Posted on 09/02/2019 4:35:14 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
See the Lincoln-Douglas debate #6.
Stephen Douglas:
We then adopted a free State Constitution, as we had a right to do. In this State we have declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding States are civilized men as well as ourselves; that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide, therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits. I assert that they had as much right under the Constitution to adopt the system of policy which they have as we had to adopt ours. So it is with every other State in this Union. Let each State stand firmly by that great Constitutional right, let each State mind its own business and let its neighbors alone, and there will be no trouble on this question. If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that this Republic can exist forever divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it and the people of each State have decided. Stand by that great principle, and we can go on as we have done, increasing in wealth, in population, in power, and in all the elements of greatness, until we shall be the admiration and terror of the world. We can go on and enlarge as our population increase, require more room, until we make this continent one ocean-bound republic.
Abraham Lincoln:
Judge Douglas asks you, "Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?" In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that: when the fathers of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?
The Founding Fathers could not undo in just a few short years what the King spent over a century doing.
Because of the false teachings of progressivism, it has become one of the greatest of ironies that the "Great Emancipator" was also one of the most ardent defenders of the Founding Fathers - specifically on the topic of slavery.
The writings of Lincoln are full of defense for the Founders.
bkmk
Though he didn't seem to put much stock into this principle upon which they founded the nation.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "
Another bookmark.
Bump.
Why aren’t all men created equal?
Who said they weren't?
Liberals.
Me: The Founders did not make America racist or slaver. The Leftist Democrats did.
I noticed you omitted that part. So I just wanted to know.
And yet he nibbled at the Constitution himself.
Men decide who is created equal and those are who are not equal.
So then you have no problem with the slaves seceeding from the slave states and forming their own Union!
I notice that people often bring it up in efforts to claim the Declaration of Independence was intended to be some commentary on slavery, which it wasn't.
I quote the salient point of the document, and one which people cannot twist into meaning something it was never intended to mean, as they constantly do with that "all men are created equal" part.
Sure, I believe all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, but as it is used today, it is a distraction from the actual intent of the document, which is to argue that "people" have a right to to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.
It bugs me when people try to make the Declaration of Independence about slavery. It wasn't. It was about independence and why the states had a right to have it.
I think the slaves had just as much right to freedom as anyone, but I am not going to pretend the laws or the people of that era agreed with me.
Out and out broke it many times in the pursuit of his political goals. Left the nation with the relationship between the federal government and the states, very greatly changed from how he found it.
The Federal became the master of the states instead of the servant.
“It bugs me when people try to make the Declaration of Independence about slavery. It wasn’t”
Have to agree with you. The primary author of that document owned over 600 slaves in his life time. He only freed 10 of them, 5 while alive, and 5 in his will after his death.
He certainly was not going to make an issue of slavery in such an important document as the “Declaration of Independence”
Many instances of the press writing of strategic plans “telegraphing” to the southern press.
One being of a so called history writer hiding behind a stump (at night) while Grant discussed plans with his staff. Burnside, later had ordered he be executed in which Grant countermanded those orders and let the SOB go.
I would have shot the SOB right then and there.
Sherman correctly said that if all the press was killed, that they would be getting news from hell by morning...Paraphrasing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.