How the Civil War Could Have Been Avoided

vanity | 10/31/01 | vanity

[tpaine]

Finally. Thank you.

[smolensk]

I just KNEW you would respond to that! You are the type that has to get in the last word. Just so you know that I am not that type - no matter what you post, I will not respond to you - so you have the last word. Enjoy it and hope it makes your day. Consider it a gift from me.

[JD86]

Your arguments are never on point. I ask a question or make a comment and you call my family names. Very adult of you.

Your commentary reminds me of an old law school joke. When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, argue the law. When you don't have the law, argue for justice. Since you don't have the facts, the law or justice, it seems you resort to baseless namecalling. Grow up.

[JD86]

see 224 above

[LadyJD]

Re: your 190

So where did you
get that ILL DEUCE?

Let me know and I will provide
equally appalling counterpoint.

[LadyJD]

Thanks for the confimation; I suspected that it was fantasy. We both know "anything" (witness WJC recently) can be "read into" the Congressional Record.

If you want to salvage a degree of credibility then give me cites. I will take it from there.

[LadyJD]

Say what!!??

Oh never mind, you are obviously off your medication again.

[JD86]

Still badmouthing the South and lawyers.....why don't you give it a rest? The Lady asked you a question and you respond with name-calling.....surely you can do better than that.

[H.Akston]

"Clinton was a southerner who did that too"

Which one, hill or bill?

I could just as easily (and meaninglessly) say that yankees were traitors to their state governments as you can say that southerners were traitors to the federal government. Since we live in a nation under two equally sovereign governments, State and Federal, and one Constitution, the only thing you can be a traitor to is the Constitution. We do not invest our souls in government, as other nations do. Government is derived from the People. IT is our slave. If the Constitution protects the rights of people in the states to secede, (and it does) loyalty to the Constitution means you don't fight a state to keep it in the Union, or else you're a traitor to the Constitution. When Americans go to war, they fight for the Constitution, not their local or general government. The CSA and each state in the South was fighting for the principles in the American constitution, duplicated in the CSA's Constitution which they had established and were going to live under had they been successful. They are not traitors unless they're fighting against the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the laws in the Constitution. The Southerners were therefore not traitors.

[Ditto]

What the South should have done, in the late 1850's, is to have realized that slavery was a dying institution anyway...

Bad assumption. Thirty years eariler, maybe, but with the growth of King Cotton in the deep south, by the 1850s, both the price and the demand for slaves was booming. It was a very profitable business.

[H.Akston]

The key you're missing is that secession is not prohibited by the Constitution. No violation of Constitution = no treason. Also, the Declaration of Independence says ANY government may be thrown off by the people when it is deemed to be hostile to their rights. The States were the original political entities that made this declaration.

You didn't answer my original question - which "Clinton" was a southerner - hill or bill?

[H.Akston]

Didn't you know that the People of each southern state had a convention and directed their representatives and Senators to secede? Here: Read Jefferson Davis' last speech before the Senate where he describes the convention that Mississippi held.