Posted on 03/30/2019 12:39:26 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
In his later years, Benjamin Franklin became vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
The Society was originally formed April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, as The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage...The Society not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society.
Preamble:
"It having pleased the Creator of the world, to make of one flesh all the children of men, it becomes them to consult and promote each other's happiness, as members of the same family, however diversified they may be, by colour, situation, religion, or different states of society. It is more especially the duty of those persons, who profess to maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who acknowledge the obligations of Christianity, to use such means as are in their power, to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race; and in a more particular manner, to such of their fellow creatures as are entitled to freedom by the laws and constitutions of any of the United States, and who, notwithstanding, are detained in bondage, by fraud or violence.— From a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles, — from a desire to diffuse them, wherever the miseries and vices of slavery exist, and in humble confidence of the favour and support of the Father of Mankind, the subscribers have associated themselves, under the title of the 'Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and for improving the condition of the African race.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at benjaminfranklin.org ...
The Declaration begins with general, not merely particular statements. It asserts a universal principle. How you want to apply it is a question of interpretation. Many of the Founders recognized the problem with asserting such general principles and denying their application to particular cases.
Slavery existed in Latin and South America since the Spanish arrived, and it is not necessarily as a result of a newly discovered morality that the nations below the United States gave it up. Having the United States turn hostile to it's practice may have had more to do with it then a suddenly discovered concern for the milk of human kindness.
Those countries abolished slavery before the United States. Did you really not know that? While emancipation may not have been the result of what you cynically call the "milk of human kindness," it certainly was the result of the Enlightenment values that inspired our own revolution.
Clearly the people of Massachusetts did not believe in true equality for blacks, and I haven't yet bothered to check to see if they had any "black" laws in that state.
Are you not paying attention? Nobody believed back then in what we could call "true equality," but that did not mean that all Whites approved of cruel and demeaning treatment of Blacks or holding people in bondage.
It was clearly legal in England up until the 1830s, I think. 1830 is a long way away from 1772.
You lie. Slavery was illegal in England in 1772. You could not own slaves in Britain after that date and slaves brought to England were freed. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire (that is, in all the colonies) in 1833. If you don't know that why are you holding forth like you're some kind of expert.
See? Not so easy to "take back" their power and legislate protections for something. When a court issues a decree, there are plenty enough people who will support it whether it be in fact wrong or incorrect.
You do not understand the British system which was dominated far more by legislative power than the American. Britain didn't have a written constitution and Parliament had greater power than US legislatures. Examples taken from the twentieth century US tell us little about what was possible in Britain (or in Massachusetts) two centuries earlier.
Well he is certainly correct on that point, but this doesn't prove that most people thought this in Massachusetts in 1778.
Most of what you've said shows that you don't actually agree with Lincoln on those basic rights. I quoted him not to say that most people in Massachusetts in 1778 thought that way, but to indicate that there was a variety of opinion about African-Americans that couldn't be reduced to fear and hatred.
Also, the Adams constitution does not clearly say it is making slavery illegal, which it should if it is intending to upturn such a significant existing paradigm. Sneaking it through in flowery language is hardly securing the "consent of the governed." It's tricking them into allowing something that they didn't actually vote for.
Yet you believe all the flowery language in support of secession. And you cite the Declaration of Independence as though its no less flowery language supported your point of view. To a cynic, all statements of principle are "flowery language."
So far as I know, nobody demanded that the language supporting slavery be put back into the 1780 state constitution, nobody wanted to overturn the court decision against slavery, and John Adams never regretted either the emancipation decision or his role in writing the new state constitution.
Well, first of all -- isn't it just amazing how DiogenesLamp has defended "eye of the beholder" from the roof-tops for his alleged unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure.
Now suddenly "eye of the beholder" is a bad thing when it relates to abolition in Massachusetts.
Second, the real point here -- because DiogenesLamp has never studied even a word of real history, his brain is a total fact-free zone and literally nothing he posts can be taken at face value.
In this case, the whole idea of "penumbras" and the Mass supreme court is just fantasy.
In fact it was ordinary courts with jury findings & awards, based on the Mass constitution's "All men are created free and equal" which rendered slavery in Massachusetts impossible to enforce and slaverholders liable to suits for damages.
In 1781 a Massachusetts county court judge instructed the jury in a slavery case:
The Mass Supreme Court did rule in a different case when the chief justice charged the jury:
In the 1790 census Massachusetts reported no slaves.
Skip.
The entire report called The Essex Result appears in two sections here and here.
The quote reading:
Slaves in 1781 were about 1% of Massachusetts' population.
DiogenesLamp: "But it hardly constitutes the primary reason they opposed the 1778 proposed constitution.
It also says nothing about the legality of the institution and what where their opinions on that point."
The "Essex results" are mainly concerned with how to achieve both freedom and equality under laws and discusses these at length.
In this context it adds, almost parenthetically, that also slavery should be abolished.
So abolition in Massachusetts happened, we might say "organically", because various juries found it incompatible with their 1780 constitution's guarantee that "All men are created free and equal."
DiogenesLamp: "Clearly the author of the Essex result didn't like slavery, but a lament about it is not the same thing as an assertion that they were going to use the power of government to make it illegal.
I dare say many of the founders lamented it as well, but would not go so far as to say they will force it to be illegal through sneaky methods of interpretation."
Clearly, what DiogenesLamp's brain lacks in facts it more than compensates for in cleverness, in these words, for example.
Here's the key fact DiogenesLamp won't acknowledge: slavery cannot possibly prosper without a major legal superstructure to support it.
Take away legal supports for slavery and it must, on its own, eventually collapse -- as happened in Massachusetts.
You don't necessarily need laws against slavery to abolish it, you only need to have no laws supporting it and it must in time disappear.
But DiogenesLamp wishes to turn that on its head and tell us slavery will naturally happen unless government imposes abolition.
In fact, without government support slavery is soon reduced to the status it has today -- hidden, secretive, illegal human trafficking.
DiogenesLamp: "If their intent was to make it illegal, some words to that effect needs to be put forth in a clear cut manner...
Something that significantly upturns the existing societal norms should be spelled out clearly and in no uncertain terms."
How much more clear cut & certain could the following words be?
Their intent was to justify separation from the United Kingdom. Their intent was not to make any philosophical statements regarding the issue of slavery, which was legal in all 13 states at the time. People trying to turn the Declaration into a statement on slavery are simply dishonest.
Those countries abolished slavery before the United States. Did you really not know that?
Biggest slave countries that I recall were Brazil and Cuba. Let's see.
Brazil was 1871 when they started freeing the children born to slaves. Puerto Rico was 1873. Cuba was 1886. 1869 for all Portuguese territories.
So, countries that never had very many slaves in the first place give it up before the US. Big whoop. Countries that had many slaves gave it up after the US which is the salient aspect of my point.
Are you not paying attention? Nobody believed back then in what we could call "true equality," but that did not mean that all Whites approved of cruel and demeaning treatment of Blacks or holding people in bondage.
The cruel and demeaning treatment of blacks continued for many decades after the Civil War. It's funny, but after men supposedly "died to make men free", they didn't seem to give an actual rat's @$$ about the well being of these people. If your primary concern is preventing free labor competition to your job, then you probably wouldn't look too kindly on lower wage competition for your job either.
You lie. Slavery was illegal in England in 1772. You could not own slaves in Britain after that date and slaves brought to England were freed. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire (that is, in all the colonies) in 1833. If you don't know that why are you holding forth like you're some kind of expert.
Never pretended to be an expert on slavery. I have repeatedly said it had nothing to do with the Civil War, and so i've never bothered to learn more than the cursory details of what was going on in the slave business. I knew England abolished it as a consequence of William Wilberforce, and I recalled that was in the 1830s. Now that you've drawn my attention to it, I see the 1772 case was another example of Judicial activism, but this time on the part of a British Judge. So a tiny little Island of the British Empire stopped it by Judicial decree in 1772, while the remainder of the British Empire continued it till the 1830s. Again, 1772 is a long way from 1830.
You do not understand the British system which was dominated far more by legislative power than the American. Britain didn't have a written constitution and Parliament had greater power than US legislatures. Examples taken from the twentieth century US tell us little about what was possible in Britain (or in Massachusetts) two centuries earlier.
I understand that people are willing to accept changes decreed by a Judge because it is often an uphill fight to get them undone through the legislative process, especially when it involves the rights of an unpopular minority. It only takes a small percentage of middle of the road squishes to prevent anything from getting done.
Most of what you've said shows that you don't actually agree with Lincoln on those basic rights.
No it doesn't. When we argue morality, I argue morality. When we argue law, I argue law. I can be and am morally opposed to slavery, but as a matter of law, I'm not going to make up what I wish to be true, I'm going to acknowledge what was true at the time, and argue on the basis of that.
The laws of that era made slaves "property." We may not like this idea of designating people as "property", but we can comprehend how it was viewed in that society at that time.
Try not to let your emotions get in the way of your ability to recognize facts.
Yet you believe all the flowery language in support of secession.
Wait, what? The intent of the Declaration is not superficial. It is specifically for the purpose of justifying by natural law the right of states to leave the United Kingdom. Whether this be couched in flowery language or not, (and I don't think it's particularly flowery) it still works out to be a statement in clear English that people have a right to be separated from other people with whom they have had political bonds.
So far as I know, nobody demanded that the language supporting slavery be put back into the 1780 state constitution
And nobody demanded that clear language abolishing slavery be put into the 1780 constitution. It is my belief that misleading the public about the purpose of some constitutional clause is dishonest and immoral. If they wanted the abolition of slavery to be the intent of that clause, they should have said so honestly, and in clear language that this was the intent.
That way there could have been real consent of the governed, instead of Judicially imposed "penumbra" crap.
nobody wanted to overturn the court decision against slavery,
And how do you know this? I can't imagine the people on the losing end of this decision wanting it to stand, but often people simply do not care about the legal rights of an unpopular minority. They are fine with people whom they don't like getting cheated.
and John Adams never regretted either the emancipation decision or his role in writing the new state constitution.
I'm sure he liked the outcome, but I do not know if he accepted what happened as a valid means of achieving this outcome. Even if he did, some people want what they want to the extent that they don't mind deceit to obtain it.
The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 effectively tricked the state into abolishing slavery by the intervention of activist judges creatively interpreting the constitution to mean something it did not clearly say.
The 1776 Declaration says:
Two years later the Essex Result in 1778 said:
DiogenesLamp: "I caution people against reading interpretations into historical events that are not necessarily there."
Says the biggest practitioner of fantasy projections on Free Republic.
Could you be more utterly shameless?
DiogenesLamp: "Having the United States turn hostile to it's practice may have had more to do with it then a suddenly discovered concern for the milk of human kindness."
And so, like a broken clock which is correct twice per day, DiogenesLamp does occasionally stumble on the truth.
But it wasn't just the US which turned against slavery, it was also the greatest European powers, notably Britain & France.
Overton's window had shifted away from slavery.
DiogenesLamp: "Clearly the people of Massachusetts did not believe in true equality for blacks, and I haven't yet bothered to check to see if they had any "black" laws in that state.
I should not be surprised to find that they did."
In 1790 many groups, not just African Americans, were excluded from voting but freed blacks could vote in six states, including Massachusetts and two Southern states -- Maryland and North Carolina.
Total equality came slowly, sometimes in fits & starts, but Massachusetts was more consistent than most.
DiogenesLamp: "So yes, some people believed they should have freedom and equal rights, and the majority just didn't want them undermining their ability to earn wages.
Seems pretty simple to me. "
Because DiogenesLamp never read a real history book, he knows nothing of such cultural trends as what is called, "The Second Great Awakening" -- an antebellum religious revival, one of which effects was millions learned of the Bible's opposition to slavery (see Exodus) for God's people.
The vast majority learned of God's objections to slavery long before they figured out the market economics of it.
So, it wasn't just a few, in DiogenesLamp's word, "kooks" who opposed slavery on moral/religious grounds, it was millions of Great Awakening revivalists who had never even seen a slave, but knew the institution was morally wrong and should be abolished where possible.
x: "Somebody who goes on and on about a supposed natural right to secession ought to recognize that there was a natural right to personal freedom."
DiogenesLamp: "I have always said that, but the actual laws of that era did not.
Are we to pretend otherwise? "
On very rare occasions DiogenesLamp claims to believe in abolition, but in 99% of his posts he defends slavery and slavers.
DiogenesLamp: " 'Implied' is also in the eye of the beholder."
And here again, after shouting "eye of the beholder" from mountain tops in defending secession, suddenly "eye of the beholder" is a bad thing when opposing slavery??
DiogenesLamp: "I disagree that slavery was not part of the common law, because at that point in history, it had clearly become part of the common law."
The Massachusetts county court judge in 1781 called slavery legal "usage", meaning it had been accepted legally even though never expressly allowed by Massachusetts law.
DiogenesLamp: "Well he [Lincoln on equal rights] is certainly correct on that point, but this doesn't prove that most people thought this in Massachusetts in 1778."
But in 1781 several Massachusetts juries agreed that "All men are born free and equal" means just that.
DiogenesLamp: "I think I have proved my point that it was mostly rejected for quite different reasons."
The 1778 Essex Results document is a long dissertation on freedom, equality and representative government all of which is consistent with its explicit statement:
Because you just hate the truth and cannot deal with facts contradicting your favorite fantasies.
There is no upside for me in engaging with you.
The fact DiogenesLamp ignores here is that our Founders' justifications were all based on the "self-evident" truth, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
The history in Massachusetts and other states clearly shows they fully understood the contradictions between their highest ideals and the reality of slavery.
DiogenesLamp: "The cruel and demeaning treatment of blacks continued for many decades after the Civil War.
It's funny, but after men supposedly "died to make men free", they didn't seem to give an actual rat's @$$ about the well being of these people."
So yet again DiogenesLamp blames Republicans for the misdeeds of Southern Democrats after Republicans withdrew the US Army from Confederate states in 1876.
DiogenesLamp: "Never pretended to be an expert on slavery."
But you defend it at every turn, condemn those who opposed it and blame it most on the people (Northerners) who had the least truck with it.
DiogenesLamp: "When we argue morality, I argue morality.
When we argue law, I argue law.
I can be and am morally opposed to slavery, but as a matter of law, I'm not going to make up what I wish to be true, I'm going to acknowledge what was true at the time, and argue on the basis of that."
I'd say every word of your boilerplate here is falsified by every DiogenesLamp post I've ever read.
Sure, like a broken clock you do occasionally get the time right, but the other 99% of your words are pure fantasy projections.
You don't know real history, only your own Lost Cause lies.
DiogenesLamp: "The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 effectively tricked the state into abolishing slavery by the intervention of activist judges creatively interpreting the constitution to mean something it did not clearly say."
Wrong.
In 1781 Massachusetts juries found that no Massachusetts law enforced slavery or overrode their constitution's guarantee that:
"Cult" = Lost Cause lies.
So your words here are total lies to cover up your own malfunctioning brain, infested with Democrat "logic" & feeeeeeelings.
The truth is you have no idea what my "world view" is because you simply refuse to read & comprehend.
My "world view" is only the truth, as well as we can know it.
Yours is nothing but Lost Causer lies, so you have no real clue what actually happened in history.
DiogenesLamp: "There is no upside for me in engaging with you."
Except the opportunity to learn the truth and be set free from the Democrat Lost Cause koolaid which is destroying your brain.
That is a very good way of putting it. I don't think one can simply assume that Revolutionary-era Americans automatically assumed that all the talk about freedom, rights, and equality excluded slaves or that slaves had to be explicitly referred to for a connection to be made between freedom for colonists and human beings and emancipation for slaves.
To be sure, it was taken for granted that slaves (and Indians and women and children) wouldn't have the full political rights of citizens. In that sense, they weren't equal. But just what rights they did have was left uncertain. And while slavery was a powerful institution, there was also the idea of equality before God to complicate things. So it's by no means clear that when people spoke of rights they never wondered how their ideas of freedom would apply to slaves or that in reading about rights and freedom and equality some people wouldn't apply what they read to slavery.
Interestingly, so far as I've been able to find out, the talk was about slaves, not about race. The founding generation assumed that slaves weren't their equals. They assumed that people like themselves would be running things, and that others would defer to their wisdom, but ideologies of racial inequality didn't play the role they later would. They grew with democracy. Race had to have been part of people's thinking and feeling, but it wasn't as much in the forefront as it would be later.
One of the arguments was that the south wanted to let the slave OWNERS cast votes for all the slaves they owned. And get congressional seats allotted according to population INCLUDING the slaves.
So if you owned 100 slaves, you got to vote 100 times.
They didn't have successful revolutions at that point. They weren't independent. One reason why they weren't independent was because slavery was so entrenched there, as in the American South. Slave owners were scared that independence would cost them their slaves. The thinking of the day in Latin America favored emancipation and saw the connection with independence. If you were for one, you tended to favor the other. Many people here in the US didn't get the connection. Some did.
The cruel and demeaning treatment of blacks continued for many decades after the Civil War. It's funny, but after men supposedly "died to make men free", they didn't seem to give an actual rat's @$$ about the well being of these people. If your primary concern is preventing free labor competition to your job, then you probably wouldn't look too kindly on lower wage competition for your job either.
That's the standard boilerplate that doesn't address my points or advance the conversation. I'm getting tired of explaining to you that there are different ways and degrees of "caring" or respecting people. You don't have to love people or want to live with them to see that they have been treated unjustly.
Never pretended to be an expert on slavery. I have repeatedly said it had nothing to do with the Civil War, and so i've never bothered to learn more than the cursory details of what was going on in the slave business.
A damning admission that makes one wonder why you are here and what you think you actually contribute.
The laws of that era made slaves "property." We may not like this idea of designating people as "property", but we can comprehend how it was viewed in that society at that time.
"Society" isn't a solid bloc of people who all think alike - especially in time of revolution. That slavery could be abolished so easily in some places suggests that people were not universally regarded as property.
Wait, what? The intent of the Declaration is not superficial. It is specifically for the purpose of justifying by natural law the right of states to leave the United Kingdom. Whether this be couched in flowery language or not, (and I don't think it's particularly flowery) it still works out to be a statement in clear English that people have a right to be separated from other people with whom they have had political bonds.
I was referring first of all to the "flowery language" (your words not mine) of the secessionist manifestos, though I did also mention the Declaration of Independence. The language of the Massachusetts Constition of 1780 is not more "flowery" than that of the Declaration of Independence. If the Declaration is not "flowery," neither are Adams's words.
The claims the Declaration and Adams's state constitution make are similar. Whatever you think the narrower purpose of the Declaration, it does make philosophical claims about human rights. One can't quite treat those as law, but they are principles that people will try to live up to and realize. The state constitution did have the status of law, and what it said could be regarded as such.
It is my belief that misleading the public about the purpose of some constitutional clause is dishonest and immoral.
Says the man who just said: "When we argue morality, I argue morality. When we argue law, I argue law." By your words, whether it was moral in your eyes doesn't matter for whether it was the law.
But what we are missing here is that the British decision against slavery came a decade before the Massachusetts decision. If you were a learned lawyer, you knew that slavery wasn't on firm ground legally. The same principle that the British judges had used could be used in America, especially with the new state constitution in effect. So the Massachusetts court's ruling wasn't the unprecedented usurpation that you want to make it out to be.
You are also missing the fact that that the justices were confirming the decisions that juries had already made. Think about it a minute. Simple farmers in isolated Berkshire mountain villages deciding that people couldn't be held in bondage against their will if they hadn't done anything wrong. Impressive? In any case, the jury verdicts make the state supreme court decision look less like the order from on high than you claim it was, and more like an affirmation of popular sentiments. If you weren't so hung up on regional hatreds you might recognize that Massachusetts sometimes played a role in populist, libertarian, anti-elitist movements. The Boston Tea Party? Shay's Rebellion?
What BroJoe said in the post that you didn't read, and what Lincoln said before him, is that slavery required positive enabling legislation to continue. Without legislative support, the "right" to own slaves wasn't as secure as you make out. It's possible that the draft 1778 state constitution was written to prevent emancipation and the adopted 1780 constitution was written to promote it - or at least that Adams made a conscious decision to give no constitutional support to slavery.
I can't imagine the people on the losing end of this decision wanting it to stand, but often people simply do not care about the legal rights of an unpopular minority. They are fine with people whom they don't like getting cheated.
Once again, law or morality? Are they linked or not? Some people felt the same moral indignation about perceived injustices as you do, but they apply it to slaves, not to slaveowners. The 1780 constitution made it possible for them to act on that conviction.
Beyond that, rich merchants supported the Revolution, and risked everything they had for it. Would they really think themselves cheated if a slave had the right to leave? Most had few slaves and most slaves probably stayed around. If you are willing to die for freedom, would you regard it as an injustice if slaves won their freedom, too?
That way there could have been real consent of the governed, instead of Judicially imposed "penumbra" crap.
I am sorry if Justice Douglas sexually abused you or something. I knew he was a randy old goat, but I assumed he was before your time.
Leaving your poor damaged penumbra aside, it was a Revolutionary era. What consent of the governed or property rights meant for people who were on the wrong side may not have counted for much. You of all people, you who sees federal property automatically becoming state property in time of revolt, ought to understand the chaos of such eras. As in the Civil War, freeing the slaves was not the worst thing or the greatest injustice of the day.
I've said before that you don't appreciate how things are in moments of crisis, when everything seems to be crumbling away. But it doesn't look like you understand moments of exhilaration, either, when countries and peoples temporarily give up materialistic calculation for principles and ideals. Those times are rare, but shouldn't be demeaned. To be sure, the fact that so few New Englanders were slave owners made emancipation easier there, but that doesn't mean that emancipation wasn't a great human achievement.
And you are still trying to side step my point that the primary concern wasn't that they were treated unjustly, it's that they represented a potential threat to white wage earners.
Again, if you are motivated by a concern for black people as people, as your brothers, then why would you be indifferent to their suffering post slavery? It leaves the impression that your primary motivation was not about seeing justice done.
A damning admission that makes one wonder why you are here and what you think you actually contribute.
A refusal to accept the long held premise that the Civil War was entirely about slavery, is not a "damning admission." It is completely consistent with my point that slavery was an ex post facto excuse for what was done to the South, and the primary purpose was to control the money flow the South produced, or failing that, to destroy it so it wouldn't be a threat to those in power at the time.
*YOUR SIDE* focuses on every aspect of slavery. I note that it existed, and that both sides had every intention of seeing it continue when the war began. Since it is not germane to *MY* point, I fail to see why I should pay it the degree of attention that people obsessed with it thinks it deserves.
I note that relatives of Thomas Jefferson brutally tortured and murdered a male slave. Are these details relevant to why the Civil War was initiated against the South? I don't think so. Nor is the extent of slavery in England or English holdings. It is tangential at best.
"Society" isn't a solid bloc of people who all think alike - especially in time of revolution. That slavery could be abolished so easily in some places suggests that people were not universally regarded as property.
And how much support was their for Abortion or Gay Marriage before it was dropped on us from above? That abortion and gay marriage could be so easily implemented suggest that people were not mostly opposed to it when it happened.
See how this line of thinking works?
I was referring first of all to the "flowery language" (your words not mine) of the secessionist manifestos, though I did also mention the Declaration of Independence.
As the context of the conversation at the time was the Declaration of Independence, if you are going to shift gears to the "secessionist manifestos", you should make someone aware that you have changed the focus of your statement away from the Declaration. Nobody mentioned the "secessionist manifestos", so how would anyone realize you were referring to those?
The language of the Massachusetts Constition of 1780 is not more "flowery" than that of the Declaration of Independence.
The part about "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights..." is equally flowery in both the Declaration and the Massachusetts constitution. It only adds decoration to the Declaration, and does not speak directly to the central thesis of the document which is that states have a natural law right to govern themselves.
In the Massachusetts constitution, people may have passed it thinking it was just "flowery", and then discovered in horror that it was to be regarded as an actual active law. This is what happens when you utilize deceit to fool people into passing your agenda.
If the voting public believed the purpose of that clause was to immediately free all slaves, did they immediately call for this upon the passage of that constitution? (And I don't mean an activist few. I mean the majority of the populace.)
If this was clearly the intent, then it hardly seems necessary to have to actually *GO TO COURT* to adjudicate this interpretation. Every member of the public would have understood this to be the meaning, and a trial would have been unnecessary.
Seems like the public was surprised.
Whatever you think the narrower purpose of the Declaration, it does make philosophical claims about human rights.
About white Christian male rights. Arguing that any significant portion of those states believed it applied to black slaves is dishonest. Jefferson of course couched his own philosophy in such verbiage that he could get away with letting the public believe it was themselves to which he was referring, while others could later come along and see that it ought to extend to the entire brotherhood of man.
But when it was written, the vast bulk of the population regarded it as being about white male Christians and their families. The effort to apply it to slaves came later.
The state constitution did have the status of law, and what it said could be regarded as such.
Exactly, but law passed under the wrongful impression that it was just the usual decorative verbiage used in official documents. People passed it without realizing it would overturn slavery. If it was their intent to do such a thing, they would have written it much more clearly to accomplish that purpose. Here is an example of what I mean.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Clear, unmistakable, and to the point. No beating around the bush with flattering decorations that had to be subjected to "Penumbra" finding in order to realize the intent.
Says the man who just said: "When we argue morality, I argue morality. When we argue law, I argue law." By your words, whether it was moral in your eyes doesn't matter for whether it was the law.
Law is ultimately enforced morality, and as such it ought to reflect actual morality, though it often doesn't. So let me get this straight. You think lying to the public is okay if it overturns something you consider to be a greater wrong? Seems as if that turns the notion of "consent of the governed" on it's head. I sort of think that is pretty important morally, don't you?
If you were a learned lawyer, you knew that slavery wasn't on firm ground legally.
That flies in the face of the fact that both England and the US oversaw millions of legal slaves. How do you reconcile the extent of it with your claim that it was on a weak legal footing? Why did it take so long to get rid of it then?
What BroJoe said in the post that you didn't read, and what Lincoln said before him, is that slavery required positive enabling legislation to continue.
I believe article IV, Section 2 refers to states' laws holding slaves in bondage. Is this not positive enabling legislation? Can we not surmise such exists by Article IV's reference to it?
...or at least that Adams made a conscious decision to give no constitutional support to slavery.
I have no doubt that he did that, but I don't think the voters saw it as approving the abolition of slavery. I think they saw Article I as "flowery language" referring to themselves. I think they were surprised at the result, and most were probably okay with it because a Judge told them it was okay.
Once again, law or morality? Are they linked or not? Some people felt the same moral indignation about perceived injustices as you do, but they apply it to slaves, not to slaveowners. The 1780 constitution made it possible for them to act on that conviction.
I do not think fooling the public is securing the moral high ground of "consent of the governed." If people want to change the law based on their moral indignation about some aspect of established society, they should do so, with full knowledge and consent of what they are doing.
When gay marriage was forced on the state of Massachusetts, once again by activist judges, was this done by "consent of the governed", or was it the dictator judge that did it?
They may be all in favor of it now, but they certainly weren't when it happened. If the people of the State of Massachusetts wanted "Gay Marriage", they should have urged the legislature to pass it in clear, unequivocal language, and they should have urged their governor to sign it. Remember what you said about "positive enabling legislation"? This is what that is.
This sneaking stuff through with ambiguous language is an attempt to avoid asking the public for their consent. Same thing with getting a Judge to force it on everybody against their will.
Most had few slaves and most slaves probably stayed around. If you are willing to die for freedom, would you regard it as an injustice if slaves won their freedom, too?
I think events of the revolution put them into the mindset to think about freedom for slaves. I think this is why they soon took it up in many of the cities in the North in which slavery was not actually all that useful to them anyways. It's a lot easier to do something that you have come to regard as morally right when it can be done without costing you much for your newly found virtue.
I am sorry if Justice Douglas sexually abused you or something. I knew he was a randy old goat, but I assumed he was before your time.
Most conservatives with whom I have conversed over the years despise and detest the idea that "penumbras" can be found, which really mean just whatever the finder wants to put into the Constitution. You have managed to turn the topic into an ad hominem against me. Is mocking me more satisfying to you than addressing a significant crises in our governance in which actual laws do not mean what they say, but instead mean whatever the "interpreters" want them to mean?
As in the Civil War, freeing the slaves was not the worst thing or the greatest injustice of the day.
No. To my mind, the greatest injustice of that era was convincing the majority of states to attack other states who had done them no wrong, and thereby greatly changing the relationship between the previously sovereign states, and our monster government in Washington DC, that now controls so very much of our lives.
The Leviathan in Washington began with Lincoln, and this massively grown government has simply put yokes on all of us now.
To be sure, the fact that so few New Englanders were slave owners made emancipation easier there,
No doubt. :)
but that doesn't mean that emancipation wasn't a great human achievement.
It would have been a great achievement if it had been achieved by an awakening of those who held slaves. (Which I think was destined to happen eventually) Being imposed by a greatly empowered government in a charade of "consent" is not a great achievement, it is a tragedy tarted up as "progress."
In the Massachusetts constitution, people may have passed it thinking it was just "flowery", and then discovered in horror that it was to be regarded as an actual active law.
Clearly that did not happen. No one was horrified, so far as I know. They had agreed that people were born free and equal and drew the obvious conclusions from that. And the evolution of the law in Britain and here would have prepared people for the decision.
>> Whatever you think the narrower purpose of the Declaration, it does make philosophical claims about human rights.
> About white Christian male rights
Now you have to show where "white," "male," and "Christian" appear in the Declaration of Independence. You have already said that if Adams had wanted to make slavery illegal, he would have written it in his draft. By the same token, if Jefferson had wanted to assert that white male Christians were equal and others inferior, why did he not write that?
If the voting public believed the purpose of that clause was to immediately free all slaves, did they immediately call for this upon the passage of that constitution? (And I don't mean an activist few. I mean the majority of the populace.)
That is foolish. Freedom was on people's minds. Adams, the political officials, and the people were largely of the same mind when it came to emancipation. That's why it happened so easily. If you believe that people objected strongly to freeing the slaves, you have to provide some evidence.
But when it was written, the vast bulk of the population regarded it as being about white male Christians and their families. The effort to apply it to slaves came later.
Five or six years later? That's almost instantaneous in the larger scheme of things, but I don't buy the premise that people never considered how their ideas of freedom would affect the institution or slavery. Many people, many minds. Who's to say that the contradictions and paradoxes of fighting for freedom and holding slaves never occurred to anybody? Not even for a minute?
It would have been a great achievement if it had been achieved by an awakening of those who held slaves. (Which I think was destined to happen eventually) Being imposed by a greatly empowered government in a charade of "consent" is not a great achievement, it is a tragedy tarted up as "progress."
Does that mean that all slaveowners had to agree to give up their slaves at the same time, or that we'd have to wait until each decided to free their slaves? As long as it was up to slaveowners to decide, slavery would have gone on. Emancipation doesn't happen without government action. That can be undertaken through democratic and constitutional channels. It's a great achievement when it happens. There is no natural right to own slaves.
You want us to believe that abolishing slavery through government action is an act of force. If it is, then so is maintaining slavery. So is most of what government does. If you are mounting a defense of philosophical anarchism it's certainly strange that you do so in support of those who keep others in bondage with more exercise of force than governments use to maintain order.
In Massachusetts you did have a situation where emancipation came without a massive increase in government power. Yet you aren't happy. Picky, picky.
When gay marriage was forced on the state of Massachusetts, once again by activist judges, was this done by "consent of the governed", or was it the dictator judge that did it?
"Once again by activist judges?" You still haven't dealt with the fact that it wasn't judges who decreed emancipation in Massachusetts (though you've repeatedly been reminded of that). The judges merely upheld what juries composed of ordinary people had already decided. Until you admit and address that, there isn't much to be said for all the verbiage emanating from your penumbra.
“The right to independence exists whether anyone in foreign countries recognize it or not.”
I have to agree with you.
“Consent of the governed” is one of the key concepts that made America exceptional.
In my post 161 I wanted to put a stop to the notion that foreign nations must approve of independence movements within six months of hostilities, or 12 months, or 18, or 48 in order for unalienable rights to be legitimized.
Hopefully we will not see those spurious claims made again anytime soon.
In say 1790, many groups, not just African slaves, were often denied full citizenship rights, including non-taxpayers, non-property owners, indentured servants, Catholics, Jews, Quakers, women, Indians, convicts "held to service", children & non-citizens.
So when our Founders considered the gap between their ideals of "all men created equal" and the reality of highly restricted full citizenship rights, they were doubtless troubled by that gap, because they soon began enacting laws to close it.
First to go were restrictions on free white male voting, then those against Catholics & Jews.
At the same time some states added specific restrictions against women and freed-blacks, and a few restrictions remain in effect today -- children & non-citizens, for example.
So, my point again: African Americans were not the only group denied full rights, they weren't even the largest group (women were), and so when our Founders got to mulling over their "all men are created equal" ideals, freed-blacks were not even the first group which came to their minds as needing a political upgrade.
But many did consider the plight of African Americans a particularly egregious example of our unfaithfulness to our own ideals.
So it wasn't necessarily the case that someone in late 18th century America would assume that equal rights applied only to white men. Things were a bit fuzzier than that. Class mattered. Politically engaged people assumed that people like themselves would remain in charge. That meant having property and behaving in certain ways. If you weren't of that class, they didn't want you in office, and may not have wanted you voting, but it didn't mean that you had no rights.
The public men of the time probably assumed that the electorate and its representatives would always look and behave like themselves, but it wasn't a matter of Whites (or men) acting as a solid bloc and excluding others. The political classes didn't expect that many women or African-Americans would vote, and couldn't imagine them holding office, but color and gender bars weren't as rigid as they later would become.
I think my points are quite clear. Article 1 does not clearly state it's purpose is to abolish slavery. That has to be read into it through creative Penumbra finding.
If the intent behind it was to abolish slavery, then a failure to state this clearly is an attempt to deceive the voters. Your position seems to be that since you like the outcome, you see nothing wrong with the manner in which it was accomplished.
My position is that this was an abuse of power by the Judiciary, and/or a successful effort to deceive the public regarding an abolition law sneaked through by stealth, and without actual debate on the issue.
How could it be "obvious" when very similar language existed in the Declaration of Independence, and everyone in 1776 knew it was referring to white christian males, and not slaves? Why would it be "obvious" in the Massachusetts constitution, when this clearly wasn't "obvious" in the Declaration of Independence, from whence that verbiage was borrowed?
"Once again by activist judges?" You still haven't dealt with the fact that it wasn't judges who decreed emancipation in Massachusetts (though you've repeatedly been reminded of that). The judges merely upheld what juries composed of ordinary people had already decided.
The judges should have ruled immediately that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, because Article 1 cannot be construed to mean what it was purported to mean without it explicitly stating that is the intent and purpose of article 1, and that the voters knew of and were aware of this consequence if that clause was approved.
The judges should have instructed the plaintiffs that the words of Article 1 were too abstract, and that unless such a purpose was clearly stated in unambiguous language, they should not be read in such a manner.
Another such attempt was rejected in Pennsylvania. Here is exactly how it should have gone in Massachusetts.
That decision by the High Court of Errors and Appeals was unanimous, by the way. This is what should have happened in Massachusetts.
Did you note how the Abolition society then followed the proper approach of appealing to the legislature for a law accomplishing this?
I am beginning to think you only have a veneer of objectivity, and in reality you, like BroJoeK, will simply dismiss things that don't fit within your world view. You want to believe what you want to believe, and you will not let unpleasant facts get in your way of believing it.
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