Posted on 10/15/2010 11:37:41 AM PDT by DWar
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunsite.utk.edu ...
The people will always reject tyranny ... eventually.
Read these Declarations of Causes, omit the slavery issue and Federal tyranny is the same today as then.
I was just having this conversation last night. Thanks for the source references.
That’s why the secession option was wasted on the CSA. They totally came off as complete hypocrites.
Cant really preach about liberty when you are hell bent on making slavery a protected institution.
Similarly, the slaves had every right to rebel against their owners. And had I been present during the era of slavery, I like to think I would have done everything I could to encourage a successful slave rebellion.
The Union was no more justified than the Confederacy when it came to those issues. The Union didn't have slaves back then because they simply didn't need them . . . they had massive numbers of immigrants (mostly from Ireland) who weren't treated much better than black slaves in the Confederate states and sure didn't have any more rights as U.S. citizens than their black counterparts.
The differences between them were largely socio-economic -- i.e., the Union "slaves" were generally better off than the Confederate slaves only because the overall standard of living was higher (something that was astutely noted by Frederick Douglass when he escaped to Massachusetts and realized that escaped slaves working as laborers there were actually better off than the owner of the plantation in Maryland where he had worked as a slave.
I want to tell everyone of a new e-zine. The Stainless Banner is an e-zine dedicated to the armies of the Confederacy. Includes biographies, regimental histories, battles, first hand account from the soldiers who fought, letters homes, diaries, etc.
Subscription is free.
To subscribe, please send an email to: thestainlessbanner@gmail.com.
I want to tell everyone of a new e-zine. The Stainless Banner is an e-zine dedicated to the armies of the Confederacy. Includes biographies, regimental histories, battles, first hand account from the soldiers who fought, letters homes, diaries, etc.
Subscription is free.
To subscribe, please send an email to: thestainlessbanner@gmail.com.
Yep. That’s why you can go to New York today and see the remains of the “Irish markets” where Irish families were kept chained until they could be sold and shipped off to Ohio and Minnesota.
If only it had today’s date....if only......
Right. Why don’t we go back and tally up the Irish immigrants who lost their lives fighting in the Civil War and the African slaves who lost their lives in the Civil War, eh?
‘The issue in 1860, slavery, was abhorrent. But the Constitutional principle, States Rights, was and is correct. ‘
States Right to do ‘what’ exactly?
In the instance of the Confederate States of America, it was to keep the institution of slavery.
Trying ‘split the baby’ here, DWar.
Had the South left the Union, and in its own Constitution outlawed slavery, there more than likely wouldn’t have been a war, and if it was forced, it would have ended after Fredricksburg or Chancellorsville, maybe even right after Antietam, based on the horrific (to this day) number of casualties.
And today North America would resemble Europe.
No thanks. JMHO.
Let me venture this:
The reason slavery fails, and ought not be considered a constitutional right is that all people have a right of self-ownership. If I own myself, then no one else can own me. Furthermore, if my neighbor owns himself, no one can own him either.
If you truly own yourself, you’re free to sell yourself as well...
and that’s what “slaves” were in biblical OT times.
States Right to do ‘what’ exactly?
Simply, to not be subject to the dictates of the central authority made up of elitist busybodies.
Gnip
In the end, it really cost the Confederacy badly. The Union basically won the war because of its superior industrial capacity, and by almost any socio-economic measure the South lagged behind the North for decades after the Civil War.
Nonsense. The South argued for the right to invade the North with paramilitary police forces whenever they wanted to so they could bring back the refugee slaves. And they wanted to make sure that all states added to the union were slavery states, regardless of the wishes of the residents of those states.
Abe had no intention of the South, and he made it clear. Conservative that he was, he expected that, confined to the South, slavery as an institution would destroy itself as freemen settled the Great West. However, that plan relied on slavery not spreading to the Great West.
States rights to pummel, rape, flay, kill, maim, torture and flog any black man they pleased, of course! What part of “democracy” don’t you understand? (/sarcasm)
yep, that’s exactly what would happen if the “tenthers” get their way.
What century are you living in?
It's OK to violate the Constitution if doing so promotes one's own ideas. Especially for a great idea like abolishing slavery or keeping the Union together. Others do that too regarding their own "great ideas". It's done all the time with the 1st amendment regarding both religion and speech; the 2nd and gun rights. Or it's even permissible to find things in it that aren't there like the "Constitutional right to privacy" to protect abortion so American children can be murdered without consequence. Many justify the violation of the clear language of the Constitution to mold society to conform to their personal ideas.
You asked, "States Rights to do 'what' exactly? The right for the people of each state to decide for themselves how their own local society should be ordered. Not for some bureaucrat thousands of miles away to dictate and regulate it.
The Constitution is clear: Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Nations are never permanent. National borders are never permanent. Persia, Assyria, Greece, Rome, The Dynasties of China, The Empires of England and Japan all disintegrated a piece at a time until they grew too weak to defend against the rise of competitor nations.
America's ultimate fate is no different. Eventually, we will either be defeated by another or disintegrate from within due to the misguided or corrupt efforts of people willing to violate the principles which led to greatness, for the sake of their own issue. Perhaps that will be 1,000 years from now. Perhaps sooner.
There will either be one Constitution that 300 million Americans agree to abide by resulting in an orderly society or there will be 300 million ideas as to what the Constitution means and growing anarchy.
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.