ABRAHAM LINCOLN: AMERICA’S GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL

Southern Caucus ^ | ? | Ron Holland

[Non-Sequitur]

Thank you Mr. Lincoln, for overpowering government
Thank you Mr. Lincoln, for overstepping your constitutional boundries(and I don't give a dern about Whiskey Acts created to cover a small rebellion 65 years prior, the powers he used were NOT in the Constitution)
Thank you, Mr. Lincoln for attacking Southern ports and allowing your generals to burn and pillage the South
Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, for giving our current POTUS a honest to goodness blueprint to follow when setting up military tribunals(even though yours were declared unconstitutional in 1866 by the SCOTUS)
Thank you, Mr Lincoln for starting one of the worst wars in history up to that time(even though you didn't get Congressional support)
Thank you Mr. Lincoln for ballooning the national debt 100 TIMES in a short four years

You're welcome.

[Ditto]

I'm sure that accidental cross-dressing happened all the time down south. Southern culture and all.

LOL . Hey…. Maybe it was Saturday night and him and the wife were get’n a little frisky…. Hell, it could happen to anyone especially when you on the run from the entire US Army. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they catch Usama and Omar decked out in a little Victoria Secrets number.

[Aurelius]

I have read in a number of places that this story of Davis dressing in his wife's clothing to avoid capture is nothing but typical Union lies and propaganda. On the other hand, there is a story that "Honest Abe" sneaked into the District of Columbia, to assume his presidency, in women's clothing. Of course, I can't vouch with absolute certainty for either; just because one reads it in a book doesn't make it so. I will try to locate some sources and get back to you.

[Leesylvanian]

Doesn't surprise me that you don't accept written words. One of the posters on your side of Friday's thread (Lincoln was not elected) accepted the clauses I mentioned, and went on to say they were void because the states ratified the Constitution after it was written (?!?!?!). It was that kind of 'logic,' along with my wife's pre-term labor and its attendant responsibilities it placed upon me at home, that caused me to drop out of the thread.

Read the constitutional ratification documents for yourself and you will see that these clauses really exist. And, if secession was so horribly against the ideals of the Founders, why were these clauses not rebuked by suceeding Congresses? The Founders were some of the greatest minds this country has produced; they wouldn't have let it slide for no reason. If they were dead-set against secession, I doubt if one state's delegation would have ratified the document.

[dixiepatriot]

Ditto said: "And you can't point to anything from the constitutional convention or the debates of ratification that any of the authors or any of the opponents of the constitution say what was intended was anything other than a perpetual union. The Articles of Confederation were specifically intended and described in that document to be a perpetual union of states, and the Constitution was specifically noted in the preamble to be for the intention of forming a "more perfect union" that was possible under the Articles of Confederation. You would have us believe that while both the Federalists and the anti-Federalists were remarkable in their insights and anticipation of future legal conflicts involving constitutional law, but somehow the idea of secession seemed to escape all of their attention? Not a word of a right to secession was mentioned in any of those debates. That is because they all knew and understood perfectly that it was a perpetual contract. The only conceivable way out was through amendment or a new convention, which the south never even attempted." Complete nonsense. The Declaration of Independence is nothing less than a secessionist document. Furthermore, three states (Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia retained the right of secession in their act approving the Constitution. Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" – by force, if necessary – a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming "independence". The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn 't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government. Far from being a new-fangled idea in 1861, the right of secession was implicit in the very language of American politics – in the words "state," "sovereign," and "federal" – from the beginning. It was also positively asserted many times, even in the North, before 1861. As a matter of fact, the Hartford Convention in 1814, attended by delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and parts of Vermont and New Hampshire, opposed the War of 1812 as well as many of the policies of Thomas Jefferson and his successors. Guess what their solution was? That's right, secession. There were secessionist cries from some Northern states over the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Whiskey Tax, the War of 1812, the admission of Texas, and the Mexican War. But I doubt you'll read about any of this in the government-approved public school textbooks. It was not secession that was unconstitutional, but the suppression of secession. The North fought the War by allowing its chief executive to exercise dictatorial powers, raising armies and money and suspending civil liberties without consulting Congress, and even arresting the Maryland legislature and installing a puppet government. This was "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? What happened to "the consent of the governed"? Then again, the Northern enemies of secession weren’t always rigid in their principles: they did allow a pro-Union part of Virginia to secede from Virginia. That’s how the United States got West Virginia. Since Virginia never legally ceded that territory, as prescribed by the Constitution (Article 4 Section 3), that was the only real case of unconstitutional secession. To make matters worse, the North never admitted that Virginia had legally left the Union. How, then, could it be split without its legal consent? Of course, after the war, the North forced the seceding states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment at bayonet point as a condition of re-admission to the Union it insisted they had never legally quit. Yet most of those states had already ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, so they were apparently back in the Union after all. The hypocrisy is dizzying. But wars aren’t necessarily won by the intellectually consistent. dixiepatriot Union by force....Confederate by CHOICE!!!

[Aurelius]

Thanks for the link, looks like it will take some time to read.

[Leesylvanian]

What is it with your rabid hatred of Southerners? Your baseless fears and hostilities undercut any credibility your arguments otherwise might have.

[Britton J Wingfield]

we have troops defending the Washington Empire in over 144 nations around the world.

Empire my ass. We have troops forward deployed because the oceans no longer protect us. The rest of this essay is a crock as well.

[J.WAREAGLE]

I just LOVE this time of year! The Gettysburg Address raises its hypocritical head and then before you know it you start hearing all about "Our Pilgrim Fathers"!

[Ditto]

1. Paragraphs are our friends < P >

2. The Declaration of Independence is nothing less than a secessionist document.

Which formally meant war. The Declaration enumerated the various attempts to petition the Crown for redress to which the Crown responded with force. The Colonies asked for basic representation and were denied. The Southern states had full representation yet when they didn’t get their way decided to take their ball and run home to Mommy. They apparently thought they could have their cake and eat it too. They were wrong.

3. Furthermore, three states (Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia retained the right of secession in their act approving the Constitution.

They did no such thing. They simply reserved the rights not granted to the Federal Government. The passage of the Bill of Rights, specifically the 9th and 10th amendments, essentially made those resolutions moot.

Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession.

Wrong. Our next to the last defense is the Constitution. Our final defense is rebellion. We are a nation of laws and those laws are meaningless if some can choose to ignore them at their pleasure by using tortured legal arguments --- be it the Federal Government or State Governments. There is not now, nor has their ever been, a right of secession. That would be anarchy because it would mean that the law only applies on your terms. If you don’t like that fact, call for a Constitutional Convention and make the changes that would allow secession.

4. Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" – by force, if necessary – a despotic government.

What’s your point? The force part was necessary if the South wanted to secede. It wasn't legal to do so just as it wasn’t legal under British Law for the Colonies to revolt against the King. Lincoln was much kinder than George III would have been. He didn't order any or the rebel leaders hung. He legally could have.

5. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming "independence".

It wasn't the Declaration of Secession. It was Independence and it didn’t occur until after a full year of war and the arrival in New York harbor of the biggest naval armada in history to put down that rebellion. Unlike the Slaveocrats in the South who talked big and hid behind bogus legal arguments while others did the fighting, the guys that signed the Declaration of Independence had real guts. They were rebels and were proud of it. They didn't pretend to be otherwise.

5. The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn 't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution.

Wrong. By the agreement of all 13 at the Constitutional convention, only 9 of the 13 needed to approve the new Constitution and that decision was then completely and irrevocably binding on the others whether they ever approved it or not. (Kind of blows the unconditional states rights argument out of the water, doesn’t it.?)

6. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states....

What is it about the words We the People don't you understand. The Constitution was not a contract between sovereign states but an agreement among all the people of the United States. It didn't say We the States. It is our contract, as a people, with the central government, not the state's contract. The proof of this is the fact that you, as a private citizen, can directly petition the federal government. You do not need to go through your state government to do so. By the same token, the Federal government can come directly to your aid if your rights are being violated. They do not need to go through the state government to do so.

[4CJ]

"They did no such thing. They simply reserved the rights not granted to the Federal Government. The passage of the Bill of Rights, specifically the 9th and 10th amendments, essentially made those resolutions moot. "

Ahhh, you do understand. They did not surrender the right to secede. And you go on to say that it's now covered by the 9th and 10th Amendments. So which one is it? Where does the Constitution prohibit secession? Or better yet, where does it state that it's a federal right and the states no longer possess it?

[Moby Grape]

Ron Holland: America's dumbest jerk. What illegitimate childish drivel....The world moves on, but a few tin foils spend all their waking hours dreaming of re-writing history....Leave them to their fantasy...to their wishes, to their childish ambitions to make the world think that they are experts on ANYTHING.

[Ditto]

What is it with your rabid hatred of Southerners? Your baseless fears and hostilities undercut any credibility your arguments otherwise might have.

I have no hatred of Southerners at all. Some of my best friends are southern --- even some relatives. I also have no fear of anything southern. I like the south. But I do have a significant amount of animosity to people who distort history and defame many of our greatest leaders for ugly purposes that will go unmentioned here. (You know exactly what I mean.)

I also hold historical contempt for those so-called leaders of the Confederacy. They were a small handful of wealthy aristocrats who distorted the law and deceived their followers in a patently self-centered attempted to break the Constitution and the Union for no other reason than to protect and expand the evil institution of chattel slavery from which they stood to gain profit. They were evil people.

[4CJ]

"By the agreement of all 13 at the Constitutional convention, only 9 of the 13 needed to approve the new Constitution and that decision was then completely and irrevocably binding on the others whether they ever approved it or not.

Sorry, Article VII of the Constitution states, "[t]he Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same." We discussed this previously, it took the ratification of 9 states to create the new government. The Constitution would only apply to the states that ratified it, or else why bother ratification after 9 had done so. For example, if another friend and I drew up a contract that stated that we agreed to pool all our money, property and belongings, would that be binding on you without your signature? Not until you signed it.

[fireeater]

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will aauthorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." -- Original proposed 13th Amendment; passed by 2/3 of U.S. Congress; rejected by the Confederate States

"If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other,...the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint." -- John Quincy Adams

"(America) was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right to do so." -- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Whenever Northern and Southern prejudices have come into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed, and the former soothed. Monarchical Federalists, employing the government as a stepping-stone to monarchy, brought all this about by adopting constructions of the Constitution that they had promised would never occur in their earlier arguments supporting that document's acceptance." --Thomas Jefferson

"To coerce a State would be 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." --James Madison

"To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever devised: no State would ever suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another." --Alexander Hamilton

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption. -- Thomas Jefferson

"Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1796.

"Force cannot change right." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.

"Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820.

"The future inhabitants of {both} the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better." --Thomas Jefferson

"A balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and absurd controversy. Banking, funding, and tariff interests united to beget the Missouri project, and that project begat the idea of using slavery as an instrument for effecting a balance of power." --John Taylor of Caroline, 1753-1824 decentralist political thinker, lawyer, planter, legislator

"If [Northerners]succeed in clutching the lands in all the new States hereafter to be made--which I take to be the whole secret of [their] exuberance and ostensible humanity about our Negroes--who can say how soon we may expect a Crusade against the slaveholding states to divest us of every remaining right which interfere in the smallest degree with their views?" --James Mercer Garnett (1770-1843) Virginia senator, agricultural reformer

"It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country...who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every state has a right to withdraw. " -- Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

"The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South." -- London Times, 7 November 1861

"I do not know what the Union would be worth if saved by the sword." -- Senator William H. Seward

"Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?" --Thomas Paine

"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain…. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper." -- Gen. W. T. Sherman

"The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers." -- Gen. W.T. Sherman

"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong." -- Adolf Hitler

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." -- Adolf Hitler

"Who says I am not under the special protection of God?" -- Adolf Hitler

"People separated from their history are easily persuaded." -- Karl Marx

'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' -- G. K. Chesterton

"...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense." -- John Adams (1735 - 1826), (Diary, 1786)

British Historical Document, "Proclamation of Rebellion," 23 August 1775 Occasion: A proclamation by the King in response to the increasing hostilities in the American colonies.

Proclamation of Rebellion

Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the publick peace, to the obstruction of lawful commerce, and to the oppression of our loyal subjects carrying on the same; have at length proceeded to open an avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us: And whereas, there is reason to apprehend that such rebellion hath been much promoted and encouraged by the traitorous correspondence, counsels and comfort of diverse wicked and desperate persons within this realm: To the end therefore, that none of our subjects may neglect or violate their duty through ignorance thereof, or through any doubt of the protection which the law will afford to their loyalty and zeal, we have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to issue our Royal Proclamation, hereby declaring, that not only all our Officers, civil and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice, but that all our subjects of this Realm, and the dominions thereunto belonging, are bound by law to be aiding and assisting in the suppression of such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all traitorous conspiracies and attempts against us our crown and dignity; and we do accordingly strictly charge and command all our Officers, as well civil as military, and all others our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which they shall know to be against us, our crown and dignity; and for that purpose, that they transmit to one of our principal Secretaries of State, or other proper officer, due and full information of all persons who shall be found carrying on correspondence with, or in any manner or degree aiding or abetting the persons now in open arms and rebellion against our Government, within any of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, in order to bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abetters of such traitorous designs.

Given at our Court at St. James's the twenty-third day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, in the fifteenth year of our reign.

GOD save the KING.

[Down right Lincolnian, ain't it?]

"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." -- General Robert E. Lee, CSA

[bluecollarman]

"They did no such thing. They simply reserved the rights not granted to the Federal Government. The passage of the Bill of Rights, specifically the 9th and 10th amendments, essentially made those resolutions moot. "

Your assertion that the majority of the framers intended a forced union seems unlikely, although some surely did.

Further, you have the burden that the Constitution says nothing about state secession. Considering that everyone was becoming very proficient at it(seceding), doesn't it seem logical they would at least mention it in the Constitution?

If this is what the framers meant, as eloquent as they were. They would have spelled it out. "In order to form a more perfect perpetual Union" or "In order to form a perpetual Union, made more perfect" or some such phrase. There were no shortages of wordsmiths.

Yet, it does not prohibit or authorize secession.

It does not authorize the government to punish a state for seceding. In fact, they specifically rejected a proposal to punish states not in compliance in 1787. The proposal reads

"to call forth the force of the union against any member of the union, failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof."

James Madison states in his opposition, "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."

Also, New York was specific in it's language to return rule back to the State if needed.

[Non-Sequitur]

He's got you there, Ditto. But the long and the short of it, 4CJ, is that every southern state either did ratify the Constitution or agreed to abide by the Constitution when they petitioned for statehood. As has been pointed out over and over and over...and over and over again the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to arbitrary secession does not exist in the Constitution. You will just have to learn to live with that.

[tberry]

"We have troops forward deployed because the oceans no longer protect us"

Protect us my as*.

Those troops are deployed to show our muscle and insure the protection of our lordship over the resources of the world that we covet.

When the government wants to control you, you will also see troops here.

OOPS! Was that the National Guard I saw in the airports???

[SerpentDove]

The lab called. Your x-rays are ready.

[Ditto]

I got to give it to you. You can not only 'discover' a right to secede in those resolution when no one else ever has (you would have done great on the Warren court) but now somehow you assert that the 9th and 10th amendments contain the right to secede. There has never been such a right. Nowhere in the 9th or 10th is there a hint of such a right. None of the Federalists argued for or against such a right. None of the anti-Federalists asserted such a right. None on either side ever mentioned it because they all understood that the constitution was to be perpetually binding. The fact that the adoption of the constitution by only 9 of the 13 made it binding on the others is proof that no one at the time believed there was such a right. No Supreme Court ruling ever alluded to it, in fact from the first, supreme court rulings always found Federal law to be superior to state laws. Yet you simply continually ask where it is forbidden in the constitution. You remind me of Alan Derschowitz demanding that people prove a negative. Let me ask you. Where in the constitution is it forbidden to drive an airplane into a building? Is that a constitutional right. Where is it forbidden for state governments to lock you up for practicing your religion? Do the states have that right? (I wouldn't want to put that question to the Warren Court, but lets take a shot here anyway.)