Posted on 07/14/2015 4:30:37 AM PDT by SJackson
The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies "to be free, sovereign and independent states." These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.
During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, "A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against 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."
In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.
On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, "No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States."
. Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here's a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."
Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution's limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.
There is a virtual army of South hating freepers that would disagree with that. Legion.
Only the most pin headed amongst us cannot come to grips with this truism.
I remember trying to formulate this question as a child in history class. I was roundly smacked back. The war was good. The war was against slavery. But the book stated that Lincoln only banned slavery in the states that succeeded. How then was this a war against slavery?
I was forced to rationalize it that Fort Sumter had been fired on and that was an act of war. However, from other reading it seemed that the South was angry and the voters wanted a war. The same was true half a century later when World War 1 broke out. It seems impossible now, but the populace broadly supported and wanted to go to war.
Excellent article by Walter W. As they say, the victors write the history.
This article points to why an article V convention is most needed. Obviously the states cannot secede, tried it and it did not work and would not work today either, in an attempt to reign in the fed government. The recently ordered HUD regs about socially engineering suburban neighborhoods points to how far astray this infernal central government has gone.
Blah, blah, blah................DUMMIES!!!!
Yer damn Confederacy DECLARED WAR on the rest of the U,S, of A.
Remember a little place called FORT SUMTER??? A misplaced week-long cannonade??
Huh?
bump
Truer words have never been spoken.
WEW nails it again. I have yet to see him go wobbly.
The articles of Confederation explicitly created a perpetual union, stating that no “alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State”.
That said, the war didn’t start because Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union, though he certainly did.
The war started because the radicals in South Carolina thought they needed war.
Remember, prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, only seven states had seceded. Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia had not.
Virginia had the largest population, most of the shipping, and the only industry in the South. A seven-state Confederacy would have been a poor backwater, easily dominated by both the US and the European powers.
At the time of the attack on Sumter, there was a debate going on in Congress over what to do. Yes, some were calling for war, others were calling for peaceable recognition. Had Congress recognized the secession, which it was very likely to do, Lincoln would have had little recourse.
Lincoln may have wanted war, but the thing is, so did South Carolina. They thought that only war would convince the other eight slave states to join the secession. They saw themselves with a choice between peace and a seven-state Confederacy or war and a fifteen-state Confederacy. So they rushed into war, trying to preempt any effort in Congress to recognize the secession. (And got an eleven-state Confederacy - and that only for four years. So it goes.)
Think about going back to 1860. Then consider the South leaving without a war. Then, project forward.
Everyone was looking to the future in 1860. What were they seeing?
Welcome, Browncoats....
Billy one note.
Pretty much an end to “Manifest Destiny”.
I think many of us have had further education on states rights and the right to secede from the Union since the beginning of the onslaught against a flag merely representing the history of the South and her ancestors..
Surely if the idea of censorship and banning of a symbol is to gain freedom from supposed anguishing recollections belonging to long dead slave ancestors and passed on in the blood to the current generation, then why was Obama not condemned when he displayed so arrogantly on the peoples house a symbol of horrific and immoral physical assault on the bodies of the children of those now living, and children of other hues also ???
Indeed why does the Isis flag, also represe4nting a slavery of ancient times, not be confiscated at our borders and not permitted to reign over rallies and parades calling for anarchy and terror ???
To the anti-Stars and Bars group does the battle flag of the Confederacy represent hatred and planned tyranny on all peoples of colored skin, or is the fear of it rather in the camp of denying freedom to govern ones one own heart and opinions and live without a Orwellian central control ???
The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
The Confederate slavemasters were fighting for self-determination? Just the opposite. They were fighting for slavery, not just for blacks, but for poor whites.
The Founding Fathers certainly did not believe in any right of secession from the Union. Even Robert E. Lee, respectful of the Founders, was horrified by secession.
It is correct that some northern Democrats and even some Republicans wanted to let the Confederates go, but they were greatly outnumbered by Unionists. The Federal war effort would not have succeeded otherwise. Likewise, there were many southern Unionists who had no use for slavery. Every southern state except South Carolina had units in the US Army.
I am not one but I am the first in my family since 1776 and before to live in one of the States of the Rebellion. My wife’s history major was practically The Civil War and she has written long papers and can talk quite a while on it and for every thing I can come up with that is “new” to me she can jump in a take off with footnotes and references. SHE can’t give a satisfactory answer on why that war took place. I doubt any of the folks who survived could. Come to think of it I doubt any soldier in any war has really understood anywhere near fully just why they are there. Slavery was the moral motivator that got the Union soldiers to fight, no question. How important was it? Lincoln himself said that if it preserved the Union he would not free a single slave so it must not have been all that important, at least to him.
Why? I don’t think anyone knows. There were many reasons and none good but together they must have been enough because it pretty much undeniably happened. The home in which I sit is surrounded with trenches and excavations that stand as mute testament to the fact that there was, indeed, a war around here.
Many Union soldiers said if the war was to free the blacks they would have never volunteered. Of course everyone one was a conscript by 1863 and the EP.
So there are a lot of questions regarding that.
Yeah, but then there’s that song they sang while doing it, “as He died to make men holy let us die to make men free”.
About the only thing I can really settle on was the comment by, IIRC, Shelby Foote (what a great Southron accent!), in the Ken Burns documentary. “whatever started it diminishes to insignificance compared to what it accomplished. In a brief four years the pronoun used to refer to the US changed from plural to singular. Globally, universally, and without comment.”. Like he said, it is really quite an amazing thing when you think about it.
My favorite quote
“Patrick Ronayne Cleburne “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision... It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
-— Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864, writing on what would happen if the Confederacy were to be defeated.
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.