Posted on 11/19/2018 8:39:26 AM PST by EveningStar
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Gettysburg Address as recited by Jeff Daniels.
He informed them that he would fire on them if the belligerent war fleet that Lincoln sent received any return fire.
No man is going to let someone shoot at him without returning fire, and Anderson simply made it clear that he would be helping the aggressor.
"Resisted" does not necessarily mean "fired upon." Captain Mercer could have interpreted it as anything which interfered with his effort to put supplies or men into the fort.
Just blocking the channel could have been seen as "resisting."
Just to be clear: I don't expect to surrender my firearm to a jack-booted thug without a decree signed by the chief justice repealing the second amendment.
I don't expect to surrender my firearm to a jack-booted thug with a decree signed by the chief justice repealing the second amendment.
So you keep claiming, over and over and over again. But as I've said before and as others far more knowledgeable than I have said before, I believe your opinion to be wrong.
I especially don't believe in "experts" in the areas of History or Law, because so much of it is subjective opinion and massaged interpretation.
And yet not a single one of Taney's biographers have found the claim to have any merit since not a single one of them included it in their books on the man.
Not is your chance to regurgitate your opinion that there is a grand conspiracy and threats of some kind that were used to keep those men from including the arrest nonsense in any of their books. I'm doing you no end of favors today.
Of course it is.
See my previous comment about "experts", and especially note the comment referencing History and Law.
Speaking of "subjective opinion" and "massaged interpretation", here you are again.
When I said I didn't understand the details, I was referring to the possible application of the decision, to what the precise principle involved was and what the limitations on it were. I doubt you've got any clearer notion of what was involved.
Citing the mudflaps case was inept on your part. First of all, the decision didn't impose federal regulation on business or on the states. Even now, there are no federal regulations governing mudflaps on trucks.
Secondly, the Constitution clearly allows Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, and interstate trucking definitely is interstate commerce. Federal involvement in matters directly connected to interstate commerce isn't any kind of usurpation.
When boats and horse carts would have carried most interstate traffic, you wouldn't have found states or the federal government interfering in how wagons or sailboats were built, but clearly, safety does become a concern when powerful trains, trucks and planes are involved.
Third, you can't assume that the people who demanded enforcement of federal fugitive slave laws over the objection of state and local authorities was really in favor of "states rights."
And whatever the Confederate attitude toward state power was in 1860, you can't assume that it would still apply after 150 years. You can't assume that history would stop in 1860 and that the Confederate central government would let states have a free rein in all spheres of life and the economy.
But if history really did stop in 1860 and nothing changed since then one can assume by the same principle that you'd still have slavery and everything that went with it.
The right or power to break with the entire Constitution can't be a right or power like any other under that Constitution.
It would be a mockery of the whole Constitution if a state or locality or individual could simply declare that it no long applies to them whenever they don't like something.
Why is it so hard to realize that if a state is part of a country, it can't simply up and leave it at will whenever things don't go its own way?
Exit of one state or another is something that could be worked out by the whole country in Congress or a convention called by the states, and then everybody would accept it.
To repeat, in his annual message to Congress, Buchanan stated that "the responsibility and true position of the Executive," bound by solemn oath before God and the country, was "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."
No human power could absolve the president from this obligation. Buchanan claimed, however, that events over which he had no control "rendered impracticable" the performance of his executive duty.
He referred to executive duty under the Militia Act of 1795, which apparently provided a statutory basis for presidential action in circumstances such as existed in South Carolina. Buchanan argued that the act was effectively nullified by the termination in South Carolina of "the whole machinery of the Federal Government" necessary for law enforcement.
Addressing the broader interpretive problem of the nature of the Union implicated in the action of the South Carolina Convention, Buchanan denied executive responsibility for resolving the constitutional crisis.
He declared: “The Executive has no authority to decide what shall be the relations between the Federal Government and South Carolina. He possesses no power to change the relations heretofore existing between them, much less to acknowledge the independence of that State.”
11/20/1860 President Buchanan’s then Attorney General J. S. Black issued his opinion on this date to support the President. He wrote that neither the President nor Congress had the authority to conduct aggressive armed conflict. He wrote,
“If Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure, will not all the States be absolved from their Federal obligations?
Despite the perceived effrontery of the secession, Buchanan respected the perpetuation of Constitutional law.
Abraham Lincoln did not allow this respect to supercede his selfish ambitions.
I don’t really want to fight the last civil war all over again. It’s settled.
We won. We write the history. That’s how it works.
That decision - Bibb v Navajo Freight Lines - resulted in federal courts claiming jurisdiction over Illinois mudflap laws and resulted in Illinois mudflap laws being held unconstitutional because of . . . blah blah blah commerce clause.
Brings to mind the oral history of the Choctaws who had a saying that phonetically looks like: Katta achaffa olkut asuv ofi filvmisa.
Translated: When the guardian angel of life urinates on your flintlock rifle, you know your luck has done run out.
In that spirit, when the federal government - yes, the federal courts are one of the three branches - says the founding fathers intended to include mudflap oversight as a federal responsibility, then you know the Constitution of enumerated powers for the federal government has been effectively overthrown.
Who knows, at this rate maybe one day the federal government will claim a glancing geese federal wetlands rule, or a federal right to regulate scaffold toe boards, or a federal right to overturn state laws that define marriage as being between one man and one woman, or to overturn state laws that protect the unborn . . .
After you read the two million page Federal Register - or is it three million pages now - come back and remind me that the federal government has not usurped states’ rights.
Much of the troubles this nation now faces is a consequence of that war. Federalism was certainly damaged. An "establishment" power cartel was created, the Federal government was massively grown to support the preferences of this new power cartel. The 14th amendment has given us Abortion, Homosexual marriage, Anchor Babies, Prayer out of public schools, and a whole host of other destructive policies with more and greater potential abuses in the future.
We have a massive debt, and in the last few years I have come to believe that this debt was created through the process of funneling Federal money through a crony capitalist corruptacracy that uses people as pawns to stay in power. Someone is getting rich from Federal Debt, and it is leaving "We the People" to pay the bill when it comes due. We won't be able.
I see the consequences of that war still hurting people today.
We won. We write the history. That’s how it works.
Understanding the reality is how you solve problems. Teaching a misleading history is how you give people bad data with which to work, and it can only result in garbage answers coming out of it.
Also, some people want to know what is the objective truth, as opposed to the preferred narrative.
You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to follow a money trail as big as this one.
“Sore losers.”
153 years, seven months, eight days.
If Southerners were really sore losers, they would not have been so quick to forgive and forget.
I really want to be respectful. And I don’t want to get into an argument.
It doesn’t matter why we are screwed after 150 years. We just are. And you and I are not going to fix that.
I hesitate to disagree with you but in this instance I do. The poster demojeff is very talented, patriotic, and inspiring contributor to this board. I like him.
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". . . intelligent, but has loads of common sense."
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Well, that's what they say.
Mercer’s actions speak for themselves. His orders were to use force only if the resupply effort was resisted. He did not allow his forces to fire on Confederate forces even though he was fully aware that they were firing on Fort Sumter. Not one person in his military chain of command would have found fault with his actions if he opened fire on the batteries that were firing on Fort Sumter. He interpreted his orders very strictly. He would not have opened fire unless the resupply mission was resisted by force. The fact that the Fort was being fire on had no bearing on his orders. Even the Confederate battery commanders were amazed that the Union war ships did not make a move to aid Fort Sumter. Why, because their orders were to only use force if the resupply mission was resisted.
They were not sent down there to open fire on the Confederate forces, They didn’t have “ATTACK” order from the President.
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