Lee, Virginia, and the Union

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 27, 2019 | Fred H. Cox

[NKP_Vet]

The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York Uni­versity was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough of the Bronx, New York City, has, or is in­tended to have, a panel of bronze with other mementos for each of one hundred and fifty native-born Americans who have been deceased at least ten years, and who are of great character and fame in authorship, education, science, art, soldiery, statesmanship, philanthropy, or in any worthy un­dertaking. Fifty names were to have been chosen at once; but, on account of a slight change of plans, only twenty-nine have been chosen, and twenty-one more will be in 1902. The remaining one hundred names are to be chosen during the century, five at the end of each five years. The present judges of names to be honored are one hundred representa­tive American scholars in different callings. They are most­ly Northern men, although at least one judge represents each State.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "But nobody is disputing where the boundaries of states have been established, nor is anyone disputing that states are the entities which the Founders asserted had the right to be independent. "

And yet again DiogenesLamp wishes to impose his own beliefs on our Founders, who never said that.

What our Founders said was not that states have an unlimited "right to independence", but rather that, under certain conditions:

"it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish and institute...".

The people, not the states, according to our Founders.

[OIFVeteran]

And, as James Madison said in the letter I posted previously, since it was created by all the people it could only be done away with by all the people, not any subset of those people.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "If people are being honest, they will recognize that Northern whites hated blacks, and did not care about any suffering they may have endured.
Their objection to slavery was almost entirely a labor/wage concern."

I suspect this is a key point pushed by many Lost Causers who are in fact Democrats here to make certain that Republicans can never again look attractive to African Americans.
Whatever lies Lost Causers must tell, however badly they must distort the truth, first and foremost they must repeat & repeat the lie that Republicans hate African Americans.

Argue it one way, argue it a different way, take another approach altogether, it doesn't matter -- Lost Causers will always bring us back to their own prime directive: that Northern Republicans hate blacks even worse than Southern Democrats, always have, always will.

[OIFVeteran]

Did you even read any of those quotes?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Here's a quote from a New York Times piece erroneously reporting victory at Bull Run that gives some insight into why so many men rushed to enlist:

"The glorious flag that fell at Sumter is now fully avenged. The folds that hid its bright stars when it was lowered in Charleston harbor, under BEAUREGARD's guns, as a conquered ensign, flamed out again in the smoke and fire of the Bull's Run batteries, and sent dismay to the hearts of the ingrates that had shouted impiously over its former brief humiliation."

Diogenes only sees money as the reason for things, but there are other reasons, and it's hard to claim that New York money interests are the reason men flocked to the flag of the United States to fight, unless he wants to claim our forebearers were a nation of mindless sheep.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

One wonders what Diogenes believes about the natural rights of people who live outside the USA, in countries that don’t have states. Do Canadian provinces have the right? What about French Departments? Or British counties? And if it does attach to British Counties, is it the Historic County or the Administrative County that has the right? For that matter, given his opinion about West Virginia, do they have a right of self-determination, or can they only exercise that right with Virginia? So many questions.

[wbarmy]

Maybe, maybe not. But I keep my oaths.

[Pelham]

“But I keep my oaths.”

Well Colonel Washington of the Virginia Regiment, British Provincial Militia, didn’t when he took up arms against the Crown. So I suspect that Patriots didn’t give a damn.

[DiogenesLamp]

Life must be very simple for you when you simply exclude anything that doesn't fit your theories. Thousands of history books about the causes of the war? Irrelevant!

I have found that there are thousands of history books, all trying to convince people that the South started the war, and that the war was about slavery.

You know what I never found in any history books? That a war fleet was sent to Charleston with orders to use force and violence against the Confederates.

You know what else I never found in any history books? That the South was producing the vast majority of the European trade, and the vast majority of all the taxes going into Washington DC.

Funny that these extremely important details never seem to get into any history books. These omissions give the appearance that history books aren't written to tell you about history, they are written to tell a specific view of history, and oddly enough it's virtually always the same view. A view that promotes the exact same power structure that we are living with today, with the North East being the virtual center of the American universe.

Statements made by the southerners themselves about why they went to war?

They didn't go to war. Lincoln went to war, and they defended their territory. Do any of these statements made by southerners explain why Northern armies marched into their lands and killed people? Then why should I give a f*** about these statements which are irrelevant to the only significant topic of the war?

I have heard it drummed into me my whole life that the war was about slavery, and slavery is bad, and therefore the South deserved to be destroyed by armies marched into it by other states.

And then you find out these other states still had slavery after the Southern states were destroyed? WTF?

Slowly the idea dawned that we have been stampeded down this path, but the information we have been presented is not objective or accurate, it's highly biased to lay all the blame on the Southern states, and to totally rehabilitate the actions of the Northern states. Things which do not fit this narrative we have been taught, are glossed over, misstated, or deliberately left out of the history books.

A single editorial in a New York Democratic newspaper saying that they'll lose money? Wave it like a bloody shirt!

The editorials (and there were many of them) simply reinforced the view that was first put forth by my seeing and comprehending the significance of this map.

Once you learn that the South produced the bulk of European trade, this map makes you immediately realize that something is seriously wrong with this picture.

There was a lot of money at stake if the South went and stayed independent, and the people getting that money in the North would very much want to stop it.

Motive. Motive for all the lying. Motive for the destruction. Motive for the existing power structure that we are fighting today.

Perhaps I have been taught wrong, and have been viewing the wrong side as being evil all this time? Perhaps it was the Northern states, led by corrupt and deceitful men, motivated by greed who were in fact the evil players in this tragedy?

This is what the evidence I have been seeing has been showing me, and slavery is incidental to the whole thing.

[DiogenesLamp]

They disenfranchised themselves!

Lie. They were forceably disenfranchised by the power block in Washington DC who didn't like the way they would vote. They were disenfranchised for the same reason modern Washington keeps importing third world immigrants who will support socialism. To obtain voters who will allow them to do what they want, and to counteract the will of the native population.

The votes held during occupation were merely the will of Washington DC, and only a liar would claim they represented the will of the population of those occupied states.

Tyranny and Potemkin voting is all it was. Some people are okay with tyranny, provided it is of the sort that forces positions they like down other people's throats.

[DiogenesLamp]

I didn’t read your post because it is too long, and at a glance it looks like your usual spiel.

[HandyDandy]

I did read the quotes and thank you for sharing them. I doubt DL did. He has a one track mind. His mind is completely closed to any dialogue that is not run of the mill Lost Causer talk. He would not be able to comprehend the simple fact that Lincoln hated Slavery more than he felt goodwill toward blacks. Lincoln may have felt the blacks to be somewhat inferior to whites, but even feeling so, he Hated Slavery by its very nature. That was the true greatness of the man. Slavery existed before the War and it did not exist after the War, all due to one great man. He struggled over this. He met with the black leaders of the time and presented his “recolonization” proposal to them. They turned him down. I think that over the course of the War his opinion of blacks grew. He dropped the colonization idea, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, he made them citizens (again, after Taney took it away from them forever) and had plans to enfranchise the blacks.
IMHO

[DiogenesLamp]

Those would be millions of African American slaves, of course, who got nothing, but DiogenesLamp has no concerns for them, only for their "masters" who he thinks were somehow getting ripped off.

It didn't matter to the New Yorkers and Washingtonians who were getting that money, so pardon me if I think the pretense that anyone gave a sh*t about them is just theater.

Yeah, I noticed they were willing to extend slavery permanently when they thought they could keep collecting the money, so their defenders can bugger off with their lamentations about the slaves.

Pushing the Corwin amendment just to keep the status quo tells me everything I need to know about the Northern leadership's concern for slaves.

[DiogenesLamp]

This is why I don’t bother with you. I post lots of facts, and you can’t see a one. At some point a guy just doesn’t bother with people who cannot see reality.

[DiogenesLamp]

What's so absurd about DiogenesLamp's argument here is that even after the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Brits still occupied dozens of forts and trading posts in US states & territories from New York to Michigan.

Yes, you repeat that every time the topic comes up, but you ignore the fact that none of them commanded the entrance to one of their important harbors.

So the British wanted to sit in a fort somewhere out in the wilderness? They let em! It would have been a very different story had they continued occupying Fort Stirling or Fort Richmond.

And yet Washington responded by sending John Jay to London in 1794 to negotiate those forts away from the Brits.

More evidence the British were more reasonable than the government in Washington DC. Lincoln would not allow any government officials to meet with Confederate representatives in any official capacity, but did allow them to be strung along for months.

The Secretary of War had told the Confederates that the Forts would be given up to them. They published the same assertion in the "National Republican" newspaper, and the representatives of the Confederate government were continuously assured of the same thing by that Supreme court justice who claimed to be acting as a liaison with the Lincoln administration.

The Confederates tried negotiating before the war even started, so they were that much further ahead of the Washington administration.

[HandyDandy]

“This is what the evidence I have been seeing has been showing me, and slavery is incidental to the whole thing.“

You don’t look at all the evidence. For example you are in denial of the reason d’etre of the Confederacy. If you have ever read the Cornerstone Speech you would never claim that “slavery is incidental to the whole thing.” Such an absurd statement.

[DiogenesLamp]

Contrary to what DiogenesLamp would have us believe, the Declaration of Independence never says anybody, anywhere, any time and for any reasons, or for no particular reasons, has an unlimited right to declare independence which must then be instantly granted.

First of all, it is a right. Rights are granted by God, and the permission of men is not required to assert a right. Rights are not granted by men.

Second of all, the declaration does indeed say that when a government no longer has "consent of the governed", the people have a right to cast it off and create a new one that better suits them.

It does say this should not be done for light and transient reasons, but "should" is a suggestion, not a command.

[DiogenesLamp]

But only under certain well-defined conditions, as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.

You keep trying to stuff that crap into the Declaration of Independence, but the document does not stipulate any requirement beyond "consent of the governed."

You also keep failing to understand, probably deliberately so, that what *YOU* consider tolerable, someone *ELSE* may consider completely intolerable, and *YOU* do not have a right to impose *YOUR* ideas on other people of what *THEY* should tolerate.

Grievances are subjective, and you simply don't comprehend that you don't get to dictate to other people whether or not their grievances have to meet your standards.

Abuses and grievances are in the eye of the beholder, not yours.

[DiogenesLamp]

Confederates were a serious threat to the Union states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, along with the Union territories of Oklahoma and New Mexico.

If you mean they were going to take them over, then yes they were. I keep telling you that the economic powerhouse the Confederacy would have became would have states eventually moving into it's economic, and later political orbit.

The confederacy would have continued to grow at the expense of the Union in terms of states going over to join it.

I've said that for a long time.

[DiogenesLamp]

What our Founders said was not that states have an unlimited "right to independence", but rather that, under certain conditions:

Only condition in the Declaration of Independence is "consent of the governed." No other conditions mentioned. *YOU* keep trying to put in conditions, but the founders did not.

They urged caution, but made no specific requirements other than the one I named.