Posted on 02/01/2017 4:52:50 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Not at all.
In fact, slavery was first "threatened" then legally abolished in every Northern state during the early 1800s.
Different abolition processes were used in different states, from passing new laws to state constitutional amendments, and everyone understood that slavery nationwide could only be abolished by US constitutional amendment.
By definition, the US amendment process is not "tyrannical".
DiogenesLamp: "So you give us an implicit "yes", to the question, else you would not try to immediately defend the claim that it wasn't being threatened."
You read too much into my words.
The historical fact is the 1860 Republican platform did not threaten slavery in the South.
It was, of course, an abolitionist-friendly document and Lincoln the first openly anti-slavery president ever elected.
But in November 1860 he had not even taken office, and Washington, DC was under control by the slavery-friendly Democrat Buchanan administration.
So no actual threat yet existed.
That's why Deep South Fire Eaters' declarations of secession were "at pleasure".
DiogenesLamp: "Apparently it was, because when Lincoln had the chance, he ended it.
Now you may argue that was because he wanted to put the screws to people with whom he had just fought a war, but can it be doubted that absent a war he would have thrown up every sort of 'executive order' restriction on it that he could have managed?"
Lincoln's Republicans were pledged to prevent the expansion of slavery into western territories which didn't want it, and that you can be certain Lincoln would do.
But absent Civil War, there's no other obvious step Lincoln would take to put restrictions on slavery in the South.
DiogenesLamp: "Would he have interfered with it in all manners possible?
The People of the South thought he would, and when he had the chance, he did in fact do this.
So were their fears of him unfounded? Should they have ignored their own impression of the man and simply trusted him? "
But only Confederate declaration of war on the United States created the constitutional conditions where Lincoln could declare emancipation for slaves as "contraband of war".
That's precisely why Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not include Union states like Maryland, Kentucky or Missouri.
Constitutionally, Lincoln had no authority to free slaves where they were already lawful, only in states at war against the United States.
DiogenesLamp: "So to go back to "x's" point, someone threatening what you regard as essential to your society creates a just cause for revolution."
But since the alleged "threat" was purely imaginary, Deep South Fire Eaters' declarations of secession were strictly, "at pleasure".
If that were truly Deep South Fire Eaters' driving motive, then they would necessarily have been super-eager to avoid war, which people like Jefferson Davis well knew would result in a Union blockade of Confederate ports, thus eliminating the possibility of the great economic bounty DiogenesLamp fantasizes.
And yet those Fire Eaters did not oppose Civil War, were instead super-eager to start it!
Further, a number of posters here have made a key point which DiogenesLamp refuses to grasp.
That is: in 1860 Deep South leaders were not driven by strong desires to become industrial & commercial giants like Northerners.
Just the opposite -- they considered themselves Jeffersonian Agrarians, idealizing rural self-sufficiency and independence.
Jeffersonians were not against industry per se, but they did abhor conditions which created a mass underclass of Marxist believing proletariats.
So, it was not Northern industry and commerce which Deep South Fire Eaters wanted, but rather the freedom to continue their Jeffersonian Agrarian slavery-based life-style as they had grown to know and love it.
That New York & other Northeastern cities would not lose much from Confederate independence is demonstrated by economics during the Civil War, at which time Confederate exports stopped entirely.
Northern cities rapidly found alternative sources & products, adjusted their economies and continued to prosper despite the loss of cotton & other Confederate exports.
So your arguments hold no water.
DegenerateLamp bases so many of his postulations on what-if’s that never were and could never-be. Beyond being equal parts absurd and amusing they fail at the basic test of aligning with actual history. But I’m sure they’re fun.
So let’s play.
What if the slavocracy hadn’t been fire-eaters. How do you suppose their fortunes might have gone had they planned for their exodus from the union instead of doing it in one big, ugly, bloody temper tantrum? What if they had spent some time and some capital on building up their infrastructure, encouraged essential industry, built partnerships, etc?
Imagine if they possessed true independence from their northern brothers - a condition entirely the opposite of where they actually stood in 1860. Imagine if they had had the forethought and maturity to put their petty differences behind them long enough to standardize their railroad? What if they had subsidized their own ship-building enterprise?
Elements within the south agitated and schemed to cut ties from their northern brothers for years and decades. But those same agitators failed the basic test of independence - can you be self-sufficient? These men had the time to do all the things I mentioned - and more. Had they truly been interested in a structured and honorable separation from the north they would have laid the groundwork for peaceful departure. They weren’t and they didn’t and the entire country paid dearly.
In view of the facts, your concern for New Jerseyans' "hypocrisy" is misplaced.
It is just this sort of failure to understand the point that makes it futile to attempt a discussion with you on this topic.
When you are talking about moral absolutes, 18 slaves in New Jersey is hypocrisy, while 400,000 slaves in South Carolina isn't.
A Confederate declaration of war against the United States (May 6, 1861) is a moral absolute.
The rate at which New Jersey & other Northern states gradually abolished slavery in the early 1860s is not.
You can get away with any abomination so long as you don't claim to be more moral than anyone else.
Of course it's BS. Today's liberals do claim to be more moral than other people when it comes to the things they really care about.
Slave owners 150 years ago certainly did claim to be more moral than the Northerners they attacked as godless.
It's comical to imagine that secessionist fire eaters were cowering in guilt over slavery and not ferociously and militantly self-righteous.
The way people get away with hypocrisy -- then or now -- is to finding somebody else to pin the label on.
So you'll hear a lot about Northern hypocrisy from people who excuse everything going on in the slave states.
Back to your well of pretend outrage, I see.
Naw, nothing "outrages" me except some pro-Confederate lies coming from people who should, and certainly do know better.
Supreme court says this is when the war started; April 19, 1861
The confederates were apparently late. Lincoln had already been making war on them by the time they declared.
You know better than that.
Constitutionally, the U.S. Supreme Court does not declare war, and didn't in this case.
The ruling itself says war can be said to have started on different dates in different places, and merely for purposes of compensation in a civil suit chose the date of Lincoln's blockade announcement.
In fact, for months before that date Confederates had repeatedly provoked war, and started war at Fort Sumter.
As we have now repeatedly reviewed, a major military action attacking a country's military forces, such as Fort Sumter, is an act of war, period.
Union troops died in that action and were forced to surrender.
Any serious student knows that's the actual start of war, as surely as were Pearl Harbor and 9/11/01.
By contrast, Lincoln's response in calling for troops and a blockade were mere announcements, no battles were fought on that date, no Confederate soldiers killed.
Indeed, the first Confederate soldier killed in battle did not happen until June 10, six weeks later.
That was the true start of the Union's war, but by then Confederates had already been fighting for months with little to no Northern military response.
Of course you know all that, because you've been told it now many times.
So truth doesn't matter a whit to DiogenesLamp, does it?
This is a lie. This is a deliberate lie, with deliberate intent to deceive.
You know very well no one was killed by the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. The people who were killed were due to a military accident while engaged in the firing of their cannon during the surrender ceremony.
You also overlook the fact that Major Anderson seized that Fort. He was assigned to Fort Moultrie, and without warning and with some degree of belligerence, he abandoned Fort Moultrie and seized Fort Sumter.
The people of Port Charleston suddenly had Union cannons looming over their city and harbor. At least one Northern newspaper had already called for the guns of Ft. Sumter to be turned on Charleston. To think they wouldn't regard it as a frightening threat is just naive.
DiogenesLamp: "This is a lie.
This is a deliberate lie, with deliberate intent to deceive.
You know very well no one was killed by the bombardment of Ft. Sumter.
The people who were killed were due to a military accident while engaged in the firing of their cannon during the surrender ceremony."
Now, now, you know better than that.
Compare: US citizens killed by accident at Pearl Harbor are still counted as victims of the Japanese attack, as are the dead & wounded at Fort Sumter.
No deception there, no lies.
Further, the Confederate bombardment was certainly intended to kill Union troops, force their surrender, and when it was over some were dead or wounded and did surrender -- from a Confederate act of war by any definition.
DiogenesLamp: "You also overlook the fact that Major Anderson seized that Fort.
He was assigned to Fort Moultrie, and without warning and with some degree of belligerence, he abandoned Fort Moultrie and seized Fort Sumter."
As he was specifically authorized to do, whatever Doughfaced Democrat President Buchanan may have said about it later.
DiogenesLamp: "The people of Port Charleston suddenly had Union cannons looming over their city and harbor.
At least one Northern newspaper had already called for the guns of Ft. Sumter to be turned on Charleston.
To think they wouldn't regard it as a frightening threat is just naive."
Regardless, Confederate leaders well knew the truth of that matter -- the fort was incomplete, minimally manned and could only survive a few weeks without resupply of food & other basics, which are said to have come from Charleston itself.
As such Sumter could pose no threat to anyone.
Similar situations have existed at Gitmo Cuba, Gibraltar Spain, Fort Mackinac Michigan, Hong Cong & West Berlin among others.
Even Portuguese Goa, Daman and Diu took 14 years before Indians invaded & annexed them militarily in 1961.
In that war Indian forces outnumbered Portuguese 10 to one, and no further war was fought because Portugal lacked any capacity for it.
But Portugal's leader didn't lack all will, and did order "scorched earth" in Goa, order fortunately ignored by his military commander there.
Portugal did not recognize India's 1961 annexation until 1974 after a military coup in Portugal brought a new government there.
Point is: plenty of historical examples show that Fort Sumter did not necessarily have to result in immediate Confederate military action against it.
That Jefferson Davis chose war speaks not to any potential Union "threat", but rather to political gains expected and immediately reaped from Confederate armed conflict against the United States, i.e., Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina & Arkansas seceded & joined Confederacy.
I saw the words “Pearl Harbor”, so i’m skipping your response.
Self imposed insanity, renders you ineffective.
Too bad about that.
Not really. As Chief Justice Chase said in his decision, "Acts of hostility by the insurgents occurred at periods so various, and of such different degrees of importance, and in parts of the country so remote from each other, both at the commencement and the close of the late civil war, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say on what precise day it began or terminated. It is necessary, therefore, to refer to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates, and, for obvious reasons, those of the executive department which may be and in fact was, at the commencement of hostilities, obliged to act during the recess of Congress, must be taken...The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed as marking the second."
April 19th was arrived at for legal reasons, and not because that marks the first act of the war. Your argument makes as much sense as saying that for the U.S. the Second World War began on December 8th since that was the day of the formal declaration rather than on December 7th, the day of the Japanese attack.
As President Roosevelt said at the time:
That's the same use of language as the Confederate Declaration of War against the United States, May 6, 1861.
But our FRiend, DiogenesLamp, has adopted the insane position that any comparison of Fort Sumter with Pearl Harbor "ist verboten", and therefore excluded from his own analyses.
But in fact that comparison is rather good, in several respects.
It is insane to compare Pearl Harbor to Ft. Sumter. It is so insane, I will not consider reading anything with that premise in it.
More lunatic stuff. No thanks. I think i’ll skip it.
They both were attacks by enemy military on US troops, they both started major wars against the United States.
And there were other comparisons.
Any suggestions otherwise are pure & deliberate insanity, FRiend.
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