Posted on 09/22/2010 7:55:54 AM PDT by Michael Zak
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Effective at yearend, all slaves in Confederate-controlled territory would be "forever free."
(Excerpt) Read more at grandoldpartisan.typepad.com ...
“And there were then a number of precidents establishing that in territory under the control of the US Army, slavery could be abolished at the direction of the military’s commanding officer.”
Neat trick. Abe should have just appointed a couple of Czars. No wonder Zero is so often compared to him.
Rights are from our Creator, not from men or government.
Our government eventually RECOGNIZED the equal rights of all men (blacks included), they always had those rights as a gift from their Creator, they previously lived under a government that didn't recognize their natural rights.
As far as Lincoln, I think Reagan is the closest parallel in our lifetime.
"Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln." -Ronald Reagan
The US Constitution says nothing about "Czars."
It does speak several times about insurrections and rebellion.
Lincoln appointed no "Czars," and with the South gone, the Republican controlled Congress went along with everything he did.
One reason I love these debates, as frustrating as they often get, is that it always seems I learn stuff I didn't know before. Thanks!
If we don’t speak the truth, dems fill the silence with lies.
“Lincoln appointed no “Czars,” and with the South gone, the Republican controlled Congress went along with everything he did.”
Exactly my point. When you decide to make shit up, you can make up whatever you want. Instead of trusting the people to do the right thing in their own time, stick it up their rear ends and tell them it’s for their own good.
“They never would have done it.”
Sounds like Zero ... we need to do it now!
Until someone stops you or is so outraged they will die trying. That is what makes the struggle noble.
And why the decidedly one-sided presentation of history here is so amusing.
PC standards of the day excuse Lincoln and the slave holder Grant, but do not excuse the South.
Robert Byrd was a Klansman but became a Black loving Democrat. Byrd was a bastard, Grant was a Saint. (I can hear it now...”but Grant only owned just ONE slave”).
Go figure. Grant was a bastard, but he was OUR bastard, that is what it sounds like. Abe was a black hating deportationist bastard, but he was OUR bastard, because the Yankees were getting KIA about 3 or 4 to one in the beginning of the war and Abe miraculously saw the light and changed his big old heart after a couple of years. He is excused.
The South wasn’t there to fight back legally, so the North just did what they wanted, is what you are saying. All legal like. Cripes. No one wants to call a spade a hoe.
In the process, the Grand Old Potty morphed into this monster that we now have to paper train just to be able to stomach pulling the lever for them, Demoncrats have become Socialists and nearly brought down the Republic with the aid of a bedwetting GOP and everyone is focused on what may or may not have happened and who may or may not have been considered legally acting more than a hundred years ago.
This pathetic pandering to the new “Southern Strategy” sickens us all and should be stopped. It is divisive, stupid and more importantly a GOP invention of Mikie Steele and his merry gang of idiots.
Please ... if I was black I would stay so far away from these morons that want to trade the old liars for the new liars that I wouldn’t be in hailing distance. I thought we were supposed to be all about truth now?
This war, to quote Hedley Lamarr, was about power and a land snatch. See snatch.
“If we don’t speak the truth, dems fill the silence with lies.”
Speak the truth then. Abe loathed blacks and wanted to send them back to Africa. Grant was a slave owner. The war was about power. Stop looking like petulant children and deal with it straight up. Neither party is what it was, we don’t need to pretend to be - the history is there to contradict us. Republicans, if they come to their senses, are the best of the two mainstream party choices if you want small(er) government. But they aren’t much better than Moderate Democrats. The left is an evil that needs to be destroyed. Period.
Conservatives are our only real hope to recover. Period. Who gives a crap what the Grand Old Potty was up to a hundred and fifty years ago? Focus on today, and do it with clear eyes and no bullshit. That’s what will win us converts.
Lincoln would have simply had them arrested, but those same Constitutional scholars probably would have found that to be okay as well.
Democrat trolls, too, fill the silence with lies. That’s why I try to educate Republicans about the heritage of our Grand Old Party.
|
|
|
| Secession Timeline various sources |
|
|
|
|
| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
|
|
|
| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
|
|
|
| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
|
|
|
| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
|
|
|
| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
|
|
|
| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
|
|
|
| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
|
|
|
| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
|
|
|
| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
|
|
|
In addition to the southern congressmen who went with the rebels, a northern senator was expelled for sympathizing with the Confederates.
How could the rebels and the neo-Confederates justify a territory such as Arizona, not a state, seceding? By what supposed constitutional right?
It’s important - thanks.
"For two years, it's fair to say, the South had the best of the war -- with better generals and more highly motivated troops, they were often able to overcome disadvantages in numbers and materials."
Sorry for the "mental typo."
Fort Sumter was 1861 of course, not 1860.
Antietam / Sharpsburg in 1862 is sometimes, but not always, called a Union victory.
But the tide of war did not definitely turn against the South until Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863.
Point being, the South did reasonably well for two years, then delayed defeat for another two years, despite being outnumbered in every category of men & equipment.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam in 1862 helped the Union side, but did not change the course or outcome of the war.
Nor did it fully free all slaves.
That didn't happen until after Lincoln's death -- 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments.
Indeed, even 100 years later there was unfinished work to be done.
If you like Biblical analogies -- Lincoln was a Moses bringing the slaves out of Egypt, but could not lead them to the promised land.
That took a lot longer.
Actually he did. The authority behind the Emancipation Proclamation came from the several Confiscation Acts that had been passed by Congress. These acts gave the government the authority to seize private property without compensation if that property was being used to further the rebellion. Hence the reason why the act applied only to slaves still in territory under the control of the rebels. The constitutionality of the Confiscation Acts has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
BenLurkin: "Lincoln would have simply had them arrested, but those same Constitutional scholars probably would have found that to be okay as well. "
Were any of the Southern Congressmen and Senators who remained arrested?
Defenders of the Southern Cause constantly complain that secession was both constitutional and legal.
But in 1861 both the President and Congress disagreed -- and why should they not disagree?
Lincoln argued at the time that entering and leaving the Union should require the same basic procedures -- application by the state and approval by Congress.
Since nothing like that happened, the President and Congress declared seceding states to be in a state of insurrection and rebellion.
And the key point is: when the South left Congress, they left no one there to defend their interests.
How then can they complain about the results?
Oh please. So in your world blacks were better off as slaves in Alabama than as free men and women in Liberia?
I don't think to say that's fair at all, because you're only looking at the eastern campaigns. In the first two years of the war the Union had captured New Orleans, the confederacy's largest city, cut the country in half along the Mississippi, driven them from Kentucky and most of Tennessee and large parts of Louisiana, and had an effective blockade in place. They had beaten the rebel armies at Shiloh and Iuka and Stone's River, captured one rebel army at Fort Donelson and would soon capture a second at Vicksburg. The South was losing the war from the very beginning.
What kind of "excuse" are you looking for?
Lincoln and Grant lead the war to preserve the Union and free the slaves -- and most people today think that was a good thing, despite whatever other flaws Lincoln or Grant might have.
The South fought to destroy the Union and preserve slavery -- and most people today think that was a bad thing, despite whatever other virtues the Southern Cause might have.
Defenders of the Southern Cause also like to claim that Abraham Lincoln was really Barrack Hussein Obama in disguise, with his huge, bloated, all-controlling, all-consuming Federal Government choking the economic and cultural life out of America.
Well, that's just fantasy.
The post-war Federal Government of Lincoln and his Republican successors was circa 10% the size it is today.
So they are not to blame for our current plight -- Progressives and liberal Democrats are.
Among the most liberal and progressive of them all, of course, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who won the states of the Old Confederacy by margins of 80% and 90%.
So, yes, I blame the South as much as anyone else for the long-term march of socialism in America.
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.