. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”…..
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
Yes, I have. You seem to have skipped the parts which don't pertain to slavery. For examples please see posts #119 & 120.
The slaveocracy of the Northern bankers, merchants, manufacturers, shippers, etc. who were making personal fortunes off cotton profits (not to mention the 'internal improvements' for their states and the federal revenues derived from cotton profits), or the slaveocracy which was determined to rule us all by force? Oh, they're one and the same!
That issue was settled with the Constitution.
See 9th & 10th Amendments.
Secessionist retreads can twist themselves in knots to deflect blame from where it rightly lays, but it does not change the facts that this is a UNION (not a weak confederation of territories or states) since the Constitution was adopted.
James Madison from The Federalist, No. 45:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiation, and foreign commerce;... The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state."
Bottom line, the states did not have any "right" to make war on other states. Besides, if the south had succeeded in shredding the Constitution and tearing apart the union, both north and south would have been ripe for attack from outside forces, and "ruinous" to all other states.
The fact remains that the southern states thought they could perpetuate power (though improper representation - 3/5 clause) over other states. When that failed, they foolishly followed a path of treason as their only recourse.
The New England slave trade was based on rum, slaves, and molasses. In New England, the slave ships would take on a load of fish and rum to be traded in Africa for slaves. The slaves would then be taken to the West Indies and traded for molasses and the molasses taken back to New England to be sold to make more rum. Often times a third of the cargo in slaves would die during the middle passage.
So important were the New England rum distilleries to the slave trade that, when the English parliament made a serious effort to collect a tax on molasses, the Massachusetts merchants protested that such a tax would ruin the slave trade and cause more than seven hundred ships to rot for lack of work. There were at this time in Massachusetts some 63 distilleries producing 12,500 hogsheads (barrels of 63-140 gallons) of rum. Also there were 35 distilleries in Rhode Island producing rum.
In 1763 the colony of Rhode Island protested the imposition of the tax to the English Board of Trade is a resolution of its General Assembly in which it said, "This little colony, only, for more than thirty years past, have annually sent about eighteen sail of vessels to the coast, which have carried about 18 hundred hogsheads of rum, together with a small quantity of provision and some other articles which have been sold for slaves....This distillery is the main hinge upon which the trade of the colony turns, and many hundreds of persons depend immediately upon it for subsistence."
The News England slave trade, which started in 1640, was maintained legally and illegally for more than two hundred years. Even after Congress had outlawed the importation of slaves into the United States, the Yankee slavers found ready markets in the Caribbean and in South America where 94% of the African slaves ended up.
In the mid 1830s off the coast of Zanzibar the yankee slavers were trading calico from yankee textile mills for ivory and slaves. In 1831 an English seaman, Captain Isaacs commented that, "Few have visited it [the port of Lamu] except the enterprising Americans whose star-spangled banner may be seen streaming in the wind where other nations would not deign to traffic." There were so many Yankee slavers and traders active in Zanzibar that the locals thought that Great Britain was a subdivision of Massachusetts.
Only 6% of all Africans taken from Africa were brought to the US. The Northerners' attempts to shift the blame upon the South by saying, "If you Southerners had not provided the market for our slaves, we would never have been in the slave trade." The truth is that after 1800 the South was never a viable market for the African slaves traders.
Did you know that the State of Virginia outlawed the slave trade in 1778, which Patrick Henry was governor. This law not only prevented the further importation of slaves, but also stipulated that any slave brought intno the state contrary to the law would be then and forevermore free. (This law was passed after Virginia had declared herself free from England. The House of Burgesses had many times before attempted to stop the save trade only to have its laws overruled by the royal governor.)
It should be clear why the United States constitution protected the slave trade for twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution. the commercial interest of the North led the fight to include the provision for protection of the slave trade in the Constitution. The provision was inserted into the new Constitution over the objections of Virginia and other Southern States. With the help of a few Southern representatives, the North won this constitutional battle to protect its lucrative trade.
From William Rawle's Views of the Constitution (an old West Point textbook from the 1820s):
"It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principles or representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle of which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.
This right must be considered as an ingredient in the original composition of the general government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood..."
here you have it from the words of a textbook used at West Point Military Academy. Secession has held to be a legal and constitutional right for all the states of the Union. Rawle was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and President t George Washington and a leader in the early abolition movement. His textbook was not only used at West Point but at other colleges as well. The right of secession was not first uttered by some "hot-headed' Southern secessionist, but was written eloquently by a 'cool-headed' Northerner.
More on Northerners and secession: Thomas Pickering, of Massachusetts, was the first to threaten secession.
Josiah Quincey, Of Massachusetts, was the first to mention secession in congressional halls. The years was 1811.
Charles Francis Adams testified that there was no doubt but that his grandfather, John Quincey Adams, believed that a state had the right to secede.
The New England States were the first to hold a secession convention. The convention was held in Hartford, Connecticut, for the propose of discussion the possibility of seceding because of the unpopularity of the War of 1812.
Abraham Lincoln argued for the right of secession in 1847.
Horace Greeley also argued for the right of the southern states to secede.
In its resolution ratifying the US constitution, Virginia placed this condition upon her consent to the new government:
"The powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."
John Milton asserted that "the power of kings and magistrates in nothing else but what is only derivative, transferred, or committed to them in trust, the right remaining in [the people] to reassume it to themselves if by kings or magistrates it be abused."
Locke also asserted likewise.
As Calhoun said, sovereignty, by a fundamental principle of our system, resides in the people and not in the federal government.
The states delegated powers to the federal government. You don't delegate to a superior, only to inferiors or equals. The federal government was a best meant only to ban an equal to the States, and as Jefferson and Madison wrote in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, "this government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive and final judge to the extent of the powers delegated to itself...but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge for itself...each party has equal right to judge for itself.
The Founders were not trying to create a huge overreaching central government to lord over the states and the people. They had just escaped such a government, and the primary desire of the Founding Fathers was to construct a central government that would not become another threat to the liberties of the people.
later read
Here... I'll print it for you just so all can see that it was slavery that they were defending, not free trade, states rights or any of the other BS you neo-confederates invent to justify the unjustifiable.
A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation. The main reason was that the North, even if united, could not control both branches of the Legislature during any portion of that time. Therefore such an organization must have resulted either in utter failure or in the total overthrow of the Government.
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The Confederate declaration of causes? "Them damn Yankees don't like slavery."
So you think it was all about slavery? Remember 70-80% of southern soldiers didn't even own slaves. There were many other reason for secession:
Alabama Ordinance of Secession said that the rise of a sectional party, as well as "many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security"
Texas Ordinance of Secession:
WHEREAS, The Federal Government has failed to accomplish the purposes of the compact of union between these States, in giving protection either to the persons of our people upon an exposed frontier, or to the property of our citizens, and WHEREAS, the action of the Northern States of the Union is violative of the compact between the States and the guarantees of the Constitution; and, WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon..."
Virginia Ordinance of Secession:
"the Federal Government having perverted said powers...to the injury of the people of Virginia"
Arkansas:
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America." Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas..."
Missouri:
Whereas the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof..."
Kentucky:
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government.
The Founders believed that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence? One of the reasons listed for the colonies breaking from England was that the King “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us” (slave revolts)
Yep. Slavery was just one of many issues.
I presented extensive quotations from the Constitutional Convention and the subsequent ratification debates that support my assertion that the New England states wanted to end the slave trade. Here, in case you missed it, is an excerpt from the North Carolina debate:
Mr. Spaight answered, that there was a contest between the Northern and Southern States; that the Southern States, whose principal support depended on the labor of slaves, would not consent to the desire of the Northern States to exclude the importation of slaves absolutely; that South Carolina and Georgia insisted on this clause, as they were now in want of hands to cultivate their lands; that in the course of twenty years they would be fully supplied; that the trade would be abolished then, and that, in the mean time, some tax or duty might be laid on.So, apparently you believe that he was lying, and that somehow, all the records of the New England states insisting on the continuation of the slave trade have been hidden away in some conspiracy, replaced by all these quotes showing that they wanted to end the trade immediately, and that South Carolina and Georgia were the only ones insisting on its continuation.
Or do you actually have some contemporary statements supporting your assertions?
The right to secede and withdraw delegated rights was a cornerstone of the American War for Independence. Even though the colonies were the legal property of Great Britain, the colonists drew upon the principle of self government and declared themselves independent anyway.
The South drew upon this precedent when they seceded.
Having just escaped from an overreaching government that had tried to keep them from leaving, the Founders made it very clear in the constitution that the federal government's powers very few and limited, whereas there were few restrictions on the States and the 9th and 10th amendments declared that all rights not delegated to the federal government or prohibited to the States were to be left to the states. It is sad that these amendments are so often ignored.
And 70-80% were also draftees and not volunteers.
Your claim that the New England states were the ones who wanted it banned is ridiculous. The New England states were the ones making money from it. They wanted it around for a while longer so they could keep making big $$$ by trading their cheap rum for slaves. And remember, only 6% or all slaves sold by the Yankees ended up in the South; 94% were sold elsewhere (often the West Indies). So while a few Southerners benefited by the 20 year slave trade allowance, The Yankees got the vast majority of the benefits. The south was not a huge market for slaves. Most of the money jingling in the Yankee slave trader's pockets was from elsewhere.
There was no right to seceed...not even in Texas or Alaska. See Texas v. White (1869) or Kohlhaas v. State (2006) among others. The myths of justification for secession were as wrong then as the pro-secessionists claims are now. It takes much picking and twisting the meaning to make that argument.
The south cannot claim “injury” by the Lincoln administration, using the Declaration of Independence as their justification. There were no ‘train of abuses’ they could claim as none had been done - Lincoln was not inaugurated yet and had not campaigned on ending slavery. Buhcannan turned a blind eye to the southern treason that went on for years, increasing during the months before Lincoln was elected.
Southern DUmocrats threatened treason if they did not get the results of the 1860 election they’d hoped for. The primary reason argued in EVERY Declaration of Secession by the confederate states was over the issue of slavery - regardless of how it is clouded in language of “states rights”.
South Carolina attempted to impose tariffs which is a power reserved exclusively to the Congress. The South Carolina legislature established an army, attacked US shipping and eventually attacked Fort Sumter. These were all violations prohibited in Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution.
The will of the people was ignored by pro-secessionist governor in Missouri and other border states. The “confederate states attempted to impose slavery onto states that voted against it and to stay in the union.
The only “injury” to the southern DUmocrat slaveocracy was the election of a Republican and the fear mongering DUmocrats within the seceeding states. In fear of the abolishment of slavery, they stirred up treasonous sentiments and started a war rather than act within the confines of the Constitution.
Even if there is a “right to secede” as you claim, it does not imply they were properly exercising that right - outside of the courts or through Congress. It also does not remove the right or even obligation of Lincoln and the Northern states to put down the rebellion.
President Lincoln swore an oath to the Constitution and it was his duty to put down the rebellion. His actions were constitutionally justified, the actions of the “confederacy” were not.
The South drew upon this precedent when they seceded.
The colonialists didn't secede - they rebelled against their masters. They were colonies, subjugated and subservient to Great Britain, not contemporaries like the southern states were. The two events are not analogous.
Yeah, I read it, and I can't find a single bit of evidence that indicates that the northern states pushed for a 20 year extension of the slave trade instead of outright abolition. Here's a link to the records of the Federal Convention debates on Article 1, Sec. 9, Clause 1. Find something that supports your assertion.
Your claim that the New England states were the ones who wanted it banned is ridiculous.
So then Richard Spaight was lying to the North Carolina Ratification Convention when he said "the Southern States, whose principal support depended on the labor of slaves, would not consent to the desire of the Northern States to exclude the importation of slaves absolutely."
It isn't the copperheads I was referring to in my statement. It is the Northern slaveocracy to which I refer. Do you deny the individual fortunes being amassed by Northern bankers, merchants, industrialists, shippers, etc. via cotton profits?
...the 9th and 10th amendments do not give the states any perceived "right" to break from the union.
Indeed, both do. The language is not ambiguous.
Bottom line, the states did not have any "right" to make war on other states.
Correct. Madison and Hamilton verify this.
Madison's thoughts against the use of coercion ("make war" in your words):
The more he reflected on the use of force the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and efficacy of it when applied the people collectively and not individually. A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.
Hamilton's thoughts on the use of coercion ("make war" in your words):
It has been observed, to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single state. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war?
Suppose Massachusetts, or any large state, should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those states which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying state at war with a non-complying state; Congress marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another; this state collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against the federal head.
Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself, a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government. But can we believe that one state will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible.
The fact remains that the southern states thought they could perpetuate power (though improper representation - 3/5 clause) over other states. When that failed, they foolishly followed a path of treason as their only recourse.
Northern states struck an agreement with the 3/5ths clause and then didn't like being bound to their own agreement. States don't engage in treason.
Your statement to which I made comment:
The Confederate declaration of causes? "Them damn Yankees don't like slavery."
I provided a couple of examples which refute your statement.
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