Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Heyworth; GOPcapitalist
It is ok with me if you quote that document as long as you know it is not a legal document.

You are too quick to project your hostility into documents that are 150 years old as if you had written them yourself.

You loosely chose to focus on secession documents. That is ok so long as you take the time to know what they actually were and so long as you also read all the other secession declarations out there. It is evident that you have done neither.

With regards to the latter, there were a total of 12 state legislatures or conventions, 1 rump state convention (Kentucky), 1 territorial convention (Arizona), and 2 Indian tribes that published one or more secession documents of some sort during the civil war.

In total they published at least 21 documents declaring or otherwise affirming their secession. 12 were ordinances officiating the secession act itself adopted by the 12 state conventions, legislatures, or popular referendum. The conventions of 4 of those 12 states adopted an additional "Declaration of Causes" as a nonbinding legislative resolution.

The convention of South Carolina also adopted a letter of causes addressed to all the other southern states outlining why they were seceding and urging others to join them (interestingly enough half that document is a list of grievances against the north for tax hikes and tariffs).

Out of the 21 total declarations, ordinances, and other secession documents only 6 mention slavery in any context beyond a geographical reference (and only 5 of them mention it at substantial length - the sixth is in a single brief clause).

14 of those documents specify other causes, either in addition to slavery (as in the 6) or without mentioning it at all. The remaining 7 do not list any causes.

You still do not recognize how narrow minded you are.

1,057 posted on 10/24/2005 2:39:19 PM PDT by PeaRidge
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1044 | View Replies ]


To: PeaRidge
Spin, spin, spin. The fact is that the four states that bothered to lay out a declaration of causes did so as a public statement of the reasons for their actions. The secession conventions established committees to draw up these documents, and the body of the conventions voted to approve them. To call them "non-binding" willfully misses the point. The ordinances are simple legal documents saying "we're out of here." The declarations were approved documents of the conventions laying out their reasons. Clearly they were expressing not only the thinking of the convention, but how they wanted to present their reasoning to the world.

Out of the 21 total declarations, ordinances, and other secession documents only 6 mention slavery in any context beyond a geographical reference (and only 5 of them mention it at substantial length - the sixth is in a single brief clause).

How many mention tariffs? Georgia does. South Carolina does in Rhett's appeal to the other states. Who else? And by "geographical reference" do you mean the constant references in the documents of the regions as either 'slave-holding" and "non-slave-holding". That gives away the game right there.

(interestingly enough half that document is a list of grievances against the north for tax hikes and tariffs).

More like less than a third, but what slavery talk is there is prime stuff. "Experience has proved that slaveholding States cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States. Indeed, no people can ever expect to preserve its rights and liberties, unless these be in its own custody. To plunder and oppress, where plunder and oppression can be practiced with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things."

Man, talk about irony challenged. Then there's the last line: "We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States." Not a confederacy of low-tariff, foreign-shipper-using states. A confederacy of slave-holding states.

1,065 posted on 10/24/2005 4:41:14 PM PDT by Heyworth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1057 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson