Posted on 03/31/2010 3:04:35 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Snarky remarks don’t make it any less true.
Had it been accepted in 1860 that the South had a right to secede and maintain the slave system, I believe that my response would have been to encourage "regime change" in the South by funding more Nat Turners and John Browns, in much the same way as I believe we should encourage regime change in Iran.
Do you possess territory?
I own a house.
Do you have a military?
I have a gun. And Non-Sequiturland prefers to depend on it's militia anyway.
Do you have a currency that is recognized and measured againsts others in international commercial exchange?
No, but then again neither did the confederacy.
And I have yet to get an answer to this question. Did the founders intend for the constitution to be a death pact or was it a voluntary association?
Neither. The founders intended it to be a compact among equal parties with no one state having any more rights than any of the other states. And whether that compact is being expanded through the addition of other, equal members or whether it is being reduced by having members leave, all members have a say in the matter.
Lincoln lovers never want to answer that.
Just did.
No voluntary union of free states can be maintained if some states believe they are more equal or have more rights than the others, either.
Besides, no force was used until the confederacy resorted to war to further their aims.
Then by all means make your case.
Jim, as I read this particular thread in the way it has developed, I can't help but believe that there are a lot of Freepers who think that the freedom of enslaved humans in nineteenth century America should not have been "fought for".
Rather, we should have just waited a few more generations in the hope that slavery would have gone away on its own.
No, I'm not trying to get those people chastised or banned. I'm just kind of disappointed in what they say.
I wonder if you feel the same way???
The secession was not about “maintaining the slave system”. It was about self-determination. Having said that, let’s analyze what you’ve said.
You have basically said that the Northern states should have let the South go but then worked to undermine the government of the Southern states, possibly in a way that would have led to the murder of many innocent civilians, simply so the North could swoop in and reconquer the weakened South.
That’s the act of an imperialistic nation, not a union of states based on the precept of freedom. If you want to pin down when the U.S. formally became an empire it was in 1861. The U.S. may have been functionally an empire before than but it was during the War of Northern Aggression and the aftermath of Reconstruction that the country embraced the mantle of imperalism.
I tire of silly southrons trying to revise the truth of what their ancestors were really fighting for.
Whatever your ancestors' personal motives may have been, the fact is that at the "national" level they were actually fighting for the right of some people to enslave others.
As the gentlemen of Mississippi put it:
"In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world...."
[emphasis mine] There's more where that came from.
Stow your fairy stories, and be ashamed of what your ancestors were defending.
ping for later
I don’t really want to make that case. What I was trying to say is that if that case HAD been accepted in 1860, my response would have been as posted in the second paragraph of #602.
You act as if there was no provocation from the Lincoln administration when you say that.
Lincoln could have easily withdrawn the troops from Fort Sumter. If he had truly wanted peace the South would have given to him. We were more concerned with conquering the Carribean than we were with what the Yankees were doing.
Lincoln forced a preliminary strike on part. This is not to say it was correct to fire on Fort Sumter. But it would have turned violent anyway. If we had let the troops at Fort Sumter starve to death (which we should have done) at some point they would have either fired on us or Lincoln would have sent in troops to fight to try and rescue his embattled garrison.
The only way around it was to with draw the Yankee troops from the fort. Lincoln refused. The war is his fault.
I deserve better countrymen than you. You make me ashamed to be an American.
As was Grenada in 1983.
Or Panama in 1989.
Or Iraq in 2003.
I will just point out that bashing the South and using slavery as the device to bash Southerners is a device that liberals have always used to try and further their political beliefs.
They did it before the parties switched when they were Republicans and the South was Democrats and they have continued to do it after the parties switched when they’re all Democrats and we’re Republicans.
It’s the same game they have been playing since the 1870s when they always waved the bloody shirt in every northern precinct to gain support for their liberalism.
Posting false information and claiming its fact doesn't make it true to begin with. Fact: Lincoln never ordered the arrest of the Maryland legislature. Not in the spring of 1861. Not ever. Fact: members of the Maryland legislature were arrested in September 1861 for proposing to take Maryland into the confederacy. Since those states were engaged in armed rebellion against the U.S. at the time, the suggestion amounted to treason, so what did they expect? As it was, the legislators were jailed briefly and got off easier than they deserved.
The question I can never get a straight answer to is whether the south's slaves had the same right of rebellion and self determination that their masters did.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
Let's tell Freepers want to defend the Southern position: OK, go ahead, but you've got to defend ALL OF IT.
The name of this site is Free Republic. It's not Kind of Free Empire. Please take your Federal Boot licking attitude to another thread. Why don't you start a thread Called: All southerners are Rednecks and the South would be a third world country with out the Hero Lincoln (Vanity).
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