The Constitution Was Literally Written By Slaveowners. Why Is America Obsessed With Upholding It?

You write about this with incredible detachment, as though you aren't worried about losing your job because, say, Chinese convicts can do it cheaper.

I am wrong because I can point out something that happened in the distant past without getting choked up about it? I try to see things as they are, not how I would wish them to be.

You are looking at this in 21st century terms.

I do not think I am. Read the Illinois "Black Codes", a link to a comment regarding them is posted above. You can't get such laws without a deep abiding and irrational hatred.

The 19th century was very and unapologetically racist.

People who opposed slavery at the beginning 19th century, generally assumed that Black and White couldn't live together in the country. Even the slave owners believed that without slavery, Blacks would either be expelled or killed or would take over. Colonization was an attempt to get the country beyond slavery.

Liberia was created during Monroe's Presidency. (1822) It's capitol city is "Monrovia" after President Monroe. It was an effort to simply get them out of the country.

It may appall us now, but at the time it seemed like the only way out. It was not necessarily associated with hatred of African-Americans either. Some proponents of colonization thought rather well of Blacks.

This is true. I think everyone involved wanted them to prosper in Liberia, but the main driving force for these colonization movements was to get them out of American society. Read what Henry Clay had to say about what he thought of free black people. I just saw it the other day while reading a book about the Presidents, and I was shocked that Lincoln's mentor believed as he did.

Again, you are disconnected from the real world and you don't even know yourself. You constantly spit out bile at "elites," but remain curiously neutral when writing about people who built their fortunes on actual, literal slavery.

They were done in during the civil war, and are not the people who are currently oppressing me and us today. No, the current elites are the descendants of the people who defeated the old Southern elites, and many of them are still living in the same areas of the country where their predecessors lived in the 1860s. New York, DC, Boston, Chicago are all still roots of the "elite."

Grant appointed his friends and supporters. They weren't longtime Washingtonians. They were people from back home and elsewhere. They were crooks.

The entire Federal Bureaucracy was corrupt at this point. His friends found themselves in an environment where corruption was the norm, and they availed themselves of it.

I recall a statement made by former Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan, William Bennett. (and I paraphrase.)

He said that when he was first appointed, he felt like the Captain of a large ship who had been given the wheel. After a time he noticed that his orders were not getting carried out, because the Bureaucracy was resisting him and undermining everything he tried to do.

He said it was as if the Captain went below decks to see what must be wrong with the wheel ropes, all to discover they were not even connected to the rudder.

The Republicans did not campaign on abolishing slavery. They opposed the expansion of slavery.

Slavery wasn't actually going to expand. This was a false claim from the liberals very much like "He'll put yall back in chains!" It was a claim intended to rally support against the possibility that newly created states would side with the South, and thereby give them a sufficient majority to break the f***ing corrupt laws pumping money out of their pockets and into the pockets of the wealthy northern elite.

The headquarters of the "Free Soil Party" was not located in Kansas, (which was the state in question.) It was located in New York City, where the corrupt business interests could sock puppet it the way they have long done with their fake organizations designed to gain them power.

Democrats feared the Republicans would build a national party and undermine support for slavery in the South, so they agitated for secession.

You know... that doesn't even really make sense when you think about it. They were worried that Republicans were going to convince the Southern states to get rid of slavery? Are these the same Republicans that voted to pass the Corwin Amendment which would guarantee permanent slavery for any state that wanted it?

And of course you tell us to "Pay no attention to that 200 Million dollars per year produced by the South, but which was under the control of New York and Washington DC!"

Real actual money sounds a lot more plausible as a motive than a fear of losing slavery, especially in a country where they were falling all over themselves to give you permanent slavery in the form of a Constitutional Amendment.

The country was falling apart.

So was the United Kingdom in 1776, but our side declared we had a right to govern ourselves whether the Union liked it or not!

You are misreading the evidence. Through Seward, Lincoln submitted three possible amendments to a Congressional committee.

You are telling me I am mistaken, but you are essentially saying Lincoln was behind this?

With the evidence Phil Magness presents, this looks like a lie.

You guys were bound to get together some time.

I don't have any background knowledge of him, so why should I disbelieve what he appears to have taken the time to research? What is supposedly wrong with Phil Magness?

Just like Hitler and Stalin.

Using derogatory language and insults is what people do when they are frustrated and cannot come up with good factual rebuttals.

Nice map. May make a country or two out of it.

In the last few years I have come to believe that the Confederacy would have looked like that at one point, but more likely including Kentucky and several other border states.

Everything connected by the Great Lakes to New York would have remained in the New York coalition, but it would have become much less powerful than it did in our timeline.

Literally, their first piece (the snippet shown) is so full of lies, every point made is a blatant lie. Sheesh.

You’re arguing with a Democrat in Diogenes.

You might as well be talking to a parrot.

You might as well be talking to a parrot.

And you are here to volunteer?

No, YOU”RE the parrot, you dope.

Off your meds again are you?

You might as well be talking to a parrot.

True. But every once in while I feel like pushing back.

I am wrong because I can point out something that happened in the distant past without getting choked up about it? I try to see things as they are, not how I would wish them to be.

I am not criticizing you for not getting emotional, but for not understanding that the complaints Americans have now about China weren't so different from the complaints free Americans had then about competing with slaves, and also for not recognizing that freedom, payment for work, and fair competition are themselves moral values. You don't see any of that because you see how you want things to be, not how they were or are.

The 19th century was very and unapologetically racist.

But you bend over backwards to excuse slaveowners and don't make the same allowances for people who did want to free the slaves. Sure, virtually everybody was racist, a word that didn't exist at the time. Very few people believed that large numbers of free blacks and whites could coexist peacefully in the same country. It doesn't follow from that that people who wanted to free slaves and give them passage to Africa were worse than people who wanted to keep buying and selling slaves an profiting from their forced labor.

I think everyone involved wanted them to prosper in Liberia, but the main driving force for these colonization movements was to get them out of American society. Read what Henry Clay had to say about what he thought of free black people. I just saw it the other day while reading a book about the Presidents, and I was shocked that Lincoln's mentor believed as he did.

I really doubt you've examined things closely enough to say what the "main driving force" was. Before William Lloyd Garrison and his supporters came along, emancipation and colonization were closely linked ideas. That's the way things were. If you want to judge people who linked emancipation with colonization (as was common at the time) harshly, you'll have to do the same for those who wanted to keep their slaves.

What Clay thought was what Jefferson thought. They weren't so different in their thinking about slavery and race or their failure to put their ideas into practice. They weren't worse than the more vocal defenders of slavery who opposed and suppressed all talk of emancipation.

While Clay never believed in the equality of the races, he did say that slavery was wrong. He called it “a curse on the master” and a “grievous wrong on the slave.” He said that slaves were “rational beings.” In the 1830s, he wrote a friend: “That slavery is unjust and a great evil are undisputed axioms. The difficulty always has been how to get rid of it.” He wrote publicly of his support for gradual emancipation. These views remained somewhat unchanged throughout his life.

They were done in during the civil war, and are not the people who are currently oppressing me and us today.

People deal with the problems of their own day. They weren't going to bow to King George or to Hitler because 250 or 80 years later, you won't like how things are.

No, the current elites are the descendants of the people who defeated the old Southern elites, and many of them are still living in the same areas of the country where their predecessors lived in the 1860s. New York, DC, Boston, Chicago are all still roots of the "elite."

This is typical of your nonsense. Big cities and their suburbs are where lots of people live. They go there to get jobs and make money. So naturally, they will play important roles in politics and the economy. Today's elites live in Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and around the country, not just in NYC, DC, Boston, and Chicago.

The entire Federal Bureaucracy was corrupt at this point. His friends found themselves in an environment where corruption was the norm, and they availed themselves of it.

More bullshit. Look at what the Democrats were doing in the cities. Look around the country. It was a time of great opportunity. People were stealing right and left, even on the frontier. Where there was money to be made, there were corners to cut, but the corruption in Grant's administration went further than expected. You are very naive, if you think grassroots politics are somehow free of the corruption that is present in the capital.

The headquarters of the "Free Soil Party" was not located in Kansas, (which was the state in question.) It was located in New York City, where the corrupt business interests could sock puppet it the way they have long done with their fake organizations designed to gain them power.

As I said earlier, we don't know if the Free Soil Party did have a headquarters or where it was. The party was strong in New York State. First, because there was a bloc of Democrats in the state that wasn't committed to supporting slavery. It was a big state and bringing together Conscience Whigs and Democrats who supported Martin Van Buren could make a difference. Second, because Western New York was the birthplace of a lot of new religious and political movement. It had been a stronghold of the religious awakening, and people were still looking for things to believe in. Third, because Western New York was a center of the Westward Movement. The parents of the people who lived there came from the East. Their children moved into the West. Why wouldn't they care about slavery on the frontier.

They were worried that Republicans were going to convince the Southern states to get rid of slavery?

Slaveowners don't sleep soundly. There's always a fear that they will lose control. Republican judges, marshals, postmasters and other appointees could act as the nucleus of a Southern anti-slavery movement. That's what the slaveowners feared.

You are telling me I am mistaken, but you are essentially saying Lincoln was behind this?

I said that a lot of people submitted ideas to the committee. You cut that part out, because you only see what you want to see.

What is supposedly wrong with Phil Magness?

Phil had weird ideas and he thought that if you couldn't absolutely prove that something didn't happen, you had to accept that it did. So when it came to the Civil War, he was like people who assume that Michelle Obama is a man because you can't absolutely 100% prove that it couldn't possibly be true. He didn't understand that the historical record isn't perfectly complete, and one has to rely on probability and credibility in trying to understand what probably happened. He also loved to get people banned and that doesn't go over well.

Using derogatory language and insults is what people do when they are frustrated and cannot come up with good factual rebuttals.

You don't pay any attention to factual rebuttals.

A bizarre rant. I’m so stunned I can hardly respond.

I am not criticizing you for not getting emotional, but for not understanding that the complaints Americans have now about China weren't so different from the complaints free Americans had then about competing with slaves, and also for not recognizing that freedom, payment for work, and fair competition are themselves moral values. You don't see any of that because you see how you want things to be, not how they were or are.

No, I do see that. I fully grasp why someone would hate to have to compete against free labor. Years ago back when Pat Buchanan was running for President, he said something I regarded as quite sensible and profound.

He said that here in America, American companies have to comply with all sorts of safety regulations, with pollution regulations, labor laws and idiot courts. Other nations such as China, do not have to deal with these things, and it is unfair to American workers and American companies to have to compete with companies in foreign countries that do not have to bear these costs.

He said we should place additional tariffs on imports from such countries to level the playing field for American companies and workers. Makes sense to me.

But you bend over backwards to excuse slaveowners and don't make the same allowances for people who did want to free the slaves.

That's what you want to hear. What I am doing is pointing out that the "good guys" were really just as bad as the "bad guys", and did not fight a war for a worthy moral reason, but instead for very bad and immoral reasons.

The Northern states hated slavery, but most of them didn't hate it because it was morally wrong, they hated it because of their own self interest and prejudice. Mens rea for all their actions was wrong.

It doesn't follow from that that people who wanted to free slaves and give them passage to Africa were worse than people who wanted to keep buying and selling slaves an profiting from their forced labor.

They are worse when they murder people for the pretend reason of caring about slaves. They used "slaves" as an excuse to invade and kill people and establish a dictatorial government rejected by the people of those states.

If you want to judge people who linked emancipation with colonization (as was common at the time) harshly, you'll have to do the same for those who wanted to keep their slaves.

What the two groups have in common is that neither of them were motivated by concern for the well being of the people they wanted to direct. Or perhaps I should say, the vast bulk of them were not concerned with the well being of the people who's future's they sought to direct.

I could see people saying "These people are our brothers and sisters and we cannot abide them being denied the fruits of their own labor." While some in the North may have felt that way, the vast majority did not. (At least not until it had become fashionable to think that way.)

They weren't motivated by the milk of human kindness. They were motivated by base and evil reasons, and some of the reasons were as bad or worse than the greed of the slaveowner.

As Charles Dickens noted, "For the rest, there is not a pin to choose between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out of it, just as it happens."

People deal with the problems of their own day. They weren't going to bow to King George or to Hitler because 250 or 80 years later, you won't like how things are.

You missed my point. The evil unleashed against the slaveowners is the evil we are fighting today. It's corrupt Washington DC with it's "special interest" influencers who bend laws and public spending to favor their own enrichment. It's too powerful Washington DC which has two systems of justice and forces it's immoral ideas on everyone else.

Biden's director of Nuclear energy.

It is not what the founders gave us. Lincoln made it bigger and stronger and more evil.

This is typical of your nonsense. Big cities and their suburbs are where lots of people live. They go there to get jobs and make money. So naturally, they will play important roles in politics and the economy. Today's elites live in Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and around the country, not just in NYC, DC, Boston, and Chicago.

Where do they get their news? Their books? Their magazines? *Who* decides to give a stupid lying bitch "air" time to spew nonsense about Trump grabbing the wheel? Or "Russian Hookers peeing on the bed?"

Now you may only see me in civil war topic related threads, but one of the other topics I have always felt strongly about and discuss whenever it comes up is News Liars feeding propaganda to the masses and thereby manipulating elections.

I have *detested* the news liars since 1995 when Newt Gingrich was trying to implement his "Contract with America", one essential aspect of which was balancing the budget.

I used to watch "Good Morning America" every day in those years, and I watched in dismay as every one of the talking head liars ridiculed the idea of the US Government balancing the budget. Every one of their staff mocked the idea and said it was "reckless and irrational."

I said to myself, "What sane American would be against not spending more money than you take in? *WHO* would think spending more than you take in is a good idea?"

Then I realized, the administrators of all that government spending would be in favor of continuing and even increasing the spending. People who benefit from government spending would of course favor it, but why would the media people favor it? And then I realized, it was because the people they work for favor it, and therefore they must benefit from it in some way, likely financially.

The media is not like normal Americans. 1995 is the year I realized the media are part of the corruption influence scheme trying to keep government spending going. At that time, I didn't realize it was a long term phenomena, and I thought it had only started in the last few decades of the 20th century. It was years later before I started to notice this sort of thing was going on for a much longer time.

So the lies are coming out of New York and Washington DC mainly. Have you noticed?

As I said earlier, we don't know if the Free Soil Party did have a headquarters or where it was.

I think I have ran across that information in the past. That's why I keep saying it was headquartered in New York city.

First, because there was a bloc of Democrats in the state that...

...Third, because Western New York was a center of the Westward Movement.

The possibility that it was astroturf that just happened to serve the interests of the coalition that more or less controlled DC and set American laws as they wished, did not occur to you? I won't say i'm set in stone with the idea that the "Free Soil Party" was astroturff, (like BLM) but I am certainly keeping the idea in the back of my mind.

Slaveowners don't sleep soundly. There's always a fear that they will lose control. Republican judges, marshals, postmasters and other appointees could act as the nucleus of a Southern anti-slavery movement. That's what the slaveowners feared.

So their enemies, and the people who smashed them to bits, have told us ever since. I've seen enough anomalies in the things I had been taught all my life so that I do not now simply accept claims as true, especially when those asserting such claims have a vested interest in the outcome.

The idea that they feared the loss of slavery is not all that plausible. Now I have seen another prominent columnist (Paul Craig Roberts) write an article in which he claims that the South claimed slavery as the legal justification for secession because it represents a clear case of breech of contract by the Northern states. He argues that they really hated the tariffs and the spending, but had no legal recourse regarding those because the Constitution grants these powers to Congress and they had to live with it, but slavery was clearly an area in which the Northern states were violating the US Constitution, and thereby giving the southern states legal justification to make their claim for secession.

There may be some merit to his theory, but I'm not ready to embrace it as probable, but it is an interesting argument.

I said that a lot of people submitted ideas to the committee. You cut that part out, because you only see what you want to see.

I didn't include it because people who weren't Abraham Lincoln were not particularly relevant. My understanding of what you said is that Lincoln submitted some form of this to the committee. Are you saying he didn't, and that was the work of some other people?

Phil had weird ideas and he thought that if you couldn't absolutely prove that something didn't happen, you had to accept that it did.

I have ran into that sort of fallacy thinking before. My tactic is to keep the idea in the back of my mind. When presented with an idea, you have to weigh it against other available facts. If you don't know of something that demonstrates it is wrong outright, you simply hang onto the idea until you can get more information. You can't declare it valid or invalid when you can't prove it one way or the other. It has to linger like a ghost haunting your mind until you can fit it in as a puzzle piece or dismiss it as garbage.

I learned this technique repairing electronic equipment. When presented with symptoms, you theorize on what possible component failures can cause those symptoms. Often it is a whole series of components and you have to weigh multiple theories of which one is bad.

You then devise tests to narrow it down until you arrive at the correct answer.

Multiple theories are harder when applied to history, (because there are so many details you have to remember) but I don't see any other way to do it.

He didn't understand that the historical record isn't perfectly complete, and one has to rely on probability and credibility in trying to understand what probably happened.

Well I agree it isn't perfect. I spent most of my life believing the official narrative about what happened in the civil war and what it was about, and I have of course since discovered I had been greatly misled on many significant points.

Part of the reason history isn't perfect is because people try to slant it to support what they wish to believe.

Take for example the Taney Arrest warrant as related by Lamon. Lincoln historians reject it as bullsh*t because they don't want to believe it. They leave it out of their histories.

You don't pay any attention to factual rebuttals.

I don't always follow them the way you wish I would, (Like Lincoln submitted to the committee thing.) but even if what you say is correct, do you think insults will produce a better result?

One thing about you is that you make me work. I sometimes dread seeing you enter a discussion because I know I will have a hard slog trying to rebut your arguments.

You are too reasonable to dismiss out of hand, as I do with some others. You deserve as good of a response as I can make.

DiogenesLamp: "Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, James Monroe, and many other movers and shakers engaged in great efforts to get black people out of the country."

It was assumed that freed blacks would want to return to their "homeland" and many did. Some were offered freedom on condition they recolonized to Liberia, others were already freed and willing to go.

But overall, the numbers were relatively small, the expenses huge and the success rate pitiful -- most freedmen died within a few years of landing back in Africa. But some did survive and prosper and so the recolonization experiment continued until if utterly failed on a large scale during the Civil War.

So recolonization was official US government policy from roughly 1820 until the Civil War. Thousands did recolonize, but the percent was small compared to the millions who wanted to live freely in their homeland.