Communist and Socialist states shown in Blue.
Posted on 12/24/2001 4:25:26 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
Communist and Socialist states shown in Blue.
Those Southerners who took up arms and put their lives on the line disagree with you as to whether it was unjustified. That it was deemed justified by the men of that time according to their sense of honor, self determination, justice, is the only lense through which that terrible war's precipitation, can be judged, and it is through that same lense that the munificence of the Union in it's resolution must be appreciated.
It is wrong to attempt to apply modern conventions of morality to judging whether historical figures were "good" or "bad" in the modern sense. Abe Lincoln was a racist of the first order, as his many now published letters show, yet he was and remains "good" for the accomplishments of his time.
It is this anachronistic judgementalism which leads to such things a banning Huckleberry Finn, because of the "N" word, despite the story's clearly noble portrayal of Jim. I believe that your seeming eagerness to retry Johnny Rebel, based on the sentiments you may feel towards our contemporary, Johnny Walker is of the same misguided anachronisizing (neoligism?).
Live for today. Hang Walker. Let the brave soldiers of the South rest in peace. Learn to appreciate the wisdom of your ancestral betters.
No, Italy, like North Africa, was a 'second front' openned to keep Stalin quiet. Both were poorly planned and equipped. Operation 'Overlord' was being planned long before the Italian campaign. There was never any consideration that US and British forces would be able to strike into Germany, across the Alps from Italy. Normandy was the end game plan from the beginning. Even Hitler understood that the invasion would be through France. He simple didn't consider the beaches of Normandy to be the likely invasion point.
... The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these states were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave, and without refunding? ...
The vicious Southerners wanted to negotiate a financial settlement with the North. THEY recognized their obligations. Lincoln essentially ignored a Southern delegation, led by Martin Crawford, sent to Washington for the purpose of negotiating some sort of settlement. I guess they just forgot to tell us about this in our high school history classes. And "Honest Abe" pretends to know nothing of it.
If we ... allow the seceders to go in peace ...
Can't allow anyone to go in peace could we? What a foolish idea!
If all the states, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union ...
Translation: Since we really don't have much of a leg to stand on about a State voluntarily leaving the Union, let's change the subject and discuss whether we could force a State OUT of the Union.
A. Lincoln, 7/4/01
01?
You really need to read more to supplement the brain washing you got in high school. I suggest Perkin's Northern Editorials on Secession or Fremantle's Three Months in the Southern States.
ML/NJ (who never lived south of the 40th parallel, and reverently memorized the Gettysburg address as a teen.)
I just got a pair of books from 1929 (originals). One is called Abraham Lincoln: The Path To His Presidency, A Cartoon History. The other is called Abraham Lincoln: The Year Of His Election, A Cartoon History. Both are by a man named Albert Shaw. I am looking into these books to see what they are worth. As for their content, they are well written, illustrated historical accounts of the period. Real treasures on that account.
AND I am finally going to dig into McCullough's John Adams. Very exciting. Just thought I'd share my thirst for American history with you. MERRY CHRISTMAS, WhiskeyPapa, and everyone else too.
--Huck
Care to expound on why you're so familiar with the klan stuff?,/p>
Really? None of those red states receive any taxpayer-funded subsidies, now, do they? Say, Iowa, or Kansas, or Nebraska? And now that I think of it, what's that red state over there? Is that...South Dakota? Refresh my memory. Is there a certain notable Senator from that state? Darple? Dumshle? Darchle? Something like that? And West Virginia? Seems like there is a famous Senator or two from there as well. Tyrd? Something like that?
Nah, I must be mistaken! Only the BLUE states have "socialists". Silly me.
The southern states almost seceded in the late 1820s and early 1830s.. and slavery didn't have anything to do with it.
Read some history boy!
Slavery had everything to do with it.
Missouri Compromise (Compromise of 1820) Missouri Compromise, legislative measures enacted by the United States Congress in 1820 that regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for three decades. When slaveholding Missourians applied for statehood in 1818, the long-standing balance of free and slave states (11 each) was jeopardized. A northern-sponsored amendment was then attached to the bill (1819) authorizing statehood; it prohibited the entry of slaves into Missouri and provided for the gradual emancipation of those already there. The proslavery faction was unable to prevent the bill's passage by the House of Representatives, where free states held a majority, but southern strength in the Senate defeated the bill.Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, also applied for statehood in 1819. Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky warned northern congressmen that unless they changed their position on Missouri the southerners would reject Maine's petition. To please the South the slavery restrictions for Missouri were then removed, and to satisfy the North, Senator Jesse B. Thomas (1777-1853) of Illinois introduced (February 1820) a proviso by which slavery would be prohibited forever from Louisiana Purchase territories north of 36° 30'. Southern extremists opposed any limit on the extension of slavery, but Clay maneuvered the measure through the House by a three-vote majority. Missouri and Maine were to enter statehood simultaneously to preserve sectional equality in the Senate. In 1821, when northern congressmen balked over antiblack clauses in Missouri's constitution, Clay again adjusted differences, and Missouri's admission was ensured.
The compromise became precedent for settling subsequent North-South disagreements over slavery and tariff issues, and it remained in effect until repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
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It was always about slavery and the expansion of slavery to the West. There was big money in slaves.
That is a senseless statement. It has no meaning. There may be a relevant fact in there somewhere, trying to get out. It failed. What does have meaning is this:
From Abraham Lincoln
Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act
October 16, 1854
Equal justice to the south, it is said, requires us to consent to the extending of slavery to new countries. That is to say, inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object to you taking your slave. Now, I admit this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and negroes. But while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the south yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world, only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority, south as well as north, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms of the southern people, manifest in many ways, their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the negro. If they deny this, let me address them a few plain questions. In 1820 you joined the north, almost unanimously, in declaring the African slave trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of death. Why did you do this? If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join in providing that men should be hung for it? The practice was no more than bringing wild negroes from Africa, to sell to such as would buy them. But you never thought of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses, wild buffaloes or wild bears.Again, you have amongst you, a sneaking individual, of the class of native tyrants, known as the “SLAVE-DEALER.” He watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the "slave-dealers" children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet; but with the slave dealer you avoid the ceremony-instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now why is this? You do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cattle or tobacco.
And yet again; there are in the United States and territories, including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At $500 per head they are worth over two hundred millions of dollars. How comes this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? All these free blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves, and they would be slaves now, but for SOMETHING which has operated on their white owners, inducing them, at vast pecuniary sacrifices, to liberate them. What is that SOMETHING? Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it is your sense of justice, and human sympathy, continually telling you, that the poor negro has some natural right to himself-that those who deny it, and make mere merchandise of him, deserve kickings, contempt and death.
And now, why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave? and estimate him only as the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you will not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing, what two hundred million of dollars could not induce you to do?
But one great argument in the support of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, is still to come. That argument is “the sacred right of self government.” It seems our distinguished Senator has found great difficulty in getting his antagonists, even in the Senate to meet him fairly on this argument-some poet has said
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
At the hazzard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet that argument--I rush in, I take that bull by the horns.
I trust I understand, and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principles to communities of men, as well as to individuals. I so extend it, because it is politically wise, as well as naturally just: politically wise, in saving us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana.
The doctrine of self government is right--absolutely and eternally right--but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that “all men are created equal;” and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying “The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes!!”
Well I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are, and will continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without the other's consent. I say this is the leading principle--the sheet anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence says:
“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.”
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of masters and slaves is, PRO TANTO, a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only is self-government.
Let it not be said I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary. I am not now combating the argument of NECESSITY, arising from the fact that the blacks are already amongst us; but I am combating what is set up as MORAL argument for allowing them to be taken where they have never yet been--arguing against the EXTENSION of a bad thing, which where it already exists, we must of necessity, manage as we best can.
Not bad for a "racist of the first order".
Merry Christmas to you too.
Merry Christmas. :)
Walt
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