Posted on 05/24/2007 6:03:30 AM PDT by Rebeleye
...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
As opposed to buying it from whom?
Politics has always been involved with the court. It is an imperfect system. I don't know the solution.
Considering the genius of Madison and the rest who wrote the Constitution I can't believe that they didn't also consider the problems and hit on the court as the best possible solution in light of the alternatives. And surely you can agree that they've been on the mark far more often than not?
From that time period, Robert E. Lee comes to mind.
A 30 second google search on "Salmon Chase book" gives over a million hits. Right at the top is this collected works of his papers and scholarly work on his life. The books are out there.
And why does it take a PhD to write a definitive work? For an example, Shelby Foote had no PhD, as near as I can tell. Carl Sandburg didn't either.
I know it is just a work of fiction, but have you Lincoln by Gore Vidal? It really is a wonderful book and Chase plays such a big role in the book as does Seward. Vidal paints an excellent portrait of Lincoln.
When there is a rebellion, maybe so. There was no rebellion in 1861. States don't "rebel" against themselves, and the People of the State don't "rebel" against themselves or their State when they act as a People in convention assembled.
Kings cannot "rebel" against themselves no matter what they do, by definition. Neither can a People.
Your insistence that there was a "rebellion" is a flat denial of the sovereignty of the People, and of their ownership of the United States.
You've admitted that the People are sovereign, right here on this board. It took me weeks to beat that out of you, because you don't WANT the People to be sovereign -- you want a faction to be sovereign, a cabal, a club, a sodality of Non-Sequiturs to be sovereign. But you despise the People and call them in the wrong all the time, and say that they "rebelled" -- because they are Americans, and not a bunch of weenified hand-lickers.
Which is what you want them to be. Subordinate, yielding, teachable, pliable, malleable, docile, and above all, compliant.
I can’t seem to bring myself to read anything by Gore Vidal. No doubt it’s my loss, but there it is.
Lie 1: The People "rebelled".
Lie 2: "It was all about slavery."
Still lying to the newbies every chance you get, aren't you?
Just sucking up bandwidth with off-topics again, are you?
It is a very good book... but if I had known more about him, I would not have bought it.
Nothing "hard" about it.
Nothing factual, either.
And what do you mean, "our section"? You spit on the South 24/7/365, and then talk about "our"?
It's one thing to correct a family member or disagree in private, and another to revile them in public, and make common cause with stranger-enemies like Non-Sequitur, who couldn't even stand the air down here and regarded his time spent in the South as -- his words -- wasted.
You mean the man who said secession was rebellion...and then joined it anyway? Please.
You'll notice Davis said "Armed insurrection began ..." and there's good reason for that. If a police officer commandeers a vehicle to chase fugitives it's not a casus belli. If state officials start attacking federal troops, it's going to have serious repercussions.
I've got David Detzer's Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War in front of me. He describes the transfer but I can't find your incident, unless you mean this: "The skipper of the rented schooners sensed what the signal meant and tried to prevent Hall from taking the boats to Sumter, but Hall and a sergeant shoved the captain into the hold and took off, arriving shortly after Seymour."
So they rented a boat, and used others of their own, and the captain balked when he found out what they were doing. More broken agreements from the South Carolinians.
The South Carolinians verbally explained that any shift of troops by Anderson from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter would violate their proposal. Buchanan said that his policy was to maintain the status quo but that he couldn't pledge anything. He said that it was a "matter of honor among gentlemen."
From Klein: "All parties went away believing a bargain had been struck, without knowing exactly what the bargain was, who the parties to it were, and what its precise terms were."
"Informal truce" indeed! It's a fine agreement when no one knows what they're agreeing to? Buchanan says he can't pledge anything, and they assume he's promised them something?
There's something more than a bit surreal about Congressmen demanding that the President acquiesce in the seizure of American military installations. Detzer notes Buchanan's long diplomatic experience, something the militants should have taken into account.
I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. The idea that state officials could declare themselves independent and start giving ultimatums to the federal government overnight is so far from experience and understanding that it's hard to take it seriously.
The people, the states, however you want to term it. They rebelled.
Lie 2: "It was all about slavery."
I believe I've said all along that by far the single most important reason for the South's rebelling was defense of their institution of slavery. I've never said it was 'all about slavery'. So that would be a lie in your court.
Still lying to the newbies every chance you get, aren't you?
Now there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black if ever there was one.
Cherry-picking your quotes again, are you?
Well, here's a quote -- addressed to Georgia and all the Southern States.
The Southern States now stand in the same relation toward the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue -- to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures. [Emphasis added.]
--Robert Rhett, "South Carolina's Address to the Slaveholding States" (1860)
Oh, yeah, and he talked about slavery, too -- since the Northern politicians had put slavery on the agenda, politically and rhetorically.
Not even Lincoln had talked about slavery, before 1854, the way he did afterward. But after that time, he talked about it, and the freesoil Whigs talked about it, and the Republicans talked about it, incessantly.
So the mantra, "it was all about slavery," belongs rather to the Northern politicians like Lincoln, and even then only to their public platforms and position papers on the subject, and it is not descriptive of their legislative effort as a whole, or of their relationship as a whole to the body of Southern opinion. It was one element in a grand strategy of national domination, one that the South confronted by leaving the Union.
We've been over this before. Merriam-Webster defines rebellion as open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government. The confederate defiance was open, it was armed, and it certainly was unsuccessful. Considering that their acts of unilateral secession were also illegal then 'rebellion' is an accurate term.
Which is what you want them to be. Subordinate, yielding, teachable, pliable, malleable, docile, and above all, compliant.
That seems to be your preference, as well as other Southron types around here. You want us to be meek and mild and accept your opinion as fact and not argue the truth with you. And it really, really pisses you off when people don't roll over like that.
I hate to post things again that I've posted in the past, but you insist on posting the same tendentious stuff over and over again, so that refuting you becomes an exercise in spamming.
You selectively quote documents that mention slavery and no other causes. You shop around. You could cite and quote -- I'm sure you're waiting to post it, to get a drumbeat going -- the Mississippi Declaration, or the South Carolina Declaration of Causes, that was written by Memminger and published under the aegis of the South Carolina secession convention at the same time Robert Rhett's call just quoted was also published. Both talk about slavery, so does Rhett: it was a fact of life of the day, and it was the fact of life in the South that was attacked by Northern politicians, who used it as a proxy issue for attacking the political strength of the South as a whole.
But here is Texas's declaration, and I've edited it to show in color the various issues addressed by the declaration's authors -- light brown refers to slavery.
The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former as one of the co-equal States thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harrassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.
When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that [of] a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holdings States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.
They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a "higher law" than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.
They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offences, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.
They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.
In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons--We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.
SOURCE: Winkler, Ernest William, ed. Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas 1861, Edited From the Original in the Department of State.... Austin: Texas Library and Historical Commission, 1912, pp. 61-65.
Now, concerning the practical effect of emancipation, which was always justified by Lincoln in terms of the honor of the Union and of republicanism (but was in fact impelled by the economic interests both of freesoil farmers and of the politicians like Lincoln who were assembling a national political machine), it is worth noting that the value of emancipation to Texas would be a negative $160 million just for the emancipation of the labor stock the slaveholders owned.
The Georgia convention documentation you linked to (thank you for the link) refers to a Northern proposal of compensated emancipation, but notes simultaneously that the compensation was to be funded by, guess what, federal tax moneys, i.e., the tariff. The existence of such a proposal is a strong indicator that Non-Sequitur's constant insistence that the tariff was paid by Northerners is just wrong: Northern politicians would not have voluntarily defrayed any expense for the reduction of slavery by taxes on their own constituents. The existence of the compensation proposal is another (indirect) evidence that the tariff schedule, and therefore the bulk of federal taxation, was disproportionately paid by Southerners.
Notice how many time slave, slavery, non-slave holding or slave holding are used? I count nineteen. It’s obvious how the Texas commission wanted to differentiate themselves from the non-rebelling states.
And here's his reply -- from Alexander Stephens.
"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that. Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question?[emphasis added]
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