Posted on 04/02/2011 12:04:41 AM PDT by iowamark
...Baker, Mallory and Townsend were field hands who — like hundreds of other local slaves — had been pressed into service by the Confederates, compelled to build an artillery emplacement. They labored beneath the banner of the 115th Virginia Militia, a blue flag bearing a motto in golden letters: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
After a week or so of this, they learned some deeply unsettling news. Their master, a rebel colonel named Charles Mallory, was planning to send them even farther from home, to help build fortifications in North Carolina. That was when the three slaves decided to leave the Confederacy and try their luck, just across the water, with the Union...
...“I intend to hold them,” Butler said.
“Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?”
Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer.
“I mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”
“But you say we cannot secede,” Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes.”
“But you say you have seceded,” Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”
Ever the diligent litigator, Butler had been reading up on his military law. In time of war, he knew, a commander had a right to seize any enemy property that was being used for hostile purposes. The three fugitive slaves, before their escape, were helping build a Confederate gun emplacement...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [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 |
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| 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 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| 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 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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I'm not so sure about that. I think the majority of the slaves were content with their lives on the plantation to the point that many stayed with their masters after the end of the war.
Come on. They had been so infantilized and terrified by the institution of slavery that they didnt know where to go.
Thanks for that.
Spare us the theatrics, no one today knows what it is to be a slave. If you don’t like who is representing you in Congress, vote them out. Slaves don’t have the right to vote, you do.
Bump
Perhaps.
But aren’t they infantilized NOW and PC’ed into staying in the ghetto, so that they aren’t an Uncle Tom today?
Yes, they are. The so called “Great Society” was about tempting them to stay stuck, and back on the plantation of the Demonrats.
“...somewhere along our way we as a nation have willingly turned over our individual freedom to social collectivists that now own US.”
This is the crux of the matter.
This whole country HAS BEEN INDOCTRINATED INTO SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM since the public schools were put into place.
From the FED to Social Security, to DeathCare, the political class has worked to put us into this situation.
Historically, this happens at the end of “empire”. Back in Roman times, things got so bad, and taxes so high, that people left villas, and became slaves just to escape the taxes.
I am afraid that this will repeat. Our schools and the parents of the last few generations did not CARE enough that their children were being robed of their nations birth right of freedom to protect them and see that they LEARNED about REAL freedom.
They fought to end the evils of fascists and came home thinking that they won, and stopped fighting the fascists in our own mist.
These are just some of the causes, and the cure will be hard to do now, because the easy of those who benefit from the current system, they will not let go. Only a major upheaval MIGHT reverse this trend. But history is not on this side, it is on the side of tyranny and dictatorship.
Other factors were of more immediate importance:
1)It costs money to move a family. Ex-slaves didn't have any.
2)More importantly, the Black Codes passed immediately after the war to guarantee plantation owners a labor force gave blacks two options: Sign a labor contract for the year or be arrested and rented out. Eventually this evolved into the sharecropping system and debt peonage, which for practical purposes was another form of slavery.
Yeah, voting in the Tea Party has worked real well.
And those unions in Wisconsin, they just love their new Govenor, yes?
I am sorry to tell you this, but paying taxes on a bankrupt country, with no job growth IS ECONOMIC SLAVERY TO A MONETARY SYSTEM THAT WILL ROB US ALL BEFORE IT IS DONE.
Theatrics my @$$. Let my guess, you went to a public school and hated history.
No, I went to catholic schools and loved history. I don’t like unions and yes, I think the Tea Party has done pretty well so far.
Of course. You are quite right. Thank you.
I would contend that individual freedom is a God given right. Bondage/slavery can occur instantaneously or over a period of time. Slavery as formerly performed was overt and there was not a shadow of doubt as to the stature of those in chains and bonds. I see a strong people that endured the literal chains and subjection of their physical beings. BUT their souls never accepted their plight and seeking freedom was with them day and night.
There is a slavery of the soul and spirit wherein the physical being has NO clue they survive in bondage/slavery. And that is all that is literally accomplished is survival.
I am NOT trying to split a hair. The man you pictured carried with him the inhumanity of fellow beings on the outside. But we in this modern era are NOT carrying those scars on the outside but in our very souls.
You make my point as to the overwhelming majority consider slavery to be a physical bondage for labor. And when the majority in this nation decide their 'god' is government they vote in the majority to redistribute the fruits of those left willing to labor. AND if my vote is diluted by non-citizen or vote fraud then it really does not matter whether I have a 'right' to vote or not.
It needs to be pointed out, repeatedly, that thousands of blacks in the south were slave owners.
There were even black slave breeders who sold their own children into slavery.
It should also be pointed out that slavery has existed throughout history. Their ancestors all got over it and moved on.
If blacks want reparations they should sue the black tribes that sold their ancestors into slavery in the first place. Then sue the Arabs who controlled the slave trade.
Then they should move on!
AND right now these people their children and yet unborn grandchildren are in bondage of debt. I do not think reality has yet passed through the bone matter covering the grey matter.
Your joke of a sovereign nation should of thought twice when they committed TREASON by firing on American soldiers.
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