Posted on 08/05/2008 12:11:25 PM PDT by cowboyway
And why should that upset you? After all, even if all this were true, under your view some states are more equal than others and the constitution is a club for some states to smack other states around with.
Um, which side offered to negotiate over obligations including a division of the national debt and the value of forts, etc.? Which side refused to do so?
Back to that old 'the south was going to pay for everything, really!' story? Well let me ask you this. Suppose for a moment the South didn't offer to pay for property stolen and debt repudiated. Would that have made their acts of secession illegal?
The Constitution and the Founders did not create a prison from which states could not escape.
Nor did they create a scenario where some states could pillage the others and create a situation guaranteed to lead to bad feelings. A separation requires that all areas of possible disagreement be settled ahead of time and that the interests of both sides are protected.
Southern states left with the rights that they had when they joined the Union.
And denied protections to those remaining.
By default they also had things (forts, etc.) that the remaining states (or more exactly, Lincoln) wouldn't negotiate a fair exchange for.
Correction. They took those without even trying to negotiate. Whatever negotioations or payment you claim would have occured, would have occured long after the South had illegally appropriated the property and repudiated their responsibilities.
All of them did. Your victimhood is obscuring your logic.
None of them did.
I think that was the excuse. The slavery lovers in those states were straining at the leash from day one to join Slavery Inc.
One way or another, legal or illegal, dishonest or not, they were going to take their states into rebellion no matter how many elections or pro-Confederate legislative usurpations it took it took.
"Damn the state, we will put her out at all hazards"
That's a quote from a confederate lover of freedom in Nashville reacting to the people's clear rejection of secession. And who needs the people when you have a legislature and governor who are going to invite the rebel army to invade the state anyway?
Alexander Stevens pointed out that slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy and few regimes in history so appropriately lived down to its squalid foundation from birth to surrender.
LOL. Among other reasons, the Southern states left because they were not treated equally. Remember my post 163 above from a January 10, 1861, speech by Jefferson Davis?
Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support.
... and the constitution is a club for some states to smack other states around with.
Yeah, well, I guess it was too much for the South to have expected the North to obey the Constitution with respect to returning fugitive slaves. If holding Northern states to what they agreed to in the Constitution was "smacking" them around with it, so be it.
Suppose for a moment the South didn't offer to pay for property stolen and debt repudiated.
Two can play the game of posing something that didn't happen that way. Now for the suppose question to you ... Suppose for a moment that Lincoln didn't violate the Constitution ... Would the North have had freedom of speech during the war?
Nor did they create a scenario where some states could pillage the others and create a situation guaranteed to lead to bad feelings.
Not intentionally.
A separation requires that all areas of possible disagreement be settled ahead of time and that the interests of both sides are protected.
Where is that requirement written? Not in the Constitution.
And denied protections to those remaining.
Protections for those that had long denied equal protection to the states that left?
Correction. They took those without even trying to negotiate.
Some kept a strict account of what they took and gave receipts, facilitating future negotiated compensation should that take place. For example:
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF TEXAS,
San Antonio, February 28, 1861.
Commanding officers of posts and others will, when the troops take up the line of march for the coast, turn over the public property in their charge (reserving such especially enumerated in General Orders, No. 5, of February 18, 1861, from these, headquarters) to the authorized agents of the State of Texas, who will be duly commissioned by the commissioners on the part of the State to give due and proper receipts for the same.
By order of Col. C. A. Waite:
W. A. NICHOLS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
To not take the forts would have left the South occupied by a fortified foreign army.
Ah, so then it was all about slavery! That's what Davis is complaining about, isn't it? Expanding slavery into the territories and how those evil Republicans wanted to limit it?
Yeah, well, I guess it was too much for the South to have expected the North to obey the Constitution with respect to returning fugitive slaves.
The Fugitive Slave Laws were federal laws, and the federal government was responsible for enforcing them. And it did so, to the best of its ability with powers granted by Congress that made a mockery of states rights. For the Northern states, at least. And every time a Northern state passed a law that might have interfered with the apprehension of runaway slaves, the Supreme Court struck it down. The South had absolutely no reason to complain when it came to the issue of fugitive slave laws and their enforcement.
Two can play the game of posing something that didn't happen that way. Now for the suppose question to you ... Suppose for a moment that Lincoln didn't violate the Constitution ... Would the North have had freedom of speech during the war?
We can come back to that directly, but first answer my question. Hypothetically speaking, since you insist that the south was willing to pay, had the South not paid for federal property stolen and debt repudiated then would that have made their secession illegal?
Not intentionally.
How can it not be intentional? The Southern states announced they were leaving without discussion. They repudiated their responsibilities. They stole every piece of federal property they could get their hands on. Where in that was anything designed to make the separation anything but acrimonious?
Where is that requirement written? Not in the Constitution.
Common sense. Madison noted that, "A rightful secession requires the consent of the others, or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it." And before you jump all over that 'abuse of contract' clause, Madison said later in the same letter, "The characteristic distinction between free Governments and Governments not free is, that the former are founded on compact, not between the Government and those for whom it acts, but between the parties creating the Government. Each of those being equal, neither can have more rights to say that the compact has been violated and dissolved, than every other has to deny the fact, and to insist on the execution of the bargains."
So Madison ridicules the idea of unilateral secession in this letter, and in others.
...to give due and proper receipts for the same.
But not money. Acknowledge what you stole, just don't pay for it.
To not take the forts would have left the South occupied by a fortified foreign army.
Obviously a foreign power they had nothing but hostile intents towards. Otherwise what would they have to fear while negotiating a peaceful and compensated transfer of ownership?
Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support.
He had no complaint. Everybody was treated equally with respect to the territories. Yankees couldn't bring their slaves into the territories either.
All? You have misspoken again.
The Fugitive Slave Laws were federal laws, and the federal government was responsible for enforcing them. And it did so, to the best of its ability with powers granted by Congress that made a mockery of states rights. For the Northern states, at least. And every time a Northern state passed a law that might have interfered with the apprehension of runaway slaves, the Supreme Court struck it down. The South had absolutely no reason to complain when it came to the issue of fugitive slave laws and their enforcement.
Massachusetts made it more expensive than the slave was worth to try to recover the slave. There were hundreds if not thousands of escaped slaves living in Massachusetts. The last slave returned from there was in 1854. As I've posted to you before the leading legal minds of the state recognized that their state laws were unconstitutional and "conspicuous and palpable breaches of the national compact by ourselves." [Link to earlier post]
Chicago was a sanctuary city for escaped slaves. A thousand escaped slaves left the city when Lincoln started enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law there in April 1861 through a friend of his, Commissioner Stephen Augustus Corneau. Why hadn't it been enforced in Chicago before? The slaves made their way to Canada through Michigan. [New York Times link]
I found the following in the March 2, 1861, issue of the State Gazette of Austin, Texas quoting an article from the Detroit Free Press [italics theirs, paragraph break and bold red letters mine]:
Absurd and Impudent Action by the Michigan Legislature
We can conceive of nothing more absurd than the passage by either house of the Legislature, at Lansing, of the resolutions which are reported to have passed concerning national affairs, while the personal liberty bill still stands. The personal liberty law -- so the legislature of 1859 construed it, and such is the only construction which it will bear -- "was designed to and if faithfully executed will prevent the delivering up of fugitive slaves." It is therefore plain, palpable, unadulterated nullification of the fugitive slave law.
Michigan, for six years past, has stood in the attitude of open and avowed hostility to the authority of the Constitution of the United States. Until she has changed this attitude -- until she has hauled down the flag of rebellion -- until she is fully within the line of her constitutional duty -- how absurd is it, how impudent is it, in her to pass resolutions that the Constitution of the United States, and all laws in pursuance thereof, "are the supreme law of the land" -- that "there is no method for a State, or the citizens of a State, to escape the obligations imposed by the Constitution except by and through an amendment of that instrument" -- that "Michigan is now, as she has always been, entirely loyal to the Constitution. ...
We know of nothing better calculated to stimulate secession than this action, especially as it is the action of a State whose professions of loyalty to the Constitution are a lie. -- Detroit Free Press
There. Is that club enough for you?
We can come back to that directly, but first answer my question. Hypothetically speaking, since you insist that the south was willing to pay, had the South not paid for federal property stolen and debt repudiated then would that have made their secession illegal?
Think of seizing forts as an act of eminent domain and the right of an independent country to control the land within their boundaries. The Southern share of the territories and Northern forts and facilities should more than cover the value of the Southern forts and facilities seized. We offered to negotiate a fair splitting of the debt. If you don't want to discuss it, then basically you are forfeiting the debt. Too bad for you.
All this has nothing to do with the legality of secession. That is a non sequitur. But you of all people know that.
So Madison ridicules the idea of unilateral secession in this letter, and in others.
So? Gouverneur Morris spoke more than Madison at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and a lot of the actual words in the Constitution were pinned by Morris, the stylist of the Constitution. He ended up wanting New York to secede in 1812. And which Madison are we to believe, the Madison of the 1799 Report on the Virginia Resolutions or Madison in old age?
Obviously a foreign power they had nothing but hostile intents towards. Otherwise what would they have to fear while negotiating a peaceful and compensated transfer of ownership?
They were right to fear a sectional party headed by Lincoln who proclaimed he would collect revenue from ships going to Southern ports, the ports of an independent country.
I’ve enjoyed the conversation, but I’ve got to get ready for a trip so I’ll be off the threads for a while. On my trip I’ll be doing one of my bucket list items, a rough nine mile hike out west through boulders with repeated crossings of a slippery stream that everybody falls into. The objective is a geologic feature I’ve always wanted to see.
I hear all the time off the NAACP, liberals etc that the rebel flag offends and yet when they shout this they do not say about the stars and strips flying over the displacement of native Americans, killing maiming butchering taking land away etc, I do not hear them say about the black soldiers who fought for the confederacy or the native Americans who fought for the confederacy.
I do not hear about the stars and strips flying over over ports up in the north building all the slave ships and I do not hear about how the supposed reconstruction stopped white southerners from voting for 10 years, not allowed to fly their flag or sing their songs for years otherwise they would be killed.
Many seem to think it was just about slaves and yet ignore it had nothing to do with slavery and it was Lincoln who said so .Never a mention how the south was being taxed and that tax money was being sent up north and spent on the north
mmmmm
If this flag offends then a history lesson is needed .
I too am offended as an English man who is a historian that some do not know their history and when I hear someone say it is racist then I am offended that the person who says it is not very knowledgeable
great post along with the rest of your posts sir/madam.
right after the war the reconstruction happened, ARFmany back in those days said that they would never be allowed to remember their dead and veterans as already some southerners were not allowed to vote not fly the flag nor sing their songs.
The supposed reconstruction is still going pon with some saying the same still.
well I fly the stars and bars and I am very proud
Political correctness is destroying our culture and, unfortunately, many on FR are as politically correct on the Confederacy as the most left wing northeast yankee.
Thanks for your reply.
NS bomb in 5...4...3........................
I hear you on that
I am from England , lived in the north for a bit, escaped and now live south though this place is being invaded .
I was amazed that so many from the north east and north maybe were clueless about their own history.
I move south and virtually every middle to older aged person knows their history.
I am now with the SVC in my town and one reason why I joined was because I was disgusted how certain veterans are ignored or named badly.
The final straw was a visit to Fredricksburg where the confederate graveyard was a mess and not looked after yet the union/federal one was landscaped very nice .
Now I teach my kids history instead of waiting for a school teacher as those teachers usually avoid or distort the subject
You’re a rarity. Most people buy into the NEA version of history and never bother to do any of their own research.
The reinvasion of the South will do more harm to Southern culture than the first invasion because they have come to stay and they are corrupting our social order.
The yankee mentality will not let them move into an area and assimilate. They move down, then bring their relatives and friends, form civic groups and proceed to ‘improve’ the situation. In fact, all they do is impose a bunch of new rules on a people that don’t particularly like rules to begin with.
And of course, they bring their much despised liberalism with them.
I’m in northern FL, St Augustine to be precise.
It is now being invaded and are moving into their elitist compounds, sorry gated communities.
No word of a lie but one of those places got built two miles from us, after a year they wanted the county to build them a school as they did not want their kids going to school with the natives.
New teachers are moving into our schools and bringing their liberal teachings with them.
My oldest is starting 5th grade and will now be taught history. I have told him about the war, reconstruction, the damage it did and how southerners were not allowed to vote for up to 10 years but blacks were etc etc.
He knows about the history but he also knows that if the teacher tries to tell him the PC version he should speak up politely and then come and tell me so I then can correct the teacher.
They are now moving here, demanding their starbucks, posh shops, tacky strip malls and outlet malls etc.
Once they ruin this area like they have with their old state they then will move onto another state to ruin.
I moved here from England , why because I like the southern life and no one should move to an area and tell the locals that they have to change to suit their lifestyle.
You don’t like it then do not move if you do like it then fit in .
They call it progress I call it destruction.
landscape changing, animal habitat destroyed, trees which give us clean air are chopped down, more cars on the road thus more pollution, schools over crowded, recently a black bear has been forced out and now these people want it killed because the bear went into their yard, they want to shove their liberal view on to our children.
couple of schools have hired two gay teachers who then said the school should have a gay group and when the county said no a lobby group from DC came and sued. etc etc
Do not come down here and tell people not to fly their flags or to remember their veterans, they did that after the war and then they say it is the south who is still fighting it, er no the south wants to be left alone like it always has
I fear for my country. We’ve become a nation of milquetoast whiners too easily offended. We will not persevere.
Say, what happened to the Indians who used to live in the south? I imagine them saying pretty much the same thing.
I agree that we screwed them.
What's your point?
What's your point?
Invest in lube.
My invest plans involve reverse carpetbagging.
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