Posted on 04/12/2022 2:53:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
It was in this month, one hundred and fifty-seven years ago, that the Civil War ended. I have seen afficionados of both sides lament what happened, while they might argue over who was right, and what was lost.
I am not an aficionado of the Lost Cause Theory. While some defenders of Dixie claim the issue was states’ rights, the chief underlying cause of the war was slavery. In his "Cornerstone Speech" of March 21, 1861, Confederate VP Alexander H. Stephens' stated bluntly that slavery was the very foundation of Southern society. Four states: Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, even listed slavery among their reasons for leaving.
Four states went further. Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina all issued additional documents, usually referred to as the “Declarations of Causes"…
Two major themes emerge in these documents: slavery and states' rights. All four states strongly defend slavery while making varying claims related to states' rights. -- Battlefields.org
The usual reply is that the South rejected the proposed Corwin Amendment which would have protected slavery in the south, hence the issue was states’ rights.
The problem with that argument is that the South did not want slavery to be “protected.” Rather, the South wanted slavery to expand to the Pacific. They wanted New Mexico, Arizona, and even Southern California to allow slavery. In their minds, the Corwin Amendment wasn’t enough.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yes but Cen-Tejas has you by 55 years or so on you because his grandfather fought in the Civil War.
Be brave, go up to a black person and tell them they should still be inslaved.
True. But showing them to be the boobs they are has its attractions.
It does. A court's decision is made up of two elements. Those that refer to the crucial facts and law of the case before the court are ratio decidendi. Those that refer to matters not directly connected with the case or which raise hypothetical facts or which are unrelated to the case before the court are obiter dictum. For the purposes of judicial precedent, ratio decidendi is binding, whereas obiter dicta are not.
Taney himself summed up facts of the case in his decision: "The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen, one of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution?" Taney then went on to lay out his facts and the laws that justified his decision that no, a negro could not be a citizen and therefore Scott had no right to sue in court. Those were the ratio decidendi that formed the binding precedent. Everything else in Taney's opinion were said in dicta and were not binding, including his comments on the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Were you absent the day they talked about obiter dictum and ratio decidendi in law school?
bkmk
Miss Dawg, you write that one Constitution protected slave imports for 20 years.
Which Constitution was that?
Nope. Look at the history Reb. The CSA knew at some point Lincoln would end it and they weren’t going to let that happen.
No Lampster. April,12 1861 was no insurrection. That was a flat out declaration of war undertaken by cannon fire.
The only shot’s fired on Jan. 6 were from the murderer of Ashley Babbitt.
Nope. This is a fantasy. Lincoln couldn't have ended it if it were a constitutional amendment and furthermore Lincoln had shown zero inclination to end it even if he did have that power, which he didn't.
Except the Dred Scott decision was not merely persuasive authority. It was mandatory authority. All federal courts were bound by it. Any case brought arguing that a slave would have to be freed if brought into a US state that had banned slavery or a territory of the US would have been thrown dismissed under stare decisis.
Taney himself summed up facts of the case in his decision: "The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen, one of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution?" Taney then went on to lay out his facts and the laws that justified his decision that no, a negro could not be a citizen and therefore Scott had no right to sue in court. Those were the ratio decidendi that formed the binding precedent. Everything else in Taney's opinion were said in dicta and were not binding, including his comments on the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
LOL! No. You have failed to understand the legal precedent set. Do some reading. Pretty much anywhere you look will spell it out for you. It was not just a matter of denying standing. The court went way beyond that and ruled that a slave is not free by virtue of having been brought to a non slave state or a US Territory.
Were you absent the day they talked about obiter dictum and ratio decidendi in law school?
No, but I can see you were absent when they talked about Dred Scott. You have failed spectacularly to understand the precedent set, the difference between persuasive and mandatory authority and what stare decisis means.
This is hilarious. You cannot grasp the plain text of the Constitution. A prohibition against a state entering into treaties/trade agreements with foreign nations in no way implies a prohibition against secession. Crawl back in the bottle.
We've gone over this a million times on this board. In the tradition of the train of abuses portion of the Declaration of Independence, pointing out that the Northern states had violated the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution gave the seceding states a legal basis for saying it was the Northern states which had violated the compact. They had. There's no question of it. Does that mean this was the real reason why the Southern states were leaving? No.
No matter how much they hated it, no matter how unfair and exploitative it was, there was no limit on tariffs set in the constitution nor was there any requirement that the federal government be fair or equitable in how it distributed funds. The Southern states were being screwed over. They were paying the vast majority of the tariff and they were getting a paltry amount back from the federal government for infrastructure projects, corporate subsidies, etc. They hated this but could not claim it was unconstitutional no matter how angry they were about it.
THIS and not slavery was an issue that touched every man's wallet in the South. Slave owners represented not even 6% of the total free population in the seceding states. The other 94% were not seceding over or fighting for something they did not have anyway. They all knew they would be far better off if they were Independent. That was their real motivation. That is why the Corwin Amendment did not address their concerns.
Exactly. It’s the one argument for which the southernphobes have no rebuttal. Well, no legitimate rebuttal.
It’s an argument based on logic, not emotion. And not “free the slaves,” which Lincoln argued was not the reason for the war.
The one FLT_bird was referring to in his reply 103: "The US Constitution protected slave imports for 20 years." Did you not read it?
As are all Supreme Court decisions.
Any case brought arguing that a slave would have to be freed if brought into a US state that had banned slavery or a territory of the US would have been thrown dismissed under stare decisis.
Depending on the circumstances, yes. Any slave using the courts to demand freedom in states that banned slavery would certainly have their case thrown out under the Scott ruling because they were not citizens and had no right to sue.
No. You have failed to understand the legal precedent set.
I'm not the one having problems understanding the court system and the difference between ratio decidendi and obiter dictum.
Yes the Supreme Court decided the matter. Slaveowners could bring their slaves to transit any non slave state or US territory.
Depending on the circumstances, yes. Any slave using the courts to demand freedom in states that banned slavery would certainly have their case thrown out under the Scott ruling because they were not citizens and had no right to sue.
The court went beyond a lack of standing argument.
I'm not the one having problems understanding the court system and the difference between ratio decidendi and obiter dictum.
You're the one not understanding how the legal system works, not understanding the difference between persuasive and mandatory authority and not understanding Stare Decisis. They cover all of this in Con Law I and II in 1L. They cover it again in the bar exam.
We are told that a democratic process of separation from a nation which was founded on the idea that all people have a right to self determination is "rebellion."
This is a lie. Even Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said "secession is not rebellion."
But calling it "rebellion" unlocked powers Lincoln could not otherwise use, so Lincoln "called a tail a leg" because it suited his need. The corrupt nasty Liberals of New York and Washington DC are calling January 6th a "rebellion" and an "insurrection" too. This should give you an idea of how the political lie system works when those in power control the news.
Would you use the same terms to describe the actions of the slaveholding classes when they committed mayhem and murder in suppressing the numerous slave rebellions?
Correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that US law recognized the rights of the "slaveholding classes" to do that. In fact, there is a specific clause in the US Constitution, Article IV, section 2, that recognizes the right of the "slaveholding classes" to have escaped slaves returned to them.
So you are complaining about something that was recognized as legal by the law of that era. Are you advocating "rebellion" against the Law?
The same institution of slavery that was the primary concern of those southern leaders that claimed secession as the only remedy to the chance that expansion of the franchise might be limited.
I see this claim repeated over and over again because people have found out that 4 of the 11 states which seceded mentioned threats to slavery as a "cause" of secession. Ignored completely is the fact that 7 states did not say such a thing, and Virginia specifically said that they seceded because efforts by Lincoln to invade the other states were a tyrannical oppression of freedom.
But getting it accurate does not suit what people wish to believe. As for those 4 states that mentioned "slavery" as an issue for secession, Paul Craig Roberts has a pretty good explanation as to why they felt they needed to do that.
On your "expansion" point, I have shown up above that this was bullsh*t told for the purposes of frightening people into voting the way the Northeastern power block wanted and had no basis in reality. Also I believe either JeffersonDem or FLT-Bird pointed out above that upon secession, the seceded states gave up all claims on the western territories, so apparently "expanding" slavery into them wasn't really a thing at all.
The only thing left of the "expansion" claim is the lie that keeps lingering through these debates. It was never real. It was just a political tool used by Liberals to gain power.
It’s very clear that the overwhelming fear of ‘servile insurrection’ was very real and palpable in the writings of many southerners before the war, and this fear clearly seemed to be at the root of many of the decisions that were made.
So their enemies have told us ever since, but just to be sure, the Nasty Evil powerful men of Massachusetts financed and planned an armed invasion by a fanatical religious nut-job to initiate a massive slave rebellion, which greatly increased the fear that there might actually be a slave rebellion like the one Nat Turner had done, or like the rebellion in Haiti.
Power and greed? As if that standard of motives was absent from the southern leadership.
The trouble with your comparison is that it was the *NORTH* who sent armies invading and killing other people because of their *POWER AND GREED*.
The Southern states did not do that. So whether they sought "power and greed" doesn't much matter, because they did not act on such a desire to kill other people. The North did.
I don't know. I gather from talking with him that he was significantly older than me, and I suspect he may have caught Covid 19 and didn't survive it. I know several people who have died from the disease.
He was very articulate and knowledgeable and a great asset for Free Republic.
This is exactly correct. Lincoln was a master manipulator which you can see in other events in his life's history, such as how he won the nomination at the Chicago convention. Lincoln was using underhanded Mafioso tactics long before he became President by cheating William Seward out of the Nomination using his Anti-fa like goons.
He said "you can't fool all the people all of the time" and then he did exactly that. He presented to them a war of nationalism triggered by an event that *HE* engineered to create that effect, and then he duped them into going into other people's lands to kill them so as to protect the financial wealth of the powerful people controlling Washington DC, and who still control it today.
Neo Confederates are comical. I have great respect for the history of the South and the Confederacy. But thelse cockamany theories about the war and the leadership are simply Sovietized pseudo history that doesn’t jive with real history.
The United States won. Get over it. The Confederacy simply got beat and Robert E. Lee was intelligent enough to know the war was lost.
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