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 ...
I think the 14th amendment was not ratified by a legitimate process and that it was not very well worded for what it attempted to do.
I dislike many ways in which the court has used it's "incorporation doctrine" to bully states into doing things the court wanted to impose on them, but the idea that freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms should be "optional" is something I very much don't want to accept.
So this "incorporation doctrine" thing has done some good things. The question is whether the good it has done is worth the harm it has done.
We got Abortion on Demand from it. We got Anchor Babies out of it. We banned prayer in public schools because of it. We rewrote the qualifications for president to allow anchor babies. We got "Wickard" out of it. We got "Gay" marriage out of it.
We got a host of nefarious and destructive ideas imposed on us out of the incorporation doctrine.
What a mess.
I was beginning to worry. Hadn't seen any pushback from you for awhile. :)
From President Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson:” The Nullification crisis was but the pretect, and a Southern Confederacy l, the object, THE NEXT PRETEXT WILL BE THE SLAVERY AGITATION.” Jackson would have crushed the Rebellion in it’s cradel.
Can puppet governments ratify an amendment? Was it the founders intent that occupying armies could force states to vote for amendments as directed by Washington DC?
We pay taxes now to create the illusion that a government printing and spending twice as much money as it takes in, has some credibility and ability to pay it's bills.
In all honesty, our government runs on illusion and printing presses.
In propaganda. In reality it was literally impossible to make profits off of slaves in the West.
When it was tacitly legal, nobody bothered taking slaves out to the West. There just wasn't any money in it.
Yes, but he would NOT have tolerated the Southern States leaving th3 Union, he wad tougher on that then even Lincoln. I think that the English Banking power was trying to divide the US. They correctly saw a rising threat
Slavery had to expand or it would die.
"We have held from the beginning and uniformly that the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment does not apply to the States any of the provisions of the first ten amendments as such."
"The relevant historical materials demonstrate conclusively that Congress and the members of the legislatures of the ratifying States did not contemplate that the 14th Amendment was a shorthand incorporation of the first eight amendments making them applicable as explicit restrictions upon the States."
Bartkus v. Illinois 359 US 121, 124 (1959)
I was in a discussion a week ago when a man argued that our system was modeled after the English system, with the same Aristocratic "elite" running it, but in our country.
He made some interesting arguments on this point.
Others argued it was necessary to build the wealth of the nation at a time when the nation needed to grow prosperous in order to defend itself.
I'm not sure I can find a flaw in this view of events.
Don’t get me started on Hamilton
🤣
That's what the party that wished to keep it's majority control of Congress said. The reality is it could *NOT* expand, at least not anywhere else in the United States. It could have perhaps expanded into Mexico, but that would be an internal affair of Mexico, and not an affair of the United States.
But slavery could not expand into the West. There simply was no way to establish any kind of large scale plantations in the West. The climate and lack of water would have doomed any such adventure at least until the discovery of the Ogallala Aquifer and modern pumping equipment to make irrigation possible. Probably 60 years in the future, from 1860.
Actually, the country had compromised and revised tariffs numerous times before the Civil War. What could not be compromised though was slavery because the South refused to consider compromise.
I recommend that you take the time to read and consider the references to slavery in all the confederate articles of secession and Alexander H. Stephens "Cornerstone Speech" explaining the reason for secession. Then read several of the standard histories on the coming of the Civil War. There really is no room for serious dispute on the issue of slavery as the cause of the Civil War.
Slavery could have been adopted to minining.
Not stated clearly enough:
Most all southern slaveholders were...
——DRUMROLL——
“Democrats”
But the only thing they’ve cancelled about themselves is their history in that respect.
Since several southern states had more Black slaves than white residents, I am not surprised free speech about slavery was suppressed.
One of the dumbest current habits is the reduction of slavery and the Civil War to the Democratic Party. That habit has gotten widespread thanks to the comic book history of Glenn Beck and Dinesh D’Souza, who like to keep their ‘history’ as simplistic as possible for their audience.
“Slavery was the cause of the Civil War, not tariffs”
Lincoln repeatedly said that the war was about “Preserving the Union”. But what would he know.
Seven deep south States had left the Union before Lincoln took office. That shifted the balance of power in Congress to the point that an Amendment outlawing slavery would have easily passed.
But Lincoln and the GOP Congress didn’t do that. Slavery remained legal in the loyal States all through the War and for eight months afterward.
The 13th Amendment didn’t pass Congress until 4 years after Lincoln became President, and wasn’t ratified until months after the War had ended and Lincoln had been killed. Abolition had to wait for Democrat VP Andrew Johnson to become President.
Lincoln’s casus belli was the same as what motivated George III to send in the Redcoats 90 years earlier. Neither one was willing to permit “rebel traitors” to leave. The Royal government even issued two emancipation proclamations during the Revolution, further illustrating the parallel.
Well firstly, "tariffs" is convenient term to dodge the real issue; 60% of the total production of the South going to the North. Tariffs" was a part of that, but all the protectionist schemes created by DC worked to the same purpose. The "Navigation act of 1817 gave Northeastern shippers a virtual monopoly on shipping, which they did with a great deal of gouging. Subsidies for Northern shipping also made it difficult for Southern shipping to compete with them. It's hard to make a profit when your competition starts out with a large chunk of operating cash thanks to the government.
Protectionist laws which made European products uncompetitive and so Southerners had to buy domestic products at much higher prices.
What the Northern controlled DC government was doing to the South went way beyond just "tariffs".
Secondly, how can you say with a straight face that "Slavery" was the cause of the war, when the Northern government offered them unlimited slavery on a silver platter? How can you say that with a straight face when there were 5 Northern slave states that didn't get invaded for having slavery?
You just say what we've all been taught, but the difference between you and me is that I started questioning these claims when I started noticing pieces that didn't fit right.
Actually, the country had compromised and revised tariffs numerous times before the Civil War.
It wasn't about just "tariffs". It was about protectionism, gouging in shipping, banking, warehousing, insurance, and every other hyped up cost the North imposed on the South for carrying their goods, and laws preventing them from hiring foreign ships to do the work. It was about the money being collected mostly from the South's export trade, and then spent in the North with no benefit to the South.
What could not be compromised though was slavery because the South refused to consider compromise.
Well the North certainly did compromise on slavery. They offered the South all the slavery they could possibly want. (Corwin Amendment)
Seems like both sides were in agreement on the slavery issue, so that wasn't the real sticking point for the war. What was the one non-negotiable thing? "You can't run your own trade and get out of our taxes."
That was the thing the North would not compromise on.
Slavery? Sure! Have all you want! But you better *PAY* us our 60%!
I recommend that you take the time to read and consider the references to slavery in all the confederate articles of secession and Alexander H. Stephens "Cornerstone Speech" explaining the reason for secession.
I am familiar with that. I'm familiar with all the (3 or 4) "secession documents". I'm also quite aware of which direction the money was flowing, and as a very cynical man, I have long discovered that you can always find the truth by following the money.
People lie about their honor, their morality, and their integrity, which is why you cannot trust what they say. You have to look at where the money goes.
I'm likely familiar with all the arguments you will put forth, but I very greatly doubt you are familiar with all of the arguments I might put forth. Specifically this argument isn't mine, but it seems plausible to me.
Syndicated Columnist Paul Craig Roberts has a very interesting explanation for why some people in the South claimed secession was about slavery.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/11/13/a-civil-war-lesson-for-the-uneducated/
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