Posted on 09/30/2024 10:03:18 AM PDT by MtnClimber
In the years before the Civil War, slaveholders were the greatest threat to free speech in the United States. White Southerners used state laws, a congressional gag rule, suppression of the mail, and physical violence to silence abolitionist speech because they believed it was dangerous.
In 1830, for example, Louisiana penalized anyone using “language in any public discourse, from the bar, the bench, the stage, the pulpit, or in any place whatsoever,” as well as “in private discourses or conversations,” that had “a tendency to produce discontent among the free colored population of this State, or to incite insubordination among the slaves therein.” In other words, those who spoke out against slavery or racial discrimination would be in violation of this law. The mandated punishment ranged from three to 21 years of hard labor to death.
Other states enacted identical statutes. As one South Carolina newspaper declared, the topic of slavery “shall not be open to discussion.”
Speaking out against slavery in the U.S. took courage. If anti-speech laws were not enough, mobs filled in the gaps. Some abolitionists were brutally beaten while others were murdered.
Abraham Lincoln engaged this issue in a speech he delivered at the Cooper Union in New York City in February 1860. Speaking directly to white Southerners, he said, “You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.” Lincoln pointed out that Southern Democrats were more likely to “grant a hearing to pirates or murderers” than to Republicans.
Indeed, when white Southerners gathered together, Lincoln said that “an unconditional condemnation” of Republicans was “the first thing to be attended to.”
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearhistory.com ...
Prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment, most of the Bill of Rights applied only to the actions of the federal government. States were free to limit speech, religion, the press, etc.. Including gun possession and ownership.
In the United States, the abolition movement faced much opposition. Bertram Wyatt-Brown notes that the appearance of the Christian abolitionist movement "with its religious ideology alarmed newsmen, politicians, and ordinary citizens. They angrily predicted the endangerment of secular democracy, the mongrelization, as it was called, of white society, and the destruction of the federal union. Speakers at huge rallies and editors of conservative papers in the North denounced these newcomers to radical reform as the same old “church-and-state” zealots, who tried to shut down post offices, taverns, carriage companies, shops, and other public places on Sundays. Mob violence sometimes ensued."[12]
A postal campaign in 1835 by the American Anti-Slavery Society (AA-SS) – founded by African-American Presbyterian clergyman Theodore S. Wright – sent bundles of tracts and newspapers (over 100,000) to prominent clerical, legal, and political figures throughout the whole country, and culminated in massive demonstrations throughout the North and South.[13] In attempting to stop these mailings, New York Postmaster Samuel L. Gouverneur unsuccessfully requested the AA-SS to cease sending it to the South. He therefore decided that he would “aid in preserving the public peace” by refusing to allow the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South himself, with the new Postmaster General Amos Kendall affirming, even though he admitted he had no legal authority to do so.[14][15][16][17] This resulted in the AA-SS resorting to other and clandestine means of dissemination.
Many evangelical leaders in the United States such as Presbyterian Charles Finney and Theodore Weld, and women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe (daughter of abolitionist Lyman Beecher) and Sojourner Truth motivated hearers to support abolition. Finney preached that slavery was a moral sin, and so supported its elimination. "I had made up my mind on the question of slavery, and was exceedingly anxious to arouse public attention to the subject. In my prayers and preaching, I so often alluded to slavery, and denounced it.[18] Repentance from slavery was required of souls, once enlightened of the subject, while continued support of the system incurred "the greatest guilt" upon them.[19] Finney clearly stated, "If I do not baptize slavery by some soft and Christian name, if I call it SIN, both consistency and conscience conduct to the inevitable conclusion, that while the sin is persevered in, its[20] perpetrators cannot be fit subjects for Christian communion and fellowship." Finney also conscientiously believed that "the time is not far distant when the churches will be united in this expression of abhorrence against this sin."[21]
Despite such determined opposition, many Methodist, Baptist, Adventist, and Presbyterian members freed their slaves and sponsored black congregations, in which many black ministers encouraged slaves to believe that freedom could be gained during their lifetime. After a great revival occurred in 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, American Methodists made anti-slavery sentiments a condition of church membership.[22] Abolitionist writings, such as "A Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument" (1845) by George Bourne,[23] and "God Against Slavery" (1857) by George B. Cheever,[24] used the Bible, logic and reason extensively in contending against the institution of slavery, and in particular the chattel form of it as seen in the South. In Cheever's speech entitled, "The Fire and Hammer of God’s Word Against the Sin of Slavery", his desire for eliminating the crime of slaveholding is clear, as he goes so far as to address it to the President.
Other Protestant missionaries of the Great Awakening initially opposed slavery in the South, but by the early decades of the 19th century, many Baptist and Methodist preachers in the South had come to an accommodation with it in order to evangelize the farmers and workers. Disagreements between the newer way of thinking and the old often created schisms within denominations at the time. Differences in views toward slavery resulted in the Baptist and Methodist churches dividing into regional associations by the beginning of the Civil War.[25]- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christian_abolitionism&useskin=vector
“Southerners went to great lengths to suppress freedoms and maintain the abomination of slavery.”
Is that all you know?
George Washington, Father of our Country, was a southerner.
Thomas Jefferson, Father of the Declaration of Independence, was a southerner.
James Madison, Father of the Constitution, was a southerner.
George Mason, Father of the Bill of Rights, was a southerner.
Patrick Henry . . .
1860’s Republicans were the anti-slavery party. And democrats were the slavery party and later the party of Jim Crow.
I lived in the Jim Crow South - it was a one party oppressive democrat party that ran the white citizen councils, KKK, and filled the ranks of every political office from Governors to dog catchers for the whole region for decades.
Democrats went from ‘blacks can do no right’ to ‘blacks can do no wrong’. Both position toxic to the black community.
I feel even more strongly about this than you do.
I am so opposed to slavery that I will not even celebrate Kwanzaa because that holiday celebrates African culture.
And Africa and its culture was the birthplace of slavery. From there it was exported to other places.
Victims of slavery - all of them - need to look no further than evil Africa to find the thing to condemn.
“I lived in the Jim Crow South . . .”
Did you ever live, or visit, in the Jim Crow North and see any of the segregated ghettos?
The Soviet Union was built on slave labor.
They were more than that. They favored big government, high taxes, protectionism, large government projects, and social change.
Their billing as an anti-slavery party was severely damaged when in March of 1861, the Republican controlled House and Senate voted by a 2/3rds majority to pass the Corwin Amendment to preserve slavery indefinitely.
Their positions as the "anti-slavery party" was just a sales pitch, because when they had the chance to vote *AGAINST* slavery, they voted for it.
Just like modern politicians, they say one thing and do another.
They did that in Haiti. It’s worked out really well for them, hasn’t it? Now they can’t wait to get into the land of the “slavers”.
I don’t want to have any slaves, but I want to have the freedom of association. And we absolutely do not have that today, with all the anti-discrimination laws in the books.
The best solution is separation, as in each side having their own country and determining their own destiny. No slaves and no slavers. And there could also be a third country with mixed races, for those who crave “diversity” and the effervescence of riots, shootings, and discord. Makes everybody happy.
What do you think?
Well that’s the basic idea of feudalism, isn’t it?
Communism is just a re-labeled version of that brand.
But at least the Feud required service from the manor lord: he had to go fight. The Communists couldn’t bring themselves to do even that: they also had conscription, and the only thing the Bolshevikii did was bring up the rear as Zampoliti.
All the downsides with no upside. Great deal, huh?
Most ominously, the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy in Charleston in 1822 intended a general slaughter of whites before the conspirators would take to ships in Charleston harbor to sail away to the free black republic in Haiti. Many of the conspirators were relatively well-treated, trusted, and well-thought of by their white owners and associates, so the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy and the nihilistic violence it intended deeply unsettled the South.
A larger point also deserves mention. The South's fearful unwillingness to think about and discuss slavery and its evils discouraged Southerners against efforts toward reform or abolition. Had such a discussion been had, slavery might have mitigated and abolished gradually on terms that would have been far better than the devastation of the Civil War.
Haiti is an example of being politically free without being spiritually free. Our Great Awakenings gave us, among other things, a greater belief in God than in government. Our country's founding fathers weren't perfect, but they moved the needle in the right direction for liberty and honor. Not so with country's like Haiti and Mexico that were started about the same time as the U.S. but without a real great awakening changing the people (along with the people's expectations from their leaders).
Bkmk
They were betrayed and destroyed by the French. Then the really nasty Haitian and anti-Christian leaders took over and created what came after.
Yes, they created the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and they would have sided with the Union.
Scotus in the 20th century unconstitutionally “applied” the BOR to the states.
States should be free to limit, as you say, speech, religion, the press, etc.. Including gun possession and ownership.
Trouble is, we've all been misled as to what was the purpose of the civil war. The South could have kept all of it's slaves so long as it agreed to keep sending all that money to the North.
The Passage of the Corwin Amendment by a 2/3rds majority in both the Republican controlled house and Senate shows that slavery was no obstacle to a continuing future in the "Union."
What the war was about was the fact the South was going to stop sending so much money into the pockets of the Northern industries. They were going to manage their own trade themselves, and thereby *KEEP* the lion's share of the profits, unlike what they had in 1860.
The Union government would tolerate permanent slavery, but it was never going to allow them to stop pumping money into Washington DC and the Northern corporate interests.
*THAT* is what the war was about.
No. The amendment wasn't meaningless and did provide some protection of citizens' basic rights against infringement by state governments.
More nonsense from Diogenes.
Right, but not wholesale incorporation of the BOR.
There is nothing in the congressional debates around the 14th Amendment that suggest incorporation.
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