Posted on 09/26/2009 2:45:33 PM PDT by HokieMom
I'm declaring his argument false as yours is today! We can play with this whole Lincoln fairy tail and add many more years to Saint Lincoln's murderous legacy if you wish.
Was the Constitution a compact? This is the key to Lincoln and your argument... However, the victor may write the history, but the truth remains the same!
The Federalist No. 43 (Jan. 23, 1788):
“A compact between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of legislative authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void.”
June 19, 1787
It had been alledged [by Mr. Patterson], that the Confederation having been formed by unanimous consent, could be dissolved by unanimous Consent only. Does this doctrine result from the nature of compacts? does it arise from any particular stipulation in the articles of Confederation? If we consider the federal union as analogous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose one Society, and which must in its theoretic origin 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. If the breach of any article by any of the parties, does not set the others at liberty, it is because, the contrary is implied in the compact itself, and particularly by that law of it, which gives an indifinite authority to the majority to bind the whole in all cases. This latter circumstance shews that we are not to consider the federal Union as analogous to the social compact of individuals: for if it were so, a Majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new Constitution for the whole, which the Gentn. from N. Jersey would be among the last to admit. If we consider the federal Union as analogous not to the social compacts among individual men: but to the conventions among individual States.
(The euphemistic nature of this popular term, BTW, reinforcing the fact that even southerners could not make a moral case for the institution they were defending.)”
What abolitionist? Spooner?
Again, More liberal tactics — Are we a Nation of laws or morals?
Speaking of Spooner——
The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States , instead of slave States, had seceded. . . .
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle—but only in degree—between political and chattel slavery. . . .
The North has thus virtually said to the world: It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connection with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great national union; but now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the power of the North has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us -— as for all governments—simply to say: Our power is our right.
In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people, than any other government ever did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief glory of her success, and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and an ample justification for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity or power of government, is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds of the people. In short, the North exults beyond measure in the proof she has given, that a government, professedly resting on consent, will expend more life and treasure in crushing dissent, than any government, openly founded on force, has ever done.
And she claims that she has done all this in behalf of liberty! In behalf of free government! In behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent!
Quite apparently REL was perfectly happy to have the elimination of slavery take a few more thousand years. What’s a millenium or two?
I found particularly sanctimonious the last sentence quoted. He apparently thinks abolitionist New Englanders should be more tolerant of the spiritual liberty of southerners holding others in bondage than of the spiritual liberty of those so held.
REL was a very great man, and an even greater soldier, but he obviously had some very serious moral blind spots.
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It’s true. Robert E. Lee had some “moral blindspots.” And it’s quite easy to look back into history 160+ years and stand in judgment of a man who, in his time, was indeed an advocate for Africans held in the bondage of slavery. His view, though by “politically correct” and “revisionist” standards in our postmodern day, was positively LIBERAL in the time and place he resided!
That Lee desired an END to slavery is NOT at issue — HE DID, as this letter clearly demonstrates. What he desired to leave in the hands of “Providence” (that would be GOD, BTW)was the TIMING of such an eventuality. It took a generation in Great Britain, and the persistence of William Wilberforce and John Wesley before him. But Lee realized that the Abolitionists of New England — descendents of the Puritans, I might add — had no desire to allow Emancipation to work itself out as it HAD in Great Britain. They wanted it ALL, and they wanted it NOW. That could ONLY lead, as Lee RIGHTLY observed and predicted, to “civil and servile war.” And indeed it DID.
Lee also observed, again correctly, that those Africans enslaved at that time were ill prepared to BE free. Most were uneducated, unskilled, unable to fend for themselves, and woefully lacking in knowledge of how America worked! One could blame the system of chattel slavery for such ignorance — and one would be CORRECT to do so! But THAT DIDN’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM! You STILL had millions of Africans unprepared to LIVE in that world in that day! Given a generation or two, PERHAPS they could have been better integrated into the fabric of American culture — and it could have been done so PEACEFULLY. That was Lee’s POINT. But we will never know. Why? Because it was easier for “Yankee do-gooders” (as they were popularly called) to kill Rebels than to HELP prepare slaves for FREEDOM.
So, what was the result when they were freed in the wake of the WBTS? Abject poverty, or else they were used as political pawns by the Washington Establishment to rub it in the faces of disenfranchised white Southerners. And where were the “40 acres and a mule” Washington promised to EVERY former slave? Never happened. Why? Because Washington lied. They couldn’t give what they didn’t have. So when their policy of “reconstruction” failed, and they’d bled dry the Southern states, they left blacks and whites alike in poverty, with plenty of animosity and hatred to go around... A game Washington STILL plays today.
A final note on the Puritans, forerunners of the Abolitionists. Theirs were the ONLY colonies where there was NO religious freedom. Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth made any religion other than Puritanism illegal, resulting in banishment. The colonies in Jamestown, Virginia and Charlestown, South Carolina were founded primarily for economic purposes, but were “officially” Anglican. Yet, they did not “forbid” other religious persuasions, and even if they did, they could not police the counrtyside to hunt up all the Baptists, or Methodists, or Lutherans, or Reformed, or Presbyterians, or Waldensians, or Moravians that came through those ports to start a new life in a new land. Thus, the SOUTHERN colonies developed a concept of religious freedom very early. But the New England colonies NEVER got past the moralistic ideals of their Puritan fathers, insisting upon one moral crusade after another — Abolitionism, Temperance/prohibition, Womens suffrage, etc... And it continues TODAY. New England has decided they are the moral arbiters of all things for ALL the country, never mind the fact that their states are in a shambles and their own “morality” has been turned upside down! STILL, it must be THEIR WAY. And Washington is now and has been the vehicle through which they make that happen.
Condemn Lee if you wish, but what he showed in this letter was more compassion than sanctimony. What he demonstrated was more respect for the Constitution than puritanical moralism. What he evidenced was more respect for the States and the people than a craving for power and control.
Deo Vindice!
Patriot Preacher
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They KNOW that if the States are powerless to STOP Washington apart from working THROUGH the rigged Washington system, then we HAVE no Republic, and our system is merely an illusion.
I’m curious. Do you have any particular reason to believe the States, by which you presumably mean the existing state governors and legislatures, would be effective in this role?
It seems to me you are speaking of romanticized and ideal States, not those which actually exist.
State legislature and governors are often at least as corrupt as the federal government, more so in many cases.
___________
Are you joking? A romanticized view? I live in South Carolina for crying out loud! We have Governor Sanford the adulterer and Lindsey Grahamnesty the limp-wristed, panty-waste RINO!
I AM making the point that the Founders made — Local and State Governments are the closest to the people and thus are [or SHOULD BE] the repositories of most of the political power! This was reflected by Joseph Story when he wrote in 1833: “The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens.”
The States and Local Governments are the closest, most responsive and easiest forum to deal with MOST issues. That’s why we had the Tenth Amendment. That’s why we NEED to return to the Tenth Amendment and restore the sovereignty of the States. Anyone who says we can have a Constitutional Republic apart from THAT essential element is deluding themselves.
Righto. The USSR killed 20M to 50M people, Red China 40M to 60M, the Khmer Rouge 40% of their population.
Yet the Union is the most evil and bloody empire in the history of the world.
I think you need to work on your understanding of what "proportion" means.
Me? That was Mr. Spooners work! Didn't it say ‘speaking of Spooner’? It would be correct during that time in history...
Back to Lincoln and his “Union Forever” hogwash——
“The Constitution of the United States is a compact of independent nations subject to the rules acknowledged in similar cases, as well that of amendment provided within itself, as, in case of abuse, the justly dreaded but unavoidable ultimo ratio gentium [the final argument of nations, i.e., war].” —Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett, 1826. ME 16:163
(Now that I've googled the name, I assume you're referring to Lysander Spooner, a 19th century flake. I see no particular reason to view him as an authority on the subject.)
In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people, than any other government ever did.
OK, let's look at this for the 19th century and before.
Ever hear of the attempted Japanese conquest of Korea in the late 1500s?
How about the Hundred Years War attempt of England to enforce its rule over part or all of France?
The Taiping Rebellion, in which the Manchu Empire eventually enforced its rule over the Chinese, at the cost of somewhere between 20M and 100M people? Mr. Spooner should have heard of this one, as it took place approximately simultaneously with the American Civil War, ending in 1864.
I stand by my comments with regard to proportionality. The WBTS was a huge catastrophe. However, it was perhaps the civil war in all of history that had the fewest atrocities, the lowest civilian death toll as compared to military casualties, and the least amount of reprisals against the eventual losers.
If the Constitution is a compact among equal parties then what gives one part the right to say the compact is broken when the other part says it is not?
However, the victor may write the history, but the truth Southron myth remains the same!
Fixed it for you.
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