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To: RegulatorCountry; Non-Sequitur
OK, so had the South won would the slogan be "government of 2/3rds of the people, by 2/3rds of the people, for 2/3rds of the people?"

Well, well ... aren't you just a ball of confusion this morning. You do know who insisted upon that whole 2/3 thing, don't you? (Hint: it wasn't southerners)...

The 2/3 personage for blacks was insisted upon by Northern politicians to balance the census so the South would not be over represented it the congress diluting Northern power. So there!!

Heck, Lincoln had no desire to free the slaves until late in the war. He wanted to save the Union.

My ancestors fought on both sides that war and on both sides of the American revolution. In fact, my bloodline arrived on this continent long before the was a USA.
359 posted on 05/24/2007 9:41:12 AM PDT by Islander7 ("Show me an honest politician and I will show you a case of mistaken identity.")
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To: Islander7
The 2/3 personage for blacks was insisted upon by Northern politicians to balance the census so the South would not be over represented it the congress diluting Northern power. So there!!

But had the Southern delegates gotten their way and had a slave counted as a whole person then wouldn't the Southern overrepresentation been even worse? In 1860 there were over 3 million slaves in the South. That added over 1.8 million people to the census for the purpose of determining congressional seats. But those 1.8 million extra people had no more use for political representation than a barn or a lamppost. They were considered property and not people. They had no rights, no privledges, no freedoms at all. So please don't get all high and mighty about the North demanding the 3/5ths counting for slaves. It was the South that was using slaves for crass political purposes and in an blatant attempt to grab power. The 3/5ths rule was merely an attempt to keep them from using the slaves as badly as they might have.

Heck, Lincoln had no desire to free the slaves until late in the war. He wanted to save the Union.

So? The Southern leaders had no desire to free the slaves at all. Does that make them worse than Lincoln?

372 posted on 05/24/2007 9:56:48 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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To: Islander7
The 2/3 personage for blacks was insisted upon by Northern politicians to balance the census so the South would not be over represented it the congress diluting Northern power. So there!!

Different argument. The 2/3 refers to the non-slave population of the South in 1860, which would have been the sole beneficiaries of an independent Confederacy.

The 3/5 refers to the compromise in the Constitution, where the South wanted the slaves to be counted as citizens, but owned as livestock without the right to elect the representatives they were being counted to apportion. I imagine the South would have objected to the "dilution" of their power, had the North insisted on counting their horses in the census.

377 posted on 05/24/2007 10:01:20 AM PDT by LexBaird (PR releases are the Chinese dog food of political square meals.)
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