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.
You have a more digestible link?
Then there was only a single wackdoodle in either partnership. Kinda hot too.
In a Morticia Adams kind of way, maybe.
Slavery was a very different affair in the days of our founders and it had changed considerably from the 1650s or so when it rose out of indentured servitude. Even this wiki account of the life of Washington’s personal slave gives the impression that Billy Lee was far more than a slave. He had a better life than poor white farmers of the day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_%28valet%29
George Whitefield is an interesting character in that even when he supported slavery early in life he saw it as a means of gaining freedom from the barbarism of Africa. He later became an abolitionist but always believed that an education for all slaves was essential to their future independence. A slave named Phyllis Wheatly was a well known poet (not a well known black poet) of the day and eulogized Whitefield in glowing terms.
AFAIK, he never opposed such laws, but I've never seen any evidence he promoted them.
Even Lincoln wanted free blacks to remain out of Illinois.
Again, I am unaware of his publicly opposing such laws, but also of any evidence he "wanted" them.
Even Lincoln’s first inaugural address he claimed he had no intention of interfering with slavery.
Flatly untrue. He stated he had no intention of interfering with slavery "within a state." He had every intention of interfering with it in the territories and in DC, where he had constitutional power to propose interference.
In fact, Lincoln, during his single term in Congress, proposed a bill "interfering" with slavery in DC. In 1849!
http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=37&subjectID=3
Something I've never seen mentioned is that Congress could have entirely constitutionally passed a law prohibiting interstate traffic in slaves, even between slave states. Which would have put a real crimp in the market and constituted big-time interference.
If you go here and "search" for "Jefferson Davis address", you'll find it.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
Amazing we didn’t hang him.
Not only that, but he declares that all those of African ancestry in the United States are his, to take to the states of the insurrection and to relegate, they and their issue forever to slavery.
And keep in mind that any judge could declare that any white person was of African issue. That meant that anyone was subject to being made a slave at any time.
It would have been interesting if someone had come up with a forged document, but one signed off by a corrupt judge making Jeff Davis a person of African ancestry and therefore a slave forever.
The current science recognizes that all humans are of African heritage, so it would have been true.
Furthermore, the Constitution forbids “Corruption of the blood” which would reasonably free any child of a slave until they had committed some offense personally.
My recollection was that she was considered the prime catch of her day. Her father was supposedly not terribly happy to have her courted by an older widower.
I suppose it is even more suprising that he wasn’t roasted over a slow fire.
North Carolina permitted freedmen of African heritage to vote until 1835.
So we have now established that not only were those not atrocities, they are also not true.
No, lies don’t make liberals heads blow up. If they did, then we would have fewer liberals.
If the slaves had slaughtered whites in self defense, it would not have been an atrocity.
From my perspective, raping slaves, a frequent practice in the antebellum south, was an atrocity.
And as a mullato, he was probably half of African descent and half descended from the Lee family.
If slaves had revolted and defended their freedom with lethal force against those attempting to re-enslave them, it would not have been an atrocity.
If they had revolted during the War, and slaughtered all the whites they could get at, who would mostly have been women, children and old men, since most young men were off fighting the War, those would most certainly have been atrocities, as similar actions by anyone else at any time are.
The Haitian Revolution was characterized throughout by horrible atrocities committed by all sides, and that is what white southerners expected if their black slaves got the chance. Well, during the War they certainly got the chance, and they did no such thing. For which I believe they get way too little credit, since they most certainly had provocation.
From my perspective, raping slaves, a frequent practice in the antebellum south, was an atrocity.
Absolutely agree. Though it is probable that physical force (rape-rape) was not usually required.
Feminists today, with some validity, obsess about how true sexual consent is not possible in a condition of extreme power differential. And of course chattel slavery is the ultimate power differential. It is fairly obvious that in many cases enthusiastic pleasuring of the master could get an attractive young female slave better treatment. A lot of the time they probably competed with each other for his attentions.
All of this, the sexual use of those within his power by the master, and the catering to his lusts by the slaves, are just examples of "human nature" in the biological sense. There was nothing at all to stop him from having his own harem, except his conscience, which in many men is not well developed. This is how masters and slaves behaved, for the most part, in the ancient world and the Muslim world, and indeed anywhere and anywhen slavery existed.
The difference is that the Christian worldview showed clearly that this was evil, and that it constituted atrocity. That slavery inevitably leads to such things shows clearly why it itself is an atrocity and very nearly the ultimate evil.
And after that?
I'm sure she was the Cameron Diaz of the mid-19th century.
bflr
And after that?
They put in a new state constitution that limited the franchise to white men only.
I believe a few states (NY?) originally had loopholes that theoretically allowed some women to vote.
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