Posted on 10/07/2010 8:12:40 AM PDT by ComtedeMaistre
Southerners who celebrate their cultural heritage, are among the most misunderstood people in America. Italians who celebrate Colombus Day, and Irishmen who celebrate St. Patricks Day, never have to suffer the grief that Southerners who want to celebrate Robert E. Lee's Birthday have to endure.
Southern identity is partly about celebrating the Anglo-Celtic culture, which is the core culture that existed in America at the time of the founding of America in 1776. It is the culture that gave us the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and others. Most Southerners, both white and black, are descended from people who were in America before the Civil War in 1860.
It is often said that America is a nation of immigrants. Southerners are not immigrants to America. When the first Southerners came to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, America did not exist as a nation. Southerners were the pioneers who built America. Southerners created colonial America in 1607, before the Mayflower folks arrived in 1620. Two sons of the South, the Virginians, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, led America to independence as a Constitutional Republic in 1776. Why shouldn't Southerners be proud of such a great heritage?
Many of the Northerners who love to mock and insult the South, are people whose ancestors came to America as immigrants, after the statue of liberty was put up in 1886. They love to mock the people who created and built the America that their ancestors immigrated to. If someone could create a time machine, and we could go back to the 1890s, we would tell our Southern ancestors to stop those European immigrants from getting off their boats at Ellis Island. It is time that the Southerners who created American culture and the American nation, are shown a little appreciation by the Ellis Island Yankees, who just got off the boat the other day. If you are a pro-Southern Yankee, this complaint does not apply to you, of course.
Actually to be honest with you FRiend, I’m not that interested in clinging to differences. My position is that the differences between North and South, East and West are much less than the past and much of that is due to technology and mobility in America. Now, if you are predicting armegedon and a return to tribalism in America as a result, you may well be correct that differences will get worse. However, I maintain that short of that, the melting pot will continue despite the diversity crowd that celebrates and promotes more differences.
Indians alive today, if born in the US can also be called native American’s though they still cling to their tribal heritage and for the most part shun American culture/nationhood.
Cool. Can I apply for Native American financial relief then?? LOL.
Something like this, for example:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
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. 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. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.
The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.
The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.
It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.
It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.
It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.
It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.
It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.
It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.
It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.
Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.
Thanks.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
It was an in-artful generalization.
Many Indians today (particularly those that choose to live on reservations) while factually Native American (just as anyone else born here) ironically shun America and cling to some sense of “their land was stolen” and this is really their (ie a tribal) land.
So, while the PC white-man calls them “native American” in fact it seems that would rather consider themselves Cherokee or whatever and just eliminate the whole America thing altogether.
And what powers were being denied them?
You are not getting any traction.
Government employee? Work for a university?
.
The first union of the original 13 colonies was effected by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781. The articles established a confederation of sovereign states in a permanent union. The “permanence” lasted only until 1788, when 11 states withdrew from the confederation and ratified the new Constitution, which became effective on March 4, 1789. The founding fathers recognized the defects in the Articles of Confederation, learned from these defects, and scrapped the articles in favor of the “more perfect union” found in the Constitution.
Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent. This was not an oversight by any means. Indeed, when New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia ratified the Constitution, they specifically stated that they reserved the right to resume the governmental powers granted to the United States. Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and was also a delegate from Virginia. In his book Life of Webster Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge writes, “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.” A textbook used at West Point before the Civil War, A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, states, “The secession of a State depends on the will of the people of such a State.”
Some important facts should be pointed out.
First, the ratifications of the Constitution by New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island were not given conditionally upon those states being granted the right to secede by the other states. Had that been the case, the ratifications would have been invalid. Ratifications of the Constitution had to be unconditional. Those who voted to ratify the Constitution in New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island simply put into writing a right they thought naturally belonged to their respective states. The states were voluntarily joining the Union, and most people believed the same principles toward self-governance that gave states the right to join the Union also gave states the right to withdraw from the Union.
Second, the ratifications of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island were unanimously accepted as valid. Those states’ claims to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington who presided over the Constitutional Convention and served as a delegate from Virginia.
Third, many lawyers believe that the acceptance of these three ratifications (New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island) as valid guarantees all states the right to secede. This conclusion is based on the principle that whatever rights are held by some states must be held by all states. [Exceptional rights have been granted to some states in order to encourage them to join the Union. But those special rights were understood by all states already in the union at the time the states granted special rights were accepted.]
Well into the 19th century, the United States was still viewed by many as an experimental confederation from which states could secede just as they had earlier acceded to it.
It took a bloody war to prove them wrong. LEGALITY did not win out, FORCE did, at the cost of over 620,000 lives.
Slavery had been going on in the U.S. for 240 years. How much longer was OK with you?
...and look at the result, lives lost and the South left in ruins
And had the confederacy not chosen war to further their aims then there would have been no lives lost and nothing left in ruins. The South has nobody but themselves to blame.
Bravo.
To say that states 'withdrew' from the confederation is inaccurate. They were the United State before the Constitution, the United States during the ratification of the Constitution, and the United States afterwards. One nation.
Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent.
I've never said it did.
Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and was also a delegate from Virginia.
You have that backwards. Congress did not accept the ratification by the states, the states ratified the Constitution as passed out of the convention. And while Virginia may have said that they were reserving the right to resume power in their ratification document, that same document also contained the statement, "We the said Delegates in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia do by these presents assent to and ratify the Constitution...by the Federal Convention for the Government of the United States hereby announcing to all those whom it may concern that the said Constitution is binding upon the said People according to an authentic Copy hereto annexed..." In other words, Virginia agreed to abide by the Constitution, and if that document did not allow certain actions on the part of the states then those actions were illegal. And the Supreme Court ruled that secession without the consent of the states, as practiced by the Southern states in 1860-61, was not allowed under the Constitution.
Third, many lawyers believe that the acceptance of these three ratifications (New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island) as valid guarantees all states the right to secede.
They would be wrong in believing the right to secede is absolute and unilateral, as the Supreme Court found.
Well into the 19th century, the United States was still viewed by many as an experimental confederation from which states could secede just as they had earlier acceded to it.
Except that with the exception of the original 13 states, none of the states acceded to anything. They did not join the Union or ratify the Constitution. They were allowed to join and agreed to be bound by the Constitution, and only after the other states had agreed to let them in as expressed by a vote in both houses of Congress. There is no reason to believe that leaving should not require the same process.
It took a bloody war to prove them wrong. LEGALITY did not win out, FORCE did, at the cost of over 620,000 lives
But LEGALITY did win out. The Southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal. Their actions constituted a rebellion. A rebellion they lost.
The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
Actually, Lincoln never said the South wasn't fighting for its view of self-determination. He always spoke very precisely. He said the struggle was over whether a government of, by and for the people "could long endure."
Fairly obviously any such government that can be broken up by any significantly-sized minority that comes along will not "long endure."
While the southern people had a right to contend that "the people" in question were the people of the individual states, unionists had an equal right to contend that "the people" were the people of the United States.
And I've ran across enough racist Indians...to fill a few pick-up trucks.
I happen to be of Indian blood..and live on a Rez. It's not my Rez...fwiw. And it's not your typical Rez either. The Osage think the whole county is their Rez. But it's not.
While I do think on the whole the Indians got screwed, lied to...and murdered. The Fed's will not be paying back ( If that ever happens..) the people that got screwed, murdered and lied to. It's been strung out too many decades now...
There's decent evidence that the BIA...as mis-managed billions of $$$ held in trust for the tribes. Sort of like the Fed's managing SS. LOL!!
FRegards,
Amazing. The word “tariff” does not appear in any of these four documents.
Part of them at any rate. That one-third of their population who were considered property and not people kind of missed out on that whole 'governing themselves' thing.
Yankee revisionists white-washed history. That's the only possible explanation. </sarcasm>
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.