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Reconsidering Slavery and the Civil War
https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com ^ | September 4, 2019 | Phil Leigh

Posted on 09/09/2019 9:42:11 AM PDT by NKP_Vet

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To: DoodleDawg
Where? The Constitution says the state legislature must approve partition. Well the West Virginia legislature did approve, at least that part that wasn't off rebelling did.

Again, might does not make right. The fact that Imperial Washington could muster more men and more guns does not make them right nor does it make their legal arguments correct. It simply means they had more men and more guns. The constitution is quite clear that the federal government may not create a state from the territory of an existing state without the consent of that state's legislature. The legislature of Virginia was democratically elected. It had been recognized as legitimate by one and all for generations. The tyrannical Lincoln Administration in this as in many other things trampled on the US Constitution they swore to uphold.

321 posted on 09/14/2019 8:13:19 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird

Guess you are going to have to live with it.


322 posted on 09/14/2019 9:22:08 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: FLT-bird

Guess you are going to have to live with it.

“The same attitude prevailed during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln readily admitted that his September 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was a necessity of war. Major General George McClellan, who then commanded the North’s biggest army and would become Lincoln’s opponent in the 1864 presidential elections, believed it was a deliberate attempt to incite Southern slave rebellions. Lincoln was himself aware that such uprisings might result.”

The slaves had a right to be free men. If they rose up against their masters to win their freedom, how is that different from us rising up against the British King to gain our freedom.


323 posted on 09/14/2019 9:25:06 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

The trouble with your idealized anachronistic view of history is that “freed” slaves were regarded as contraband of war by Union forces. Fact. They were badly mistreated, even to the point of destroying temporary bridges over flooded rivers, allowing “freed” slaves following Union forces to drown. Fact.

Deal with facts, not emotions.


324 posted on 09/14/2019 9:28:59 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Bull Snipe
Guess you are going to have to live with it.

Nowhere is it written that I must agree with it.

325 posted on 09/14/2019 9:36:15 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: Bull Snipe
The slaves had a right to be free men. If they rose up against their masters to win their freedom, how is that different from us rising up against the British King to gain our freedom.

States have the right to be free of a tyrannical federal government they no longer consent to be ruled by. How is that different from the colonies rising up against the British King to gain their independence?

326 posted on 09/14/2019 9:38:08 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: RegulatorCountry

No emotion, Sherman didn’t want a thousand or so freed slaves following his army through the middle of enemy territory.. That is why the bridge was destroyed. called military necessity, Fact


327 posted on 09/14/2019 9:38:30 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: FLT-bird

So you would have not problem with 3 million slaves rising up and winning their freedom with the loss of a lot of blood.


328 posted on 09/14/2019 9:41:13 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

Sort of puts your romanticized anachronisms in proper perspective though, doesn’t it? Sherman didn’t give a damn whether they died. They weren’t human beings they were contraband of war and they were interfering with his mission to destroy Georgia and the Carolinas.


329 posted on 09/14/2019 10:00:00 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry

I had no problem with Sherman’s actions. Sherman’s concern was his army and his campaign. The last thing he needed was a thousand or so freed slaves following his army in enemy country. What’s wrong with that.


330 posted on 09/14/2019 10:05:21 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

Puts the lie to your claim that they had rights as free men at the time. You can’t have it both ways. You can view slaves as property, which is what contraband of war is, or you can view them as human beings with rights. Were there ever any charges brought, war crimes trials or the like, for causing the slaughter of hundreds of free men with rights, or was it ignored as just so much collateral damage of war?

You know the answer to this.


331 posted on 09/14/2019 10:27:52 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry

According to Thomas Jefferson, all men are created equal.
Southerners viewed slaves as property.

Were there ever any charges brought, war crimes trials or the like, for causing the slaughter of hundreds of free men with rights.
Yes. that would be the trial of Henry Wirz. Commandant of the Andersonville Prison of War camp.


332 posted on 09/14/2019 10:36:49 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

Interesting, since all Civil War POW camps were hellholes. I have a 2nd great uncle who died in Point Lookout, Maryland. Do you suppose that was any better? It wasn’t.

But, to the point, no one thought anything at the time, of Sherman ordering the destruction of a bridge leading to the drowning deaths of hundreds of “freed” slaves who were following him.

Because they were in the way, basically, is that about right?


333 posted on 09/14/2019 11:09:21 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Bull Snipe
So you would have not problem with 3 million slaves rising up and winning their freedom with the loss of a lot of blood.

How can you be against slavery but for the federal government ruling over millions of Southerners who do not consent to be ruled by it, disenfranchising them for years, etc? The right to free association is sacred when its for slaves but doesn't count when its for White Southerners?

334 posted on 09/14/2019 11:54:03 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird
S--T--R--E--T--C--H.

Hardly. Just an logical progression from your claims.

Providing for the national defense against foreign invasion is the very first responsibility of the federal government or indeed any government.

Hence the funding for an army and a navy.

This does not remotely concern the principle that powers not delegated to the federal government by the sovereign states remain with the states - as the 10th amendment makes clear.

But remember, your claim is that only powers explicitly granted to Congress are allowed. Nowhere does the Constitution explicitly allow for an air force. Or an air traffic control system or an interstate highway system or a Food and Drug Administration or any of the other agencies we all depend on and which exist because of implied powers. The Constitution says that Congress will provide for the national defense. Implied in that is the power to create any armed forces branch needed to accomplish that. But in your world the Air Force cannot be legal because the Constitution does not explicitly allow for it.

This does not remotely concern the principle that powers not delegated to the federal government by the sovereign states remain with the states - as the 10th amendment makes clear.

Sure it does. The power to admit states and to approve any change in their status are powers reserved to Congress by the Constitution. Implied in that is the power to approve leaving as well.

335 posted on 09/14/2019 12:19:49 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: FLT-bird
The states do not derive their powers from the US constitution. It is very much the other way around. You seem to fail to grasp that. What this means is that the states do not require permission from the federal government to exercise a power not specifically stated in the constitution - such as the right to unilateral secession. The power to expel another state from the club by other states would have to be spelled out in the club bylaws. It isn't. Ergo, that individual state's right to free association prevails. They can remain in if they so choose. They can leave if they so choose.

And all that crap ignores the question I was asking. If states can leave unilaterally because the Constitution doesn't prevent it then why can't they expel a state since the Constitution doesn't prevent it. You claim then can do one but not the other. Why not?

336 posted on 09/14/2019 12:22:30 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: FLT-bird
No they weren't. Might does not make right.

They would have been wrong even if they won their rebellion. Although winning does erase a multitude of sins. The South should have tried it.

I know what it means. Clearly you don't.

LOL! Sovereign is defined as possessing supreme or ultimate power. Yet the Constitution lists action after action that states are forbidden to do. Rufus King pretty well summed it up: "The states were not “sovereigns” in the sense contended for by some. They did not possess the peculiar features of sovereignty,—they could not make war, nor peace, nor alliances, nor treaties. Considering them as political beings, they were dumb, for they could not speak to any foreign sovereign whatever. They were deaf, for they could not hear any propositions from such sovereign. They had not even the organs or faculties of defence or offence, for they could not of themselves raise troops, or equip vessels, for war.... If the states, therefore, retained some portion of their sovereignty [after declaring independence], they had certainly divested themselves of essential portions of it."

337 posted on 09/14/2019 12:28:38 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: FLT-bird
When Lincoln sent a heavily armed flotilla into the territorial waters of the independent sovereign state of South Carolina.

I believe that the South began their bombardment of Sumter while the resupply ships were still in international waters.

Did he say this in the federalist papers or his public utterances before ratification? If so it might be evidence as to what the parties actually agreed to when they ratified the constitution.

The letter is dated July 20, 1788. New York ratified the Constitution on July 26.

If he did, it seems awfully strange then that 3 states including the two largest and most powerful ones expressly reserved the right to unilaterally secede when they ratified the constitution.

They can't reserve a right that's not allowed to them.

It would be entirely inconsistent for a man who penned the declaration of independence in which the 13 colonies certainly did not obtain mutual consent from the rest of the British empire prior to seceding from it.

You keep forgetting that Revolutionary War thing, don't you? Have you not heard of it?

So you have no argument at all on the merits. Instead you try to fall back on "might makes right". This is the kind of argument put forth by the worst monsters in history to "justify" their aggression too.

Yeah but fortunately they tend to lose. Like the South did.

338 posted on 09/14/2019 12:34:45 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: RegulatorCountry

When it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war, neither the United States or the Confederate Governments can claim any claim any moral high ground. Both governments failed miserably in dealing with the POWs the held.

Yep they were in the way.


339 posted on 09/15/2019 2:23:15 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: FLT-bird

It actually very easy. It is my opinion. You have your opinion on the issue and it differs from mine. Just as you have a different opinion on the Supreme Court and it’s place in American Government.


340 posted on 09/15/2019 2:30:22 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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