At least his wife Varina was sane. Kinda hot too.
Posted on 07/08/2013 2:18:10 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
Citizens of the non-slave-holding States of America, swayed by peaceable motives, I have used all my influence, often thereby endangering my position as the President of the Southern Confederacy, to have the unhappy conflict now existing between my people and yourselves, governed by those-well established international rules, which heretofore have softened the asperities which necessarily are the concomitants of a state of belligerency, but all my efforts in the premises have heretofore been unavailing. Now, therefore, I am compelled e necessitati rei to employ a measure, which most willingly I would have omitted to do, regarding, as I always must, State Rights, as the very organism of politically associated society.
For nearly two years my people have been defending their inherent lights their political, social and religious rights against the speculators of New England and their allies in the States heretofore regarded as conservative. The people of the Southern Confederacy have--making sacrifices such as the modern world has never witnessed-- patiently, but determinedly, stood between their home interests and the well paid, well fed and well clad mercenaries of the Abolitionists, and I need not say that they have nobly vindicated the good name of American citizens. Heretofore, the warfare has been conducted by white men peers, scions of the same stock: but the programme has been changed, and your rulers despairing of a triumph by the employment of white men, have degraded you and themselves, by inviting the co-operation of the black race. Thus, while they deprecate the intervention of white men--the French and the English-- in behalf of the Southern Confederacy, they, these Abolitionists, do not hesitate to invoke the intervention of the African race in favor of the North. The time has, therefore, come when a becoming respect for the good opinion of the civilized world impels me to set forth the following facts:
First. Abraham Lincoln, the President of the Non-Slaveholding States, has issued his proclamation, declaring the slaves within the limits of the Southern Confederacy to be free.
Second. Abraham Lincoln has declared that the slaves so emancipated may be used in the Army and Navy, now under his control, by which he means to employ, against the Free People of the South, insurrectionary measures, the inevitable tendency of which will be to inaugurate a Servile War, and thereby prove destructive, in a great measure, to slave property.
Now, therefore, as a compensatory measure, I do hereby issue the following Address to the People of the Non-Slaveholding States:--
On and after February 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Confederacy shall be placed on the slave status, and be deemed to be chattels, they and their issue forever.
All negroes who shall be taken in any of the States in which slavery does not now exist, in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged, immediately after such capture, to occupy the slave status, and in all States which shall be vanquished by our arms, all free negroes shall, ipso facto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that the respective normal conditions of the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis, so as to prevent the public peace from being thereafter endangered.
Therefore, while I would not ignore the conservative policy of the Slave States, namely, that a Federal Government cannot, without violating the fundamental principles of a Constitution, interfere with the internal policy of several States; since, however, Abraham Lincoln has seen fit to ignore the Constitution he has solemnly sworn to support, it ought not to be considered polemically or politically improper in me to vindicate the position which has been, at an early day of this Southern republic, assumed by the Confederacy, namely, that slavery is the corner-stone of a Western Republic. It is not necessary for me to elaborate this proposition. I may merely refer, in passing, to the prominent fact, that the South is emphatically a producing section of North America; this is equally true of the West and Northwest, the people of which have been mainly dependent on the South for the consumption of their products. The other States, in which slavery does not exist, have occupied a middle position, as to the South, West and Northwest. The States of New England, from which all complicated difficulties have arisen, owe their greatness and power to the free suffrages of all other sections of North America; and yet, as is now evident, they have, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution, waged a persistent warfare against the interests of all the other States of the old Union. The great centre of their opposition has been Slavery, while the annual statistics of their respective State Governments abundantly prove that they entertain within all their boundaries fewer negroes than any single State which does not tolerate slavery.
In view of these facts, and conscientiously believing that the proper condition of the negro is slavery, or a complete subjection to the white man, and entertaining the belief that the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent, and in view of the future harmony and progress of all the States of America, I have been induced to issue this address, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the future.
JEFFERSON DAVIS.
I found most interesting his claims of states' rights as his ultimate goal, yet he announces the enslavement of free men in Confederate states without any reference at all to whether those states have any say in the matter.
Interesting, an insurrection within an insurrection.
It is also interesting that the Confeds vastly underestimated the decency and humanity of their slave property.
Despite extreme provocation, there were essentially no atrocities committed by slaves against their masters or his women and children.
It is all the founder’s fault. They should have insisted that slaves be counted as full people instead of just 3/5 a person, you know for the case of proportioning out the house seats...
That would have ended slavery because the slaves would have been fully represented in the house..... You know with all those elections where the slaves wouldn’t vote at all in...
One way to blow a Liberal’s mind is to tell them that Most all Abolishionists in the North wanted slaves to NOT count as person at all when the constitution was being ratified....
You will need a rake a trash can to clean up the grey matter after they fully digest that fact...
Sorry a bit carried away about what is actually taught about the civil war in schools these days....
“One way to blow a Liberal’s mind is to tell them that...”
Even Lincoln wanted laws forbidding blacks to marry whites.
Even Lincoln wanted free blacks to remain out of Illinois.
Even Lincoln’s first inaugural address he claimed he had no intention of interfering with slavery.
There were all kinds of bad things on both sides, but for some reason the anti-South bigots refuse to condemn the North for their atrocities.
No politician in Washington would ever defend our “inherent lights.”
Those aren’t atrocities.
I would like to find out more about the document, because I’m honestly skeptical about its authenticity. It doesn’t sound like any of the other speeches I’ve ever read from Davis to begin with. I have a hard time believing that Davis would order all the existing free blacks in the Confederacy back into slavery without it ever being mentioned in any of the dozens and dozens of books I’ve read about the rebellion, about both North and South. It just doesn’t...feel right.
That would have ended slavery because the slaves would have been fully represented in the house..... You know with all those elections where the slaves wouldn’t vote at all in...
...
Most all Abolishionists in the North wanted slaves to NOT count as person at all when the constitution was being ratified....
First of all, they weren't abolitionists at the time. Secondly, if slave states only got representatives based on how many free people there were in the state (which the slave states didn't want) you could be sure it would have been a major incentive to get rid of slavery, in order to get more free people and more representatives. I hated math, but even I can figure that out.
Thanks. I have just been informed that the document may indeed be fake, in which case I offer my sincere apologies to the forum.
I think it does a pretty good job of sounding like a document of the time, or at least a good deal better than most lame attempts to “cite” Jefferson or Lincoln.
If I got fooled on this, it’s a classic example of believing something that you want to believe because it lines up so well with your worldview. Which is a part of human nature that people of all ideological persuasions are prone to.
I’ve read perhaps several hundred books on the War, and probably should have been more skeptical that I hadn’t read or heard of this before.
In my defense, the website from which I got it looked pretty legit.
http://corematerials.homestead.com/
And the anti-Yankee bigots refuse to apply the same standards to their rebel heroes that they try and hold Lincoln to. Go figure.
Not sure what you mean, but if slaves throughout the South had started slaughtering the white people they could get at, those would certainly have been atrocities by my definition.
You have just outlined the major difference between the Unionists and the Lost Causers on this forum. We disclose and repudiate myths. They cling to them with white knuckles as if their entire cause depended on them. Which, frequently, it does.
Presumably a typo.
If they are then Bobby Lee, Tommy Jackson, and Jeff 'Run for my life and leave my family to fend for themselves' Davis were even more atrocious.
At least his wife Varina was sane. Kinda hot too.
Sorry, but just noticed you weren’t responding to my use of the term “atrocities.”
Must pay better attention to the headers.
Dude's got skinny arms though. Maybe that's why she's sad.
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The Note says: "The famous fake reply to the Emancipation Proclamation, probably printed in the North."
How do you figure? The truth is that white Southerners would have been even more over-represented in the House. Slaves would continue to have no representation at all. Neither would free blacks.
One way to blow a Liberal’s mind is to tell them that Most all Abolishionists in the North wanted slaves to NOT count as person at all when the constitution was being ratified....
They were not considered a person down south, merely property. Should your house have a vote? Your wagon? Your plow? That property had no rights as individuals, and neither did slaves. So why include them when allocating Congressional seats?
You will need a rake a trash can to clean up the grey matter after they fully digest that fact...
Yes if there is one thing we've become over-exposed to when dealing with Lost Causers it's trash.
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