Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Banned sign riles heritage group
The State ^ | Jul. 16, 2006 | SAMMY FRETWELL

Posted on 07/18/2006 12:49:14 PM PDT by aomagrat

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 161-180181-200201-220 ... 401-411 next last
To: Professional Engineer
Ruffin Flags is where i buy the ones for our SCV camp & for the memorial ceremonies at the Confederate graveside services.

RUFFIN makes NICE stuff. their "hand sewed flags" are just that, as they are sewed by Amish ladies.

free dixie,sw

181 posted on 07/22/2006 8:26:54 PM PDT by stand watie ( Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God. -----T.Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 173 | View Replies]

To: stand watie
The strange domestic cult realToday's 'neo-confederatism' is best summed up in the personification of unglued "Stand Watie" and his unending public displays of rage & madness for a lost cause of the slave empire, which was correctly defeated & buried forever in the year 1865.
182 posted on 07/23/2006 1:11:43 AM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 180 | View Replies]

To: orionblamblam
Care to provide us with some quotes that specifically claim that the problem was primarily with slavery?
Tell me: have you read the ordinances of secession?

No I have not. That's why I was asking you for some direct quotes that specifically state that the problem was primarily with slavery?

I have noticed that you have not answered a single question that I brought up that challenges your view that slavery was the cause in the War for Southern Independence.

I have also noticed your viciousness in referring to the South (calling them "scumbags", "losers", etc.) in other posts. I would like to remind you that the war was incredibly costly in terms of human life lost and property destroyed. The people in the South were and remain Americans. I do not like to lightly make fun of the tragedy that took place in which we made war upon or fellow countrymen, regardless of their opinion. Many Southerners were against slavery. Robert E. Lee detested slavery. Stonewall Jackson hated slavery also. But they hated the idea of being coerced into remaining in the Union more. Personally, I believe that the South started the war. It was Edmund Ruffin after all who fired the first shot. But in all fairness, it was Lincoln who started to raise troops (with the intention of invading the South) as soon as the threat of secession started to take root.
183 posted on 07/23/2006 4:08:44 AM PDT by dbehsman (NOBODY can get the mileage out of a cadaver like a democrat!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 174 | View Replies]

To: dbehsman

> No I have not.

A common problem among those who believe that secession and the following war of aggression on the Souths part were not about slavery. Note: I mis-typed... *declarations* of secession, not *ordinances.* Further note: There are those who have tried to claim that the declarations of secession are irrelevant. They are precisely as relevant for the various states secession as the Declaration of Independence was to the formation of the US.


Mississippi:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Georgia:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war.

South Carolina:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Texas:
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States. ...
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

>I have noticed that you have not answered a single question that I brought up that challenges your view that slavery was the cause in the War for Southern Independence.

You mean the War To Enslave Black Americans?

> I have also noticed your viciousness in referring to the South (calling them "scumbags", "losers", etc.) in other posts.

Nice spin. As I asked before: What *do* you call a man who sees glory and honor in killing his fellow man in order to maintain his "right" to keep other men in permanent slavehood?



To the oft-repeated claim that the war was about the right of secession: that makes No Sense Whatsoever. Would a state secede just to prove that they could? Did the United States decalre independence from Britain not over taxes, but over the right to declare independence? Does the blame for 9-11 deaths in the WTC fall squarely on "A building fell on them," not on "someone who destroyed the building?" If an assassin gets in a subsequent gunfight with the cops, can he claim that he was all about just defending himself from the cops?

No. The southern states seceded over slavery. They then launched an aggressive war to *support* their secession. The leaders of the South 145 years ago would ahve been quite clear on the subject. But the history revisionists on this thread and elsewhere, knowing that slavery is *not* a noble cause, are trying to whitewash the motivations of their predecessors.


184 posted on 07/23/2006 6:37:04 AM PDT by orionblamblam (I'm interested in science and preventing its corruption, so here I am.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 183 | View Replies]

To: M. Espinola; All
to "Mr SPIN" once more you post IDIOT foolishness that fools NOBODY & makes you look STUPID!

but PLEASE, rant on, as you damage to DAMNyankee cause & the "unionist coven", with each and every time you SPEW your ignorant, BIGOTED, DUMB-bunny nonsense on the form.

to A:: and after reading the ARROGANT, ignorant, BIGIOTED nonsense that "m.eSPINola" routinely posts on FR, why more & more southerners just want to be FREE of DAMNyankee HATERS, like him.

free dixie,sw

185 posted on 07/23/2006 9:57:29 AM PDT by stand watie ( Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God. -----T.Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 182 | View Replies]

To: orionblamblam
"blam", once more (SIGH!- i don't expect to HAVE to explain this again. i have told you the FACTS before!), the "declarations of the causes of secession" were PRIVATE RANTINGS of a FEW slave-owners. the so-called "declarations" were NOT official documents of ANY state at ANY TIME.

they were NOT in any way more than the beliefs of the FEW people, who wrote them, either. the "declarations" spoke for NOBODY except the private authors, who wrote the papers; furthermore the "declarations" cannot be said to even be typical of the thoughts of other slave-owners. they were read by almost NOBODY, either (with the exception of the authors, themselves).

had the "authors" of the "declarations" chosen to publish "Mary Had a Little Lamb" instead, that child's POEM would have been just as meaningful to the WBTS period as the rantings of the authors were.

the so-called "declarations" are MEANINGLESS as causes of the WBTS. almost no serious historian believes the documents to be of ANY VALUE whatever in determining ANYTHING about the antebellum period of US history. (frankly, even mentioning the "declarations" as IMPORTANT historical documents will get you RIDICULED and laughed AT as a nitwit/dunce/fool, by serious historians.)

free dixie,sw

186 posted on 07/23/2006 2:11:58 PM PDT by stand watie ( Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God. -----T.Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 184 | View Replies]

To: orionblamblam
The tiny neo-confederate disinformation club always has a deep rooted problem with the truth.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

Thanks for posting the historical facts relating to the origins of the Civil War. America's domestic tragedy was triggered by the South's Slavery Inc's political and corporate interests, after those bums lost the election of 1860.

The bottom line is those few arch defenders of the 'lost cause' are really still sore they even lost Southern state enforced segregation, which allowed even the lowest of this backward element to somehow feel superior. These days neo-confederates are just plain losers.

187 posted on 07/23/2006 10:28:59 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 184 | View Replies]

To: Godebert
What do you blue zone socialists have now besides gay pride parades and leaders such as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy?

The pleasure of not having leaders like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Johnson?

188 posted on 07/24/2006 6:44:51 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: dbehsman
Mind you, this opinion is coming from a Northern man. I've seen the photos of the condition of Atlanta after the Union Army was through with it. Hiroshima looked like it was in better condition that Atlanta did.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 people died at Hiroshima. How many died at Atlanta?

189 posted on 07/24/2006 6:49:27 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: JamesP81
Union casualties were easily double southern casualties because, frankly, northerners didn't have very much fight in them.

That is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard on one of these threads, and I've participated in a lot of them. If Northerners didn't have any fight in them then casualties would be less because none of the Northerners would fight, wouldn't that be true? Instead 2 million men served through 4 years of the bloodiest warfare this country has ever been through. Unlike the confederate army, where upwards of 25 to 30 percent were conscripted, the Union army had no effective draft and relied almost entirely on enlistments. Unlike the confederate army, where in April 1862 all of the early enlistees had their terms of service involuntarily extended for the duration of the war, the Union army could have melted away in the summer of 1864 as the 3 year enlistments ran out. But it didn't. A huge percentage of those men you claim "didn't have much fight" reupped to see the job through. And they did.

190 posted on 07/24/2006 6:57:47 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 92 | View Replies]

To: BaBaStooey
The Civil War is over.

It was the War Between the States. States that had joined the Union felt they had a right to leave the Union if they were not being treated fairly. They don't teach the entire story in skools up north.

191 posted on 07/24/2006 6:58:11 AM PDT by ladyjane
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: JamesP81
Actually it had as much or more to do with tariffs and unfair trade practices, but the revisionist historians won't tell you that.

Care to elaborate on that a little more?

192 posted on 07/24/2006 7:00:06 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 99 | View Replies]

To: Tokra
I suppose you wouldn't mind if I constantly referred to Southerners as "damnrebels"?

"Damnwhineylosers" is probably more appropriate.

193 posted on 07/24/2006 7:01:21 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 101 | View Replies]

To: smug
They did not rebel. They parted company. The south did not know when or if slavery would end. If they really wanted to keep slavery indefinitely they could have just stayed in the Union and helped pass the Corwin Amendment.

The Corwin amendment specifically did not address the one issue that the southern leadership was most interested in, the expansion of slavery into the territories. They knew that unless they could take their slaves with them into the territories then the states that resulted could not be slave states. So instead they rebelled and adopted a constitution that protected slavery expansion and slave imports in a way the Corwin amendment could never do.

194 posted on 07/24/2006 7:07:19 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: Colt .45
And at LEAST we are still willing to fight for what the Founders believed every person should have - Freedom.

Well for about 66% of your population anyway.

195 posted on 07/24/2006 7:08:16 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 136 | View Replies]

To: lentulusgracchus
No, because Lincoln and the Northern business interests he repped for (remember, Lincoln was a railroad lawyer, not an abolition lawyer or a civil-rights lawyer) were determined to drag the Southern States back into the Union by force.

The Northern economic-development model required a payor (street synonym: chump). The South was the payor. They couldn't leave. If they did, the Northerners would have to pay for their own development, which was a nonstarter for them.

ROTFLMAO.

196 posted on 07/24/2006 7:09:31 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 139 | View Replies]

To: dbehsman
REALLY? Care to provide us with some quotes that specifically claim that the problem was primarily with slavery?

Be glad to,

"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860

"The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.

"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black."
-- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world.
--Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Secession Convention

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Secession Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina.
-- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Secession Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable ---
-- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas Secession Convention

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

197 posted on 07/24/2006 7:17:27 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: dbehsman
REALLY? Care to provide us with some quotes that specifically claim that the problem was primarily with slavery?

Be glad to,

"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860

"The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.

"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black."
-- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world.
--Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Secession Convention

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Secession Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina.
-- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Secession Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable ---
-- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas Secession Convention

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

198 posted on 07/24/2006 7:17:48 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: Non-Sequitur
...they rebelled and adopted a constitution that protected slavery expansion and slave imports in a way the Corwin amendment could never do.

True, but it would have been without great risk.
199 posted on 07/24/2006 7:41:51 AM PDT by smug (Tanstaafl)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 194 | View Replies]

To: smug
True, but it would have been without great risk.

Again, why accept half a loaf when you've claimed the whole loaf for yourself? In the eyes of the southern leadership the greatest threat to them was limitations on the expansion of slavery, for with every new free state there was a new pair of anti-slavery senators. And as the free states grew the disproportionately large number of southern congressmen became less and less influential. That was the fear, not an end to slavery. That was the goal of the Republican party, containment and limitation of slavery and not ending it where it was. They knew that they could never accomplish that so long as the slave states held together.

200 posted on 07/24/2006 8:18:01 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 199 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 161-180181-200201-220 ... 401-411 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson