Breaking News: Republican senators def Donald Trump by voting to strip Confederate generals' names from Army bases

Republican senators rebelled against Donald Trump late Wednesday by voting to tell the Army to rename bases named after Confederate generals within the next three years.

The Armed Services Committee, whose members include Trump ultra-loyalist Tom Cotton, voted behind closed doors for the move, Roll Call first reported.

The voice vote was on an amendment to the annual Pentagon policy bill — the Defense Authorization Act — which was put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and former presidential candidate.

It came hours after Donald Trump tweeted furiously that he will “not even consider” renaming Forts Bragg, Hood, Lee and others.

The move puts the Republican senators on a collision course with Trump, who White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany suggested would veto any legislation which renamed the bases. …

It was also a message to the North that you can make all the laws you want but it isn't changing much on the ground here.

More like "You can kill our people and burn our homes, and force us to obey you by the strength of your arms and bayonets, but we will defy you where and when we can."

Otherwise known as "Irish Democracy."

You're the one who's studied this but I'm not aware of a lot of Confederate monuments in the Union states.

The point in contention to which you are replying is not about confederate monuments, but is instead about how black people were treated in the North.

And the answer to that is "often worse."

They only way to correct a bad ruling from the Court of Black Robed deities is to Amend the Constitution. Which in the case of the 14th amendment was the objective in getting around Scott v. Sanford. But the 14th would have been just as effective in its aim, if they had just written the first couple of line and left it at that.

I Strongly agree with this notion. The first part addressed the primary concern. The second part is where all the abuse by the Federal judiciary crept in.

Now of course I often argue that the 13th, 14th and 15th were not legitimately passed by the valid constitutional process, because when you are holding threats over someone's head, you cannot say they are voluntarily doing what you are compelling them to do, and the constitutional process was not meant to be circumvented by threats and duress.

But it is done, and there is no redo on passing it properly.

Still would have a problem with birthright citizenship. that could have been solved by putting a time limit on the Amendment.

The first part of the 14th was patterned after the Civil Rights act of 1866, and they would have been better off if they had kept that language.

"All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States"

The initial draft of the 14th amendment was much better, but I think it was Senator Trumbull that caused them to get rid of the clear and easily understood language, and replace it with the ambiguity we have now. He said he had learned there was a thing called "local allegiance" which was a condition which occurs when citizens are in foreign lands, and he thought it would be misconstrued, so they got rid of the "subject to a foreign power" clause.

The authors went overboard and added a lot of stuff to punish ex-Confederates, etc. You already know that.

Yup. They had the power, and they wanted to twist the knife as much as they could get away with. Some today are still trying to punish them.

Not quite accurate. Those slaves that resided in 13 Parishes in Louisiana, The Tidewater region of Virginia, the Coastal regions of North Carolina, South Carolina. Georgia, and a large portion of Tennessee were still slaves. These areas were exempt in the Emancipation Proclamation. While those slaves probably no longer labored for their former masters, they were still legally slaves in the eyes of the law, just as those slaves in Kentucky and Delaware. They would remain slaves until the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

You are correct. Except for the exempted portions of the former confederacy, the North had slavery for six months longer than did the Confederacy.

But as I have mentioned, I consider the manner in which the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed, a violation of the constitutional process. Threatening or intimidating states to pass an amendment is not how the process is supposed to work. It's supposed to be voluntary and the will of the people.

This is about Confederate monuments and military bases named after Confederate generals.

The heading of the thread is, but we diverged from that thesis onto another subtopic, which was how the black people were treated in the South, and I mentioned how they were treated in the North, and you said that Northern abuse of black people was irrelevant, and that only the abuse of them in the South had any relevance.

I disagreed. I pointed out both sides were equally bad.

Why? You don’t want to defend honoring the memory of slaving traitors?

I don't regard them as "traitors." The Declaration of Independence is quite clear in allowing states to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another". In plain English, this means they had a right 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."

Which makes them not traitors. It makes them a people attempting independence from a government which they believed no longer served their interests, just as the Founders did when they broke from England in 1776.

As for them being "slavers", some were, but so were five states in the Union still slavers. If the Union was launching a war to end slavery, they should have ended it in their own states first.

Ending slavery in the North six months after they ended it in the South makes it look like they were shamed into doing it because keeping it was making them appear hypocritical.

The heading of the thread is, but we diverged from that thesis onto another subtopic, which was how the black people were treated in the South, and I mentioned how they were treated in the North...

Right, because that's ground you're comfortable defending.

You want to say since both sides treated blacks poorly it's all the same.

What you don't have the guts to confront is the fact that the South was willing to sacrifice more than 600k American lives to continue slavery while the North was willing to sacrifice the same number to end it.

Blacks weren't equal then on either side and no one thinks they were, but your attempt to equate the two sides is pure intellectual cowardice.

What you don't have the guts to confront is the fact that the South was willing to sacrifice more than 600k American lives ...

The bloodshed lies on the heads of the people who launched the war. The people who sent armies into other states to subjugate them to the will of Washington DC.

Had Lincoln simply left them alone, there would have been no bloodshed. Also the last official count was 750,000 killed as a direct result of the war. The numbers dead in the aftermath have not been accurately tabulated, but i've seen numbers in the millions, and virtually all of it was in the South. Starvation, disease, exposure is what killed them, and it was all a result of the devastation left behind by the Northern Armies.

to continue slavery while the North was willing to sacrifice the same number to end it.

Absolute lie. The South didn't fight to "continue slavery", slavery under the existing US government was going to continue indefinitely anyways. The Southern states fought because they were invaded. Secondly, the North didn't fight to "end it", they fought to force Washington DC control on Southern economic output. Ending slavery wasn't part of the Northern war effort until nearly two years after the war had began.

If they were fighting a war to "end it", they would have said so right from the beginning instead of waiting nearly two years later to "end it" only in places they didn't control, but to absolutely continue tolerating it in all the places they did control.

The goal of Washington was subjugation, and they didn't give a crap about the slavery until they saw it as a useful tool in helping them win the war.

You may never have heard of the "Corwin Amendment", but this amendment was urged to be passed by Lincoln in his first inaugural address, and this amendment would guarantee legal slavery in the United States forever.

So you just stop trying to repeat the usual propaganda at me. I've learned better what the truth is, and other people who have a real misconception about what actually happened should learn better.

The bad guys were the invaders, not the people who defended their homeland.

A couple points, my opinion only on the first, with trepidation since I long ago abandoned Civil War threads due to the animosity it sometimes raises. Disclosure, my few relatives who served at the time fought for the North. Never met them, but I doubt it was to free slaves, living west of the Mississippi I doubt they'd seen a black, one or two maybe.

My opinion, slavery was certainly a major issue, particularly the expansion of slavery without which it would be doomed under our representative system. Southerners were smart enough to see that.

Ending slavery wasn't part of the Northern war effort until nearly two years after the war had beganNot really true, the Emancipation was a political act, failed, in hopes of some southern states leaving the confederacy. Under the Emancipation if the rejoined the Union slavery was just fine. It made slavery illegal in states in a state of rebellion. Slavery existed legally in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia until the 13th Amendment became law in December, 1865. Ironically it finally freed the slaves which hadn't run off owned by the wife of a man by the name of Grant, of Galena, IL. Owned by the wife, but managed by the husband. Who was fighting to restore the Union, not to free slaves.

It's also worth noting, my opinion to some extent I guess, that had Lincoln, not a military genius imo, not attempted to regain control of Ft Sumpter by ground attack, there's a good chance Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and most importantly Virginia would not have left the Union. I'm not suggesting the "invaders" were "bad people", but may not have entirely understood the ramifications of their actions. By this standard, if the free zone in Seattle expands to the extent the Federal government enters the fray, President Trump is the head of an invading force.

My opinion, slavery was certainly a major issue, particularly the expansion of slavery without which it would be doomed under our representative system. Southerners were smart enough to see that.

This topic was not something I was interested in for most of my life. I started getting interested in it about three years ago. I see that "expansion of slavery" over and over again in thread after thread, repeated by many people, and there are plenty of historical documents that says this very thing. The Southern states left because slavery was doomed, because the other states had effectively blocked the "expansion of slavery."

So I asked myself, "Would slavery have actually expanded to the territories?" My knowledge of the areas of the country that were the "territories" led me to believe that you couldn't do plantation style farming in these areas. So I decided to look at it.

I looked at a modern cotton farming map. My reasoning was that if slavery was going to "expand" in the territories, it would likely do so by growing cotton.

Another Freeper who knows about agriculture told me that West Texas and everything west of West Texas, only grows cotton as a consequence of modern irrigation systems, and it would have been impossible to grow any cotton in the territories back in 1860.

So no "expansion of slavery" to grow cotton in the territories.

Someone mentioned to me "tobacco." So I looked at it.

No, no Tobacco growing in the territories either.

So what were these slaves actually going to do in the territories? The issue appears to be more hype than reality.

Continued on next message...

Not really true,

War started in April of 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January of 1863. That's a year and 8 months, which is why I said "nearly two years after the war had began."

Ending slavery was clearly not announced in April of 1861, but that's when the war started. The officially stated reason for the war was to "Preserve the Union." No statement was made about ending slavery.

Under the Emancipation if they rejoined the Union slavery was just fine.

Ironically that would have thrown a monkey wrench into subsequent efforts to pass the 13th amendment.

Lincoln didn't really care about Fort Sumter. He offered to give it up in a discussion with representatives of Virginia if Virginia would issue an assurance that they would not join the Confederacy. I believe his exact word's were "A state for a Fort is no bad business."

Indeed, the Washington DC newspaper "The National Republican" printed an article that said the government was giving up Ft. Sumter. I have a link for this on my other computer which isn't available at the moment, but I will get you a link to it if you want to see it.

Lincoln wanted and needed a war. If he did nothing, the South would get further and further away from recovery, and people would accept it as a different country, most especially the Europeans, which is where the great threat to the North lay.

By this standard, if the free zone in Seattle expands to the extent the Federal government enters the fray, President Trump is the head of an invading force.

The Southern states held democratic elections and referendums and their states peacefully decided they wished to be independent of the existing government which they no longer saw as serving their interests.

This is a little different from going into an area, seizing it with threats of force and intimidation, then declaring it to be it's own autonomous zone.

If the entire state of Washington had held a vote and wanted to secede, I would say let them go, but a small band of malcontents just seize an area and declares themselves a country? No.

If you're suggesting that slavery wouldn't be economically effective in western agriculture, I suspect you're right. In Washington's personal papers you'll find lots of references to slavery as an uneconomic system. Of course he didn't sell many slaves, wouldn't break up families, and supported those too old to work the fields rather than sell them. For others, perhaps. I believe he converted some tobacco fields to vegetables. Partly because of soil depletion due to tobacco, but also to lower the cost of maintaining slaves that were no longer economically viable. Of course others would manage differently.

I don't think that was the crux of the expansion issue. After all slaves can be used in non agricultural pursuits as well. House servants and such. Probably some as commercial employees, stores, stables and the like. So there could be demand in the western states.

IMO the real problem was the rule of 2s. One new state, 2 new Senators. The future political balance would be changed dramatically if new Senators had no slave owning constituents. And those wealthy enough to own slaves would tend to be the more influential constituents. Without expansion, the handwriting was on the wall.

Under the Emancipation if they rejoined the Union slavery was just fine....Ironically that would have thrown a monkey wrench into subsequent efforts to pass the 13th amendment.

It didn't, slavery was legal in those northern states which hadn't banned it until 12/1865.

I don't think it was that Lincoln needed a war as much as his passion the keep the nation intact. He had other alternatives. One I've heard mentioned, not written about much, was the very real ability of the US to launch a naval operation at what was at the time at best a relatively raw militia in Charleston. Once he began raising a land invasion force, I doubt Virginia or any other southern state would trust his intentions. I wouldn't, even knowing Lincoln didn't care a whit about slavery at the time of his election. He made many offers, including legislation and, I believe, an amendment guaranteeing slavery where it existed.

As to Washington, I think the concept of secession has been settled by force of arms. In 1860, I'd likely have thought it a states right. The free zone, that's criminality in the process of raising itself to insurrection and can't be allowed to stand.

In Washington's personal papers you'll find lots of references to slavery as an uneconomic system.

Washington was absolutely correct when he wrote that. But Washington was likely unaware at the time of the later consequences of a revolutionary invention created by Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney in 1794.

The Cotton Gin turned an institution with declining profits into one with massively growing profits. It single handedly made slavery not only profitable, but very profitable.

The economics of slavery changed greatly after Washington died in 1799.

I don't think that was the crux of the expansion issue. After all slaves can be used in non agricultural pursuits as well.

Not significantly. As cotton was the only thing which made them profitable before, it is unlikely anything else would have made them profitable subsequently. In the growing regions of the South they had millions of slaves. In trying to use them in the territories, they would have had hundreds, perhaps at most thousands. Even at that it would have been less than 1% of what was going on in the South.

According to this Wikipedia article on the "New Mexico Territory", during the time "New Mexico Territory" stretched from Texas to California,

there were no more than a dozen black slaves in the entire region. There was simply nothing for them to do which would make profit to the extent that they would be worthwhile.

But you are right. Actual expansion of slavery was not the crux of the expansion issue. Representation in Washington DC was the crux of the expansion issue.

The Northern coalition had gotten the laws and national policy rigged so that the Southern states were funneling 60% of all the revenues produced by slavery in the South into the pockets of men in New York and Washington DC. They had used tricks like the "Navigation act of 1817" and the "Warehousing Act" to get control of this income stream, and if the South could get more representation in Washington DC, they could undo some of these laws, and also reduce their tax burden. The South was producing the vast majority of all the taxes for the Nation, and most of the money got spent in the North.

This is pretty much it. It was all about control of Washington DC back then, just as it is all about control of Washington DC right now.

Do you think this "Black Lives Matter" crap is a real issue, or one ginned up to get political gain in Washington DC during an election year?

"Expansion of Slavery" was the same sort of tool in 1860 that "Black Lives Matter" is right now. Nobody gives a crap about the actual people involved, they just want to ride the issue to power in Washington DC.

It's all astroturf meant to manipulate elections so as to gain power.

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