Posted on 11/26/2009 10:19:55 AM PST by dynachrome
What I think about secession basically is that it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but a dangerous pursuit to advocate publicly. Janet Napolitano and the alphabet soup guys do not take kindly to the notion of freedom in any way, and for the precise reason that Abraham Lincoln did not. When asked why he didn’t just let the South go, Lincoln exploded in a rage, “Let the South go? LET THE SOUTH GO? How, then, should I fill my coffers?”
Documented historical fact. Look it up for yourselves. Winners write history and the North/Leftists have had nearly 160 years to spin their propaganda, but the fact is that the South was the wealthy portion of the country back then. Cotton was, indeed, king, the Feds had gotten themselves into monetary trouble, and bankruptcy was imminent! The back room Congressional brawls were over whether to declare the USA closed at the Mississippi and raise taxes, or to hit tariffs even harder to benefit their factories and shipping businesses, improving their bottom lines and increasing tax revenues. Greed and tariffs won. Hit the South for the enrichment of the North. Hit those who produced cane, corn, and cotton for the benefit of those who consumed and controlled shipping and rail transport and to increase federal control.
(Excerpt) Read more at whiskeyandgunpowder.com ...
My point was that the EP did nothing for the slaves in the USA. the EP only affected the CSA.
barbra ann
Strictly speaking they were all in the U.S., but legally Lincoln could only free those slaves in areas under control of the Southern rebellion. The others had to wait for the 13th Amendment, which Lincoln also pushed through.
I could never top the ones in the story this post is referencing no matter how hard I tried.
Then I must have missed something in WWII. What American base on Japanese soil did the Japanese attack after asking us many times to leave?
Well you did hit on the common thread between both. Both Japan and the Davis regime attacked a military base that did not belong to them, both lost their war, and both have spent much of the time since then whining about it.
The relevant legal declarations were called "Ordinances of Secession". Every state published one.
But four states published declarations on the causes leading to their secession. Their versions of the Declaration of Independence. And in all four slavery was the single most often reason mentioned.
Lincoln said this himself. But as to who wasn't very smart -- four more states seceded after Sumter so I don't think Lincoln was very smart either.
But Davis was convinced that by starting the war he'd get all 8 remaining slave states to join him. Who was more wrong?
And what did the proclamation do for the thousands of blacks captured behind Union lines and concentrated into Benjamin Butler's "contraband camps" - where they were starved, left to die of disease, charged with vagrancy and forced to perform free labor?
Hyperbole and Southron myth aside, Lincoln could only legally free the slaves being used to further the Southern rebellion. He could not touch the rest, that required an actual end to slavery. Which Lincoln accomplished with the 13th Amendment.
The Emancipation Proclamation was merely a war measure designed to disrupt the Southern economy. I believe you had something to say about myths?
True, and a highly effective one at that. What's mythical about that?
No it wasn't a customs house. It was the control point for Charleston Harbor. It's guns covered every ship entering or leaving. Its main use during peacetime was as a threat to any ship attempting to avoid the port authorities.
Again, more myth. Sumter's purpose was to defend Charleston from attack. That was also the purpose of Fort Moltrie and Castle Pinkney and every other army fort up and down the coast. The organization tasked with enforcing the tariff and limiting smuggling was the U.S. Revenue Service, the precursor to the Coast Guard.
Wuh?
..not to mention that Lincoln was a total racist...
Well hell, then Lee and Davis and Jackson and every other Southern leader you would care to name was a total racist, too. None of them thought blacks should be anything but slaves, much less intermarry or enjoy any rights at all. Shouldn't we disparage them as well?
You might want to check the date on that.
L
1) the right of secession
2) property rights
3) right of self defense and self preservation, and self determination
4) right to liberty
5) right to oppose, resist and escape from oppression and tyranny(of the North, Federal, and of the majority)
6) states rights
7) state independence
8) state sovereignty
9) right to withdraw or recall any or all delegated powers from the central government if those powers were used to oppress
10) the principle that the union and the constitution was a compact among the several sovereign states
11) the principle that the states are united in a confederacy
12) the principle that the people have the right to live under the consent of the governed
13) the right to resist the initiation of force
14) the idea of the federal government is an agent of a conditional union
15) free trade
16) limited government
17) preservation of the South’s institutions, culture, society, traditions, and way of life
Except of course, Sumter was SC territory, the Sumter attack was provoked, and was a legitimate police action against a foreign occupier.
But Davis was convinced that by starting the war he'd get all 8 remaining slave states to join him. Who was more wrong?
Davis didn't want a war and did not set out to start one. Lincoln deliberately sought war. That makes him more wrong. Remember the war could have ended any day Lincoln decided to live by his own stated ideals - "government of the people...".
Hyperbole and Southron myth aside, Lincoln could only legally free the slaves being used to further the Southern rebellion.
How does a man "legally" acquire the right to dispose of property in another country? It was a military measure, nothing more.
Which Lincoln accomplished with the 13th Amendment.
Which Lincoln hoped and planned to be a prelude to a massive back-to-Africa deportation campaign.
The organization tasked with enforcing the tariff and limiting smuggling was the U.S. Revenue Service, the precursor to the Coast Guard.
Are you referring to the US Revenue Cutter Service? That service operated against smugglers at sea. Enforcement of port regulation was the responsibility of local port authorities, which in important ports (where the customs takings were good) were backed up by the army.
Sumter is a cork in the mouth of Charleston harbor. It controls all the traffic coming in and out. That's why Lincoln wanted it and that's why South Carolina couldn't let him keep it. Lincoln made it clear in his inaugural address that SC could secede if they wanted to but he was going to collect the tariff anyway.
You might want to crack a book sometime. Or did you get your history from some liberal?
Jefferson Davis was already preparing his slaves, as were many southern slave holders, to be freed men. He had provided schools for them, he alotted them lands to grow and sell their vegetables and keep their money and learn how to manage it, and he let them set up their own court systems to deal with criminals in their midst.
It’s mind boggling when you crack a book and read facts instead of drinking the kool-aide.
The fact is, Lincoln really didn’t give a flip about slavery, he used it as a tool to rally Northern troops to kill off their own neighbors....
Back in those days only land owners and men could vote.
That was a state by state policy, accepted on a state by state basis, nationwide.
We should then assume that all of the Southern voters were free. They were capable of making the decisions required of statehood, and or secession if the federal government no longer honored the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
The federal government intruded on the rights of the citizens of the south by imposing tariffs on their goods, imposing taxes on the population, and then used the human rights argument against slavery to invoke the “feelings” of the population at large to support military infringement when certain states balked.
Certainly that same human rights argument is being used against Americans today with bulked up civil rights laws, slavery reparations and entitlements. How could a person NOT “feel” badly for the oppressed minority without otherwise being called a racist or hate monger.
I find the parallels between 1860 and today are very close.
The government wants to rule the people. But the people have other ideas that coincidentally include freedom and liberty.
Much of the disparity was due to the state of medical technology. Many of the wounded who died in the War Between the States would have been saved by WWII medical technology and converesely the numbers of WWII wounded would have been VASTLY higher with Civil War medicine. A more useful ratio is wounded vs dead, far higher in WWII. 96% of the wounded who made it alive to Battalion Aid and higher medical facilities in WWII survived.
They hadn’t even discovered (Not til the 1870’s) Joseph Lister’s germ theory which was instrumental in developing practical applications of of disease control (notably gangrene) with respect to surgical techniques.
What you say is true but... the lions share of the massive casualties had to do with a basic mis-match between weapons systems and infantry tactics in the 1860s battle space.
In other words, if you lined men up in ranks and files today and marched them around in formations, and stood them up in front of the opfor, they would be mowed down the same way they were then. The rifled musket with the minie ball was so much deadlier, more accurate, and at greater ranges than before that the kill ratios were immense.
The solution was trench warfare which both sides adopted by Petersburg. The massed formation was never again used by a major army after that. The development of the gas operated machine gun sealed the deal - by WWI there was no way to get out of the trench without being cut to pieces.
This stalemate remained until WWII when air power, read dive bombers, could be used to blow the enemy out of their trenches and tanks could roll across the trenches, the barbed wire, and no mans land.
Nonsense, such a statement was never made. Industrialization - the real engine of prosperity - was already well under way in Europe, as well in the North. It was the South that was clinging to an outmoded aristocratic theory of wealth that only caused the entire region to lag further and further behind the burgeoning economies of the industrializing world, granted that a few rich plantation owners were able to do quite well for themselves; but as a whole, the North was far more prosperous.
Oh I agree that medical tech made a huge difference. However, given the vastly larger scale and much higher lethality of the weapons used in WWII, the closeness of the casualty count (CW was actually higher as someone correctly pointed out) is a testament to how deadly the Civil War was even given their far poorer medical tech.
Largely because of parity in weaponry and military tech and training, not to mention strength of ideological motivation, civil wars are almost always disproportionately deadly. Add to that the fact that almost all of the figthing occurs on one side’s or the other’s home territory, they are true nightmares to be avoided if at all possible. Sadly, sometimes it is not possible and even the nightmare is better than the alternatives.
Lincoln supported the 13th Amendment, pushed to have it added to the Republican platform in 1864, pushed to have it passed out of Congress, and saw it ratified by 20 states before he was murdered.
The TAX REVENUES were in the South. The South exported cotton and imported manufactured goods (a market the North coveted). From the customs on this traffic as much as 65% of Federal revenues derived.
The South proposed a 10% tariff on incoming goods. The North saw grass growing in the streets of New York and Boston.
This, more than anything, caused the War Between the States.
You might want to try to actually do some reading from someplace other than Southron myth sites yourself. The fact of the matter is that Davis owned slaves his entire adult life, having as many as 115 at one time. In all those decades as a slave owner do you know how many he voluntarily freed? None. Zero, zip, nada, zilch. So if he spent all his time preparing them for freedom then were they just slow learners or something?
In March of 1861 Davis said, "We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." That does not sound like a man who was prepared to free anyone.
It’s mind boggling when you crack a book and read facts instead of drinking the kool-aide.
So when are you going to get your mind boggled?
The fact is, Lincoln really didn’t give a flip about slavery, he used it as a tool to rally Northern troops to kill off their own neighbors....
I can provide any number of quotes from Lincoln indicating his opposition to slavery. Can you provide any quotes from Davis indicating the same?
And I can provide one which proves that Lincoln didn't give a rip about freeing any slaves and that he only cared about subjugating the Southern states.
I bet mine carries more weight than yours.
L
You can provide all the Lincoln quotes you want, but he didn’t give a flip about slavery...if all the states would’ve wanted slavery he would’ve approved it because he was a racist.
As far as your Davis quote...would YOU put a kitten out in the middle of the freeway? Jefferson knew the slaves needed to be taught how to be freed men. That why he had started TEACHING them!
And, of course, that like Pearl Harbor Fort Sumter was a federal facility and it was attacked by people who had no legal claim to it and who's purpose in attacking was to start a war. As for provoked, other than retaining possession of a fort that belonged to the government in the first place I'm not aware of any provocation.
Davis didn't want a war and did not set out to start one.
Then you are arguing that he was stupid, because attacking a federal fort is not the act of a man desiring peace.
How does a man "legally" acquire the right to dispose of property in another country? It was a military measure, nothing more.
The Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862. Those gave the federal government the authority to seize without compensation any private property being used to further the Southern rebellion. And yes, it was a military measure. As Lincoln stated.
Which Lincoln hoped and planned to be a prelude to a massive back-to-Africa deportation campaign.
Complete nonsense, but even had it been where was that worse that the Southern plan to keep blacks in bondage as property for the foreseeable future?
That service operated against smugglers at sea. Enforcement of port regulation was the responsibility of local port authorities, which in important ports (where the customs takings were good) were backed up by the army.
Nonsense.
Sumter is a cork in the mouth of Charleston harbor. It controls all the traffic coming in and out. That's why Lincoln wanted it and that's why South Carolina couldn't let him keep it.
Sumter was a federal fort in a U.S. city and that was all the reason for Lincoln, or any other U.S. president, to retain posession of it.
Lincoln made it clear in his inaugural address that SC could secede if they wanted to but he was going to collect the tariff anyway.
Again, completely false. In his inaugural address Lincoln denied South Carolina's secession was legal or valid. So far as he was concerned it remained a state in the Union.
Let's hear them.
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