Posted on 07/04/2011 6:57:54 AM PDT by jmaroneps37
And you sir are in more need of a girlfriend(and an education) than anyone in history . And btw, nice way to avoid the question Johnny Reb.
Game, set, match!
The secession of the Southern States and the creation of the confederacy was not counter to the American Revolution as you so falsely claim. It was the Confederacy who held more to the priciples of the Founders. The Founders stood for a people's right to self determination, the right to government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Jefferson wrote in the declaration of Independence that governments derive their "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."
Do you disagree with Jefferson on this?
The South wanted self determination. The North would not allow them to have it. Thus, the North stood in the same place that King George III did during the War for American Independence.
The colonies broke from Great Britian. Ireland broke from Great Britain. Norway seceded from Sweden. Texas seceeded from Mexico. Portugal seceded from Spanish rule. Numerous countries broke from the old USSR. Panama seceded from Columbia (and the US helped them). If secesion was OK for all these people, then why not for the South?
The slave owners were not believers in states rights or individualism, rather they wanted a more powerful national government that would enforce human slavery in every state.
That is one of the most BS filled statements I have ever heard on FR.
The confederate Constitution incorporated the bill of rights into the body of it, not as a tacked on afterthought. It also banned the slave trade, limited Congress' taxing and spending powers had wording to stop cost over-run contracts, and specifically detailed that the regulation of comerce clause could not be construed to delegate undue powers to Congress. Real big government stuff there, huh?
Btw, you do know that 70-80% of southern soldiers were not even slave owners, right?
good post
Thanks. :-)
Read about the Fugitive Slave Act. The slave-masters wanted the Federal government and the free states to enforce slavery, hunt and capture escaped slaves, and force the territories to accept slavery against their will.
If you read (Confederate VP) Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone speech, or Robert E. Lee’s letters, they said that the Confederacy was a revolution against the American Revolution.
Yes, of course the poor southern whites did not own slaves. They were dirt poor because they were forced to compete with slave labor. [A similar situation exists today where poor Americans are forced to compete with illegals.] That is why so many poor whites moved from the slave states. That is also why the slave owners who ran the slave states prohibited poor whites from voting. The majority of southern people did not want to secede. The slave-owning planters who denied suffrage to poor whites as well as non-whites knew this.
Btw, did you know that many northern states nullified this act? Nullification was ok for them, but it was somehow wrong when South Carolin nullified the tariffs back in the 1830s.
Also, the North did not nullify these acts because they cared for blacks. They did not. Many northern states barred blacks from even entering. New Jersey passed one of the first laws prohibiting slaves from settling there. Massachusetts passed a law that allowed the flogging of blacks who came into the state and remained for longer than two months. In 1853, Indiana's constitution stated that "...no negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the state..." Illinois in 1853 enacted a law "...to prevent the immigration of free negroes into this state..."
Not satisfied with a mere statute, in 1862, and while its boys in blue were pillaging the South, Illinois passed by overwhelming popular vote an amendment to the state's constitution declaring that "...No negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state."
Oregon's 1857 Constitution provided that "...No free negro or mulatto, no residing in this state at the time of adoption [of the state constitution]...shall come, reside, or be within this state..."
As John Sherman (William Tecumseh Sherman's brother) made clear in 1862:
We do no like the Negro. We do not disguise our dislike. as my friend from Indiana [a Mr. Wright] said yesterday: "The whole people of the Northwestern States are opposed to having many Negroes among them and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all the Northwestern States."
I would like you to point out in what way the secession of the Southern states went against the principles of the War for American Independence.
The majority of southern people did not want to secede
That is pure BS. There was patriotic fervor all over the South upon the news of secession.
God bless this union - the United States of America!
This is not accurate.
The southern fire-eaters, after a decade or more of propaganda, had succeeded, with the unintentional collaboration of northern abolitionists, of creating a climate of hysteria in the South where most (white) people were indeed in favor of secession, at the time.
Yet southern leaders, after secession, were very open about their belief they had to precipitate the irreversible break, war, in order to prevent public opinion from swinging back the other way.
They were right, of course, once war broke out public opinion in the South, understandably enough, became nearly unanimous in favor of independence.
The slave-owning planters who denied suffrage to poor whites as well as non-whites knew this.
As I understand it, white male suffrage was pretty nearly universal prior to the War.
And Washington, Hamilton, Lincoln, and Franklin are all on paper money. Ironic I call that.
Ad hominem? You’re a southern sympathizer, are you not? A ‘’Rebel’’? How is that an ad hominem? You accused me, sub rosa , in a previous post of being a dupe to the ‘’top hats’’ and ‘’tails’’. Irony and hypocrisy isn’t lost on you, is it?
White male suffrage was denied by asserting slave ancestry. Anti-slavery candidates were not permitted to run. Anti slavery newspapers were not permitted to operate. Non-slave owners were coerced to run slave patrols using militia training as pretense.
The south was fighting for the principle of African Slavery, and was willing to destroy a union of self governing people to advance the cause of slavery.
The US government was fighting for the principle of self government by a union of self governing people, and was willing to end slavery if helpful to preserve that union.
It is debatable whether the Personal Liberty laws constituted nullification or not.
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Lalor/llCy820.html
They did not prohibit states or state officials from complying with the obligation to return fugitives, although they did place significant obstacles in the way.
There is, however, no doubt that the Fugitive Slave Act passed at the demand of southern slaveowners was a major expansion of federal power, which doesn't exactly fit with the claim of southerners to be resisting such expansion.
And the founders put slavery on a path to extinction. Slavery in the US colonies was established by the British government, for British advantage.
All this is quite accurate. Does not have a thing to do with wealthy slaveowners preventing poor whites from voting.
40 regiments of southern men served the Union as they put down the rebellion. By contrast, the southern rebels resorted to conscription to fill their depleted ranks.
That would be evidence against uniform southern enthusiasm for rebellion. Also add the southern border states which did not rebel, and the western counties of Virginia which separated from Virginia rather than leave the union.
When we were a nation of laws, not men there were only symbols of liberty and depictions of indians on the money ... and it contained gold and silver. And this my friend was not "irony" but a reflection of the connection between the two.
Who in his right mind could honestly claim that the Southern soldiers and sailors, the vast majority of whom were not slave owners, went to war against a numerically superior foe and endured four long years of hardships, all in order to allow a few rich men to keep their slaves?
Generals R. E. Lee, Joseph Johnston, A. P Hill, Fitzhugh Lee, and J. E. B. Stuart and others did not own slaves. I suppose you somehow think they were fighting for slavery?
After the war one former soldier testified that
"I was a soldier in Virginia in the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, and I declare I never met a southern Soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery....What he had chiefly at heart was the preservation of the supreme and sacred creed of self-govenrment....It was a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern armies who were financially interested in the institution of slavery."
Personal letters from Southern soldiers:
One young lad wrote that, "The hard fighting will come off here and our boys will have a fine opportunity of showing the enemy with what determination we intend to fight for liberty and independence....History will record this as being the greatest struggle for liberty that was ever made..."
George W. Bolton of the 12th Louisiana volunteers sent this encouragement home: "You seem to be in low spirits and fearful we will not gain our Independence. So long as there is an arm to raise in defense of Southern liberties there is still hope. We must prove ourselves worthy of establishing and independent Government."
A soldier from the 7th Louisiana wrote home that, "with proud hearts and strong arms we are more determined than ever to apply every energy until our independence is achieved."
willing to destroy a union of self governing people
The union was not being destroyed. If you have a club and some folk leave it, it is not destroyed is it? No, it just has less members. And The secession of the Southern states did not somehow destroy self government. Rather it was the North that through their aggression trampled upon the right of a free people to have self government.
Daniel Webster said in the US senate in 1833 that "If the states were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptise it by that name."
Lincoln said in 1847 that "any people whatever have the right toabolish the existing govenrment and form a new one that suits them better."
Horacy Greely wrote in the New York Tribune that:
"If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession of the 3,000,000 colonists in 1776, I do not see why the Constitution ratified by the same men should not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of the Southerner from the Federal Union in 1861.
We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that government derives its power from the consent of the governed is sound and just, then if the Cotton states the Gulf States or any other States choose to form an independent nation they have a clear right to do it.
The right to secede hay be a revolutionary one, but it exists nontheless....And when a section of our Union resolves to go out, we shall resist any coercive acts to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets."
The US government was fighting for the principle of self government
That is one of the must ridiculous things that can be claimed. They were fighting to deny the South their right to self determination. The South wanted to leave. The North would not let it. How was fighting a war of subjugation against the south fighting for self determination?
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