Posted on 11/03/2015 6:52:26 AM PST by don-o
The Civil War is, as Shelby Foote noted, at the crossroads of our being. Looked at one way, it marked the end of a long struggle against slavery and the beginning of a long one for civil rights and racial equality. Looked at another, it marked the end of limited government and the beginning of the encroaching, ever-present Leviathan that exists today. These memories can be both in sync and in conflict. After all, it was the deployment of strong government in the form of a dominant army and the passage of federal amendments that played a large role in the freeing of American slaves. And yet, as the government's mechanisms for intruding into the lives of the American people increased from the 1860s on, racial discrimination and segregation remained entrenched - moral suasion had at least as much to do with a broad acceptance of racial equality as big government did.
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
I see nothing in your post that refutes the idea that by doggedly trying to keep an occupying army in a foreign land, the North wasn’t trying to bait the South into war.
“At no time did these British forts become a casus-belli for the US government, which waited patiently until their evacuation by Britain could be negotiated peacefully.”
That’s a silly statement, since they had already fought a war with Britain and won! Of course they didn’t need to declare war again, the British were beaten and that was acknowledged by both sides.
I certainly DO NOT AGREE that by doggedly trying to keep an occupying military force in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the US is trying to bait the Commie Cubans into war!
If the Cubans launch war against us, that is their choice, not ours, FRiend.
Nor do I agree that by doggedly trying to keep a large naval force at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941, that President Roosevelt was trying to bait the Japanese into launching war against us.
The Japanese decision to launch that war was theirs and theirs alone, not FDR's.
Nor do I agree that by doggedly trying to maintain Union troops in Union Fort Sumter that President Lincoln was trying to bait Confederates into launching war against the United States.
The Confederates' decision to launch that war was theirs and theirs alone, not Lincoln's.
And yet, despite Brits losing the war, and despite their signing a peace treaty promising to abandon Brit forts on US territory, THEY DIDN'T LEAVE!
They stayed in those forts, some for 30+years (!), in order to protect their economic interests and their Indian allies.
And what did the US government do about it?
Nothing! We let them stay and do whatever they wanted to do for decades, until, one by one, opportunities presented to negotiate for British removal form those forts.
And that is the model Confederates should have, would have followed, if their main interest was in preserving the peace.
But of course, peace was not their first concern.
The no taxation thing was a slogan, but I seriously doubt that it was more important to many of the patriots than some of the other considerations listed in the long list of specific grievances, which Jefferson specified in the major part of the Declaration. And to your point, many of the grievances listed against the King, were for allowing the British Parliament to intrude on the development of the local institutions.
That does not, however, suggest that the Confederates were less patient than their ancestors. The Northern radicals had been thumbing their noses at the Southern States for the better part of a generation--from the 1830s. If one contemplates the psychological dynamics, rather than official Federal actions, it was obvious that a growing segment of Northerners had abandoned the sense of a common heritage--a common understanding of the purposes--which had drawn the peoples of the several States together in the concepts that made a Federal Union appear desirable.
I would suggest that the common thread was never the exaltation of a functional structure--which was strictly limited. The exaltation of a common bond in the counter-revolution against outside encroachment--the bond that led to the concept of a new American ethnicity--was the foundation for a Federal Union. The appeal of that Federal Union died for many Southerners, in the flood of insult that seemed to be growing.
At least that is what this native Ohioan, sees as the real cause of the division. The specific policy differences can be interpreted as symptoms of something deeper: The loss of mutual respect for the essential aspect of that Union, which was respect and tolerance for the cultural differences, even as they celebrated the once shared heritage & identity, based in large measure on having fought together, even while they maintained those cultural differences.
Not by the confederates. Those two who were killed were killed by the explosion of their own cannon when they were doing a surrender ceremony.
Here is what History.com says about it.
No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held before the U.S. evacuation.
You can quibble about this all you like, but you have said nothing to address the fact that there was no provision under English law for a separation from the United Kingdom. American Law, as outlined in the US. Founding Document, the Declaration of Independence, asserts that people (Meaning States) have the right to abolish their government and create a new one that suits them.
Our nation was founded on the premise that unhappy states have a right to leave. English law did not reflect such a right. US Law was founded on such a right.
The assertion of a right to leave is at odds with English Law, but is consistent with what used to be American law prior to 1861. Before Lincoln destroyed the Declaration.
IIRC, Cuba was the most prosperous nation in the hemisphere other than the United States pre-Castro. So our ideals exported fairly easily to Cuba.
No, American law never supported the notion of a right of secession and so Lincoln did not destroy any such right. Your defense of what the South did always includes this claim that the South believed there to be such a right and then Lincoln came along and surprised everyone by destroying this supposed.
In fact, in 1832, long before Lincoln, President Andrew Jackson made it clear to everyone, particularly the people in South Carolina, that there existed no such right. His Proclamation Regarding Nullification included the following:
"The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league, and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which ale the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States; they retained all the power they did not grant. But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation, and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure."
So, this defense of ignorance of the law just does not fly. South Carolina had been told that what it was doing was wrong and everyone in South Carolina knew it was wrong. A few local bigshots went ahead and did it anyway. What we call the Civil War was really just history's answer to those local crackpots. Notice that what happened is exactly what President Jackson had said would happen in 1832. Lincoln just played the cards that he was dealt exactly as President Jackson had instructed.
Well, then why did they not just sue the government and prove their case, if they truly believed that they had a case? The answer is that they had no confidence in this case you are trying to belatedly prepare. South Carolina opted to settle the matter by war. The world has long accepted the outcome dished up by the forum that South Carolina chose. The time has come for the whining to end.
We succeeded some more when we ended slavery. Anyone is entitled to hold whatever opinion that they want to hold respecting slavery, but it is time to accept that it is gone, and gone for good. There is no option for replay in this game. ;-)
Boogieman, aside from the loss of the right to own slaves, you cannot think of any other personal liberty that Lincoln has stolen from you?
The constitution does not compel states to have slaves or slavery. It recognized the institution even as it put limits on its spread but it doesn't say "slavery shall be legal in all states and territories". In fact it limits how slaves were counted for apportioning representatives to congress and it bans the slave trade after 1808. So your assertion that slavery is baked into the constitution as some sort of fundamental inalienable right up there with free speech is false. It not only can be limited, it was limited, right in the constitution.
But perhaps you refer to the fugitive slave provision. Certainly over the years the Northern states did indeed grow lax in enforcing this, and hence the Dredd Scott case later. However I will point out that the fact that this clause exists at all makes it clear that there was no support for slavery in the north and that they could not be relied upon to recognize slavery in their own territories without a federal mandate. So yes, they didn't adhere to the compromise but at the same time, your prior assertions that the North supported some sort of fundamental right to hold slaves is further undermined. The truth is they objected to it from the start and the constitution is a patchwork of compromises to try to let both sides unite, however uneasily, in spite of this contentious issue.
But further, you assert that the North, in signing the constitution, were forced forevermore to respect, honor and cherish slavery whether they wanted to or not because they were BOUND by the constitutional "contract" yet the South could walk away from the same contract whenever they wanted. I've noted that inconsistency and you have said "yup, that's right" so basically your position is that slavery trumps everything else.
Here's what we know. The words slave and slavery do not exist in the constitution. Nowhere. The institution is implicity mentioned in three ways, in the limitations of "other persons" from being counted in the census as a full person so as to limit the amount of political control slave holding states could get as a result of their holding slaves (limit on the institution of slavery), the banning of the slave trade by banning the importation of people (i.e. slaves) after 1808 in the original states and immediately in any new ones (limit on the institution of slavery) and the clause that states will return those who's labor is owed to others (i.e. slaves) to the ones who are owed that labor (support for the institution of slavery). This is at best a mixed bag. The presumption at the time was that without new slaves coming in, the institution would whither over time and thus the northern states gritted their teeth and agreed to letting it survive so long as it was limited. This, sadly, turned out to be false as the invention of the cotton gin made large scale slave labor economically more desirable than ever to the South. But the fact that the north held their nose and agreed to live with a limited slavery instutition cannot be construed as an endorsement of slavery or agreement to have no limits on it ever, anywhere.
And they never moved to ban slavery in the south. They moved to limit it in the new states. The south perceived this as a problem, eventually there would be more free states than slave, and they'd be squeezed out. The walked BEFORE that happened. So don't talk about the north breaching their obligations, the South wanted them to be doormats on this one and weren't willing to have it otherwise.
If this comes down to deciding if two groups of people of conscience to side with, the one side that is guided by the principle that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and that the right to FREEDOM isn't limited to white people or the group that is guided by the principle that THEIR RIGHTS TO PROPERTY ARE GOD GIVEN EVEN AS THEY APPLY TO PEOPLE AS PROPERTY and they are free to secede if they perceive that to be threatened than I know which side I support.
I want to beleieve that you are arguing the legalistic point that states have a right to walk away from the constitution if it becomes unbearable (which I can see) even if their rationale for it is terrible (supporting slavery). That is I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't defending the morality of slavery along with the right to secession. I am finding it increasingly difficult to do so.
Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but you apparently characterize Hamilton and the Federalists as "original conservatives" and strict constitutionalists as "Jacobian atheists." That doesn't make sense to me. I see no problem with your comment that Lincoln was the heir of Hamilton and the Federalists. Indeed he was.
Re Hamilton. Hamilton certainly used the implied powers argument. But was Hamilton, the monarchist and proponent of a very strong central government, conservative? He certainly publicly advocated passage of the Constitution after the Constitutional Convention. But during the Constitution Convention Hamilton proposed that the Constitution should form a government patterned after the British government. That was less radical a change than what the other delegates favored and in that sense might be considered conservative in a relative sense.
Here is a link to Hamilton's handwritten proposal for the Constitution that his grandson gave to the New York City Public Library: Link. His proposed Constitution does not seem conservative to me. Hamilton proposed that the president be elected be elected by a series of electors and serve for life. He could only be removed/impeached if convicted of a crime or misdemeanor Hamilton's president would have an absolute veto over laws passed by the legislature.
In Hamilton's Constitution, Senators would also serve for life, and they could also be removed or impeached. Hamilton proposed that the governors or presidents of states be appointed by the central government. Those governors or presidents of states would also have an absolute veto over state legislation.
The book, "Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen, says summarizes some of what Hamilton said to the Convention in presenting his proposed Constitution:
... why should we fear an elective monarch for life more than one for seven years? Were not the governors of the states elective monarchs? Hamilton's own notes for his speech went even further. "The monarch must have proportional strength," he had written. "He ought to be hereditary and have so much power that it will not be his interest to risk much to acquire more. The advantage of a monarch is this -- he is above corruption."
That sounds like a government that could easily and quickly become tyrannical and despotic over the people.
Re the Federalists. The Federalists passed the Sedition Act that prohibited criticizing the government or the president. Once signed by the Federalist president John Adams, the Federalists used the Sedition Act to jail their political opponents and critics. Fortunately, the Federalists soon faded as a political party but did retain a hold on the judicial system for many years. So much for free speech under the Federalists.
Back to Lincoln. As president, Lincoln kept his Congress out of session for months while he unconstitutionally assumed powers of the Judicial and Legislative branches of government and acted without Constitutional constraints. He did that without Congress in session to object to his actions and nobody but Taney and a few other judges in the judicial system to try to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law (which judges Lincoln simply ignored). In fact, Lincoln's minions jailed one judge and held another under house arrest. With respect to freedom of speech, Lincoln and his administration and military jailed newspaper publishers, writers, city officers, state legislators, and critics of his policies. A number of them were held for more than a year without charges. All of that sounds very much like the immense powers of the president in Hamilton's proposed Constitution. That's conservatism?
Look around and see if you can identify any current-day philosophical descendants of Hamilton and the Federalists or even Lincoln. Ask yourself whether such persons are considered conservative or liberal?
Your basic misunderstanding is a poor sense of the spirit of those times, beginning with our Founders' generation.
The truth is that nearly all Founders -- northern and southern -- considered slavery an evil, which should be gradually abolished.
Even those Southern Founders who wanted to keep slavery still considered it evil, yes, a necessary evil, but still evil.
So our Founders took small steps in the direction of abolishing slavery, and left the rest for future generations.
So, by 1860 slavery had been gradually abolished in all northern states and was actually a dying institution in Border States like Delaware, Maryland and even Missouri.
Based on that, you could say that our Founders' ideals were slowly coming to fruition.
However, between 1787 and 1860 other profound changes had come over the American spirit.
It began with the growing attitude amongst Southerners, especially in the Deep South, that slavery was not evil, not just a necessary evil, but rather a necessary and positive good that must be preserved, protected and spread where-ever possible.
And since the Slave-Power controlled Washington DC almost continuously from 1788 through 1860, they began enacting laws to protect and expand slavery:
The northern response to the Slave-Power's growing assertiveness was increasing outrage.
That first manifest itself in the mid-1850s with the collapse of the old pro-slavery Whig party and birth of a new anti-slavery Republican party.
But abolitionism itself was never a great Northern cause because nearly all Northerners well understood that slavery in the South was a precondition for Union, and any serious move to abolish it would result in disunion and possibly even war.
Yes, it's true that once Brits abolished slavery in their empire, in 1833, many British loving Americans (north & south) also became increasingly hostile to slavery.
However this was hugely off-set by the increasing demand for, and prosperity of those slave-plantations producing the world's greatest trade-commodity: cotton.
So most Southerners clearly understood that slavery was the source of their amazing wealth, and would tolerate no discussions on its evils or abolition.
In the end -- 1860 -- protecting themselves from slavery drove the majority of Northerners to vote Republican, while protecting and expanding slavery drove the majority of Deep South slave-holders to declare their secession and a new Confederacy.
They certainly died in the Battle of Fort Sumter, as surely as if they had been killed by Confederate fire.
Four others were seriously wounded.
Fort Sumter surrendered and Civil War began.
In fact, long before Founders declared their independence the Brits had officially declared colonists in rebellion and launched war against them.
So colonists did not declare independence out of the blue, but as a necessary response to ongoing war.
Only independent and united states could ever hope to defeat the British super-power militarily.
That's why there was never any question of Founders secession "at pleasure", just because somebody woke up one morning with a headache and blamed the Brits!
Rather, it was the stark choice of independence, Union or death which drove our Founders declaration.
By stark contrast, the Slave-Power in 1860 declared its secession "at pleasure", meaning without material constitutional reasons, but rather in an effort to prevent anti-slavery actions which they thought might happen, sometime in the future.
Of course, all this has been explained to you before, but you refuse to acknowledge truth you don't like.
What "states' right" gives states the right to block the federal government from enforcing a provision of the Constitution with the Fugitive Slave Law? Even Lincoln thought the Constitution demanded a fugitive slave law [Link]:
"We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us -- We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the Constitution demands it."
States' rights are most commonly seen as stemming from the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The basis for the Fugitive Slave Law is, of course, Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which all states agreed to. So, the "right" to recover fugitive slaves would appear to have been delegated to the Federal Government, as both Lincoln (above) and the Supreme Court (e.g., Prigg v. Pennsylvania) understood. It is thus not a states' right to thwart the Fugitive Slave Law.
It’s not about personal liberties, it’s about the rights of the people, versus the rights of the federal government. I’ve already explained that to you but you just want to keep throwing the word “slave” around because you can’t form an actual rational response to any of my points.
I understand why you are miserable.
I understand why you are afraid to express yourself fully.
I think you deserve your misery. You control it. You choose whether to hate your country and its present culture. I think you deserve all of your misery and all of your pain and I have no desire to see it end.
I love my country. My country has been good to me. So, I am happy.
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