Posted on 09/26/2009 2:45:33 PM PDT by HokieMom
LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Americans must pay attention to challenges to democracy today just as Abraham Lincoln did by fiercely opposing slavery, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a conference on the 16th president's legacy Friday night.
"We are part of something far greater than ourselves," Thomas told more than 300 people at Washington and Lee University.
Many in Lincoln's time didn't realize the threat that slavery posed to the principles on which the nation was founded, Thomas said.
"What a miserable job he had. He wasn't popular," Thomas said, "but he did what was right."
Thomas received a standing ovation from the audience in Lee Chapel, where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is buried.
He told conference participants he isn't a Lincoln scholar, but admires him greatly.
"My interest in him has been deeply personal and long-standing," said Thomas, who grew up in segregated rural Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s. "We thought of him then as the great emancipator."
The 61-year-old Thomas is the Supreme Court's second black justice. The first was Thurgood Marshall, whom he replaced in 1991.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I was referring to Saint Lincoln and his band of thugs as Bolsheviks!
You have history turned on it's head...Every power mad individual in history has been opposed to self determination including Hitler,Mussolini and Lincoln,of course..
Y'all really need to look at how many foreign born Marxist joined the Union ranks {Why not since King Lincoln was a pin pal of Marx }
The slaves freed themselves, by leaving their masters and making their way to union lines. I don't know what Lincoln was thinking, but that was a more likely outcome than mass uprisings, and I wouldn't be surprised if he thought so when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
That slavery was on its way out was an already foregone conclusion by almost ALL in the States.
That's the myth, but when you look at what Southern extremists were saying in 1860, it's just not true. There was even talk of expanding the Confederacy to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin America.
Given time, attrition and economic realities would have ended slavery.
Given how much time? Say slavery was abolished in 1890 or 1900 for those born after that date, slaves born before that could have been bought and worked and sold long into the 20th century.
That's just a hypothetical, but slavery was a live issue at the time. It was a reality and a victorious Confederacy could have held off emancipation for a long time.
But that would not have achieved the ends desired by those in the North and in Washington, DC. Slavery served as a convenient pretext to force the ascent of Federal power over the States, to subvert the Constitution and to “enslave” all free men to the whims, policies and purse strings of Union politicians.
So in 1859 we were all free, and in 1866 we'd become enslaved? Not very likely.
Here, you’re dead wrong. George Washington and the Founders designed a federal government that was firmly checked and limited by not only 3 separate branches, but by ALL the individual State governments.
Sorry, but even before 1860, the things Lincoln favored -- a national banking system, protective tariffs, transportation subsidies, a Homestead Act -- were all constitutional and not liable to checks from individual state governments.
Despite the use of pitting the races against each other, they still failed to achieve their goals — at that moment.
Not clear who "they" are here. Certainly Southern anti-reconstructionists did achieve their goals by pitting the races against each other. Reconstruction Republicans didn't succeed in putting their program through, but were they really the ones setting race against race at that time? If you were an ex-master appalled by his ex-slave having the vote you might think so, but would lovers of liberty take that view now?
What Lincoln’s war produced was a muted, largely hollow, gutted Constitution that Washington revises, ignores or “reinterprets” at their whim — something they largely COULD NOT DO before the WBTS. That’s just ONE reason we need the States to reassert the Tenth Amendment NOW — it’s the only way to RESTORE the Republic.
That sounds like a loose league of independent sovereignties. That was never how the Constitution worked. It may be how things worked under the Articles of Confederation, but it wouldn't be a restoration of the Constitution.
Hello- Non-Sequitur! I'm sure your efforts give Lord Lincoln a grin... Let's post his thought process and to why he was against slavery.
(…) But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once-a thousand times agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so let them be married. On this point we fully agree with the Judge; and when he shall show that his policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours we shall drop ours, and adopt his. . . .
I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief plank in their platform - opposition to the spread of slavery - is most favorable to that separation.
Utter nonsense, start to finish.
Yes, let's.
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - 1858
"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." - 1859
"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal." - 1858
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless." - 1864
"Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." - 1865
"You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us." - to Alexander Stephens, 1861
"...notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." - 1858
Now how about some similar quotes from Lee? Davis? Jackson? Any confederate leader?
Is the Federal Constitution a suicide pact?
If we are to believe the Constitution was formed with a “contract mentality” a contract can be breached......
In the words of Mr. Madison in 1787:
“If we consider the federal union as analogous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose our society, and which must in its theoretic orgin at least, have been the unanimous act of the component members, it can not be said that no dissolution of the compact can be effected without unanimous consent. A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact by a part of the Society would certainly absolve the other part from their obligations to it.”
No. And it's not a tool for the seceding states to bludgeon the remaining states with either.
If we are to believe the Constitution was formed with a “contract mentality” a contract can be breached......
Who gets to decide that? In the words of Mr. Madison in 1832: "The characteristic distinction between free Governments and Governments not free is, that the former are founded on compact, not between the Government and those for whom it acts, but between the parties creating the Government. Each of those being equal, neither can have more rights to say that the compact has been violated and dissolved, than every other has to deny the fact, and to insist on the execution of the bargains."
Sounds like Lincoln liked talking out both sides of his mouth!
“Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to
make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and
fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?”
“Such separation...must be effected by colonization...to transfer the
African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however
great the task may be.” From a speech delivered in Springfield, IL; 26
June 1857
August, 1862
“Why should people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between any
other two races. Whether it is right or wrong, I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while we suffer from your presence. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated.”
So wanting the blacks to stay in the country, in bondage, as property, for all time is OK but supporting voluntary emigration that would allow them to carve out a life of their own free from the racism that they faced in all parts of the country was evil? Why?
Why don’t you tell us how the Founders were in the right to secede from Britain but not the south during that time? There isn’t one. They were both under the rule of a tyrant and wanted no part of it.
It is my contention that Lincoln, and many of his comrades, disliked slavery because he was a true believer in white separatism!! Yes, Slavery was a horrible evil—Same as compelling your obedience, as a rapacious army penetrates into the bosom of your State, carrying destruction and desolation before it-Enslaving a Southern people to a Centralized power they wanted to be free from!
The founders didn’t “secede” - they rebelled. They succeeded in their rebellion where the south did not.”
That’s laughable! Didn’t they want a Government by their own choosing?
“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” —Thomas Jefferson
He, Thomas Jefferson, also wrote a letter to James Madison containing the following: “Determined…to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government…in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.”
The New-York Daily Tribune, December 17, 1860,
We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or do not assent to Mr. Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government,” &c., &c. We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And, if it justified the secession from the British Empire of Three Millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? . . . —we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of Self-government sacred, even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others . . . if ever ‘seven or eight States’ send agents to Washington to say ‘We want to get out of the Union,’ we shall feel constrained by our devotion to Human Liberty to say, Let Them Go! And we do not see how we could take the other side without coming in direct conflict with those Rights of Man which we hold paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and advantageous.
They seceded from British and King George III's rule.
And of course all the Southern leaders supported slavery because they believed in the universal brotherhood of man and the equality of the races. </sarcasm>
Slavery was a horrible evil
A horrible evil that the Southern leaders were willing to launch a bloody rebellion to protect. Guess it wasn't all that evil after all, huh?
Fair enough, although you're still stuck with that whole problem of who decides when the Constitution is violated. If it's left up to each party to decide for itself then the contract, like any other, becomes an at-will and unenforceable agreement, in which case there is no real contract at all. Much like today's status for marriage.
You will have to point out to me the violation of the Constitution that justified SC's Declaration of Secession. As I seem to recall, the issues they cited were pretty much all prospective. IOW, they seceded because they thought the Union might do something in future that would violate the Constitution.
Surely you don't claim pre-emptive secession was justified?
“This may be the stupidest thing Clarence Thomas has ever uttered. “
___________
Well, atleast since he married Rush and Marta.
Even Lincoln's Idol Webster disagreed with his war!
“if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.—Daniel Webster”
Let's look at State Constitution regarding the Right of self Government! State of New Hampshire: Article VII, New Hampshire State Constitution, 1792.
The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right to governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state
Constitution State of Massachusetts, 1780
The people of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent State….”
Even more enlightening is a few States made it clear that they could take back delegated authority! Ratification of the Constitution by the State of New York; July 26, 1788
That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness ..
I'm sure, Mr. Madison wouldn't agree with forcibly preserving the Union.
- Federal Convention of 1787
The use of [federal] force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.
- Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787
“Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself — a government that can exist only by the sword?” Alexander Hamilton, 1788
Thomas Jefferson, to William Crawford, “If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative, to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying “let us separate.”
I certainly agree with this quote:
"Safeguarding an interpretation of Constitution as it was written is vital in his job, he said, and must override personal opinion.
"Stupid things can be constitutional. Misguided things can be constitutional," Thomas said. "And things with which you agree can be unconstitutional."
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