Posted on 05/19/2015 10:33:26 PM PDT by iowamark
Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world.
The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart over the issue, what hope did freedom have? European powers wasted no time in taking advantage of the debacle. France and Britain immediately each sent fleets of warships with the official purpose of observing the imminent war in America. In Paris, A New York Times correspondent who went by the byline “Malakoff” thought that the French and British observers “may be intended as a sort of escort of honor for the funeral of the Great Republic.”
...the French forced Benito Juárez, the republican leader, to flee the capital and eventually installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico.
European conservatives welcomed the dismemberment of the “once United States” and the bursting of the “republican bubble” that, beginning with the French Revolution, had inspired revolution and unrest in Europe. Republicanism had been in retreat in Europe since the failed revolutions of 1848, and some predicted that all the wayward American republics would eventually find their way back to some form of monarchy, or seek protection under European imperial rule. When Lincoln, in the darkest days of the war, referred to America as the “last best hope of earth,” he was hardly boasting...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Do the same search on the Declaration of the Causes of Secession that four of the Confederate states pubished and let us know what you find.
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Thank you.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world." - Mississippi Declarations of the Cause of Secession
We, the people of the State of Tennessee, waiving any expression of opinion as to the abstract doctrine of secession, but asserting the right, as a free and independent people, to alter, reform, or abolish our form of government in such manner as we think proper, do ordain and declare that all the laws and ordinances by which the State of Tennessee became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America are hereby abrogated and annulled, and that all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of said laws and ordinances were conveyed to the Government of the United States, and to absolve ourselves from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred thereto; and do hereby henceforth become a free, sovereign, and independent State.
“Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.” - Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession.
ping
That's a very debatable proposition. Canadians consider it a Canadian victory. The British don't really think about it at all--it was a minor sideshow to the Napoleonic Wars. Most historians consider it a draw, since nothing really changed from before the war.
Have a nice day.
You too.
Whoa, there, Nostradamus. Here's a scenario just as likely: Germany's 1918 Offensive fails, and with their economy cracking and the public tired of war, the Bolshevik ideals that prompted the 1918-1919 riots lead to a revolution and a Soviet-aligned Communist state in Germany. Now the Iron Curtain falls in 1919 along the Rhine, and it has a modern industrial state instead of a backwards agricultural one. From there it's easy to imagine all of Europe a communist "Internationale" by the mid-1930s, especially if the Great Depression hits on schedule.
You know, there are planes leaving every day for places where you wouldn't be under the boot of Fedzilla. Send us a postcard from whatever bastion of freedom you settle on.
You know, if you just start RANDOMLY CAPITALIZING words, you could be the new Stand Watie.
I mIss STAnd WaTIe
Your reference to the Ordinances of Secession is a fallacy. They do not say what you think they say.
Every OOS made it plain slavery was the main reason they were seceding.
Actually none of the Ordinances make that statement.
For one example, here is the Ordinance of Secession from South Carolina....can you point out where it mentions slavery?
.......................South Carolina.................
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."
We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved. Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.
Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 1.
It looks like you are confusing the official Ordinances of Secession that were legal statements adopted by popular referendum in 11 states, with the Causes of Secession published by four states after seceding from the Union. All four were essentially written explanations having no authority and expressing nothing more than the opinions of the authors.
They were essentially of no more importance than newspaper articles.
They do not document what you wish that they do.
The next bit is even better:
"These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."
Hey, do you think central_va has been out in the tropical sun, which the imperious law of nature says he cannot bear?
While I understand that you find them an embarrassment that undermines your entire position, the fact is that they were official statements of the secession conventions, framed and voted on by those conventions.
He was entertaining, I’ll give you that.
Not 100% sure but i think non-sequitur is posting again.
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