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Posted on 12/24/2001 4:25:26 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
In point of fact,'vicious' in not a bad choice of words for the secessionists.
"And this issue embraces more than the fact of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--can or cannot, maintain its territorial integtrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: "Is there in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?"
A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
The problem with the southern states just saying, "we're leaving, and we're leaving you with obligations that we freely incurred, (there not being enough money in the whole country to compence the federal governments for the present value of the Louisiana Purchase, the state debts of Texas, the whole state of Florida and other outlays), is that it shows that men cannot govern themselves through democratic means. Lincoln and the many many loyal men, north and south, who came forward to fight for the old flag thought that a reason to risk maintaing the national fabric. And history shows -they- were right, and the slave holder/secessionists were wrong.
Walt
The disinformation campaign knows no bounds.
General Marshall proposed early in 1942 Operation SLEDGEHAMMER to aid the Russians, who were thought to be on the verge of collapse. Under this plan, 3 US and 7 Bristish divisions would land on the Cherbourg peninsula to draw off German troops.
The British were agahst, and would not even consider the plan.
SLEDGEHAMMER was superceded by GYMNAST, later renamed TORCH. FDR definitely wanted US troops in action against the Germans in 1942, and TORCH was the result.
PLanning for the Normandy operation began in earnest in 1942. It was always the main operation, and it was always the "Second Front".
Walt
ML/NJ
Show me a single southern leader of the times whose position was more racially enlightened than Lincoln's. One who advocated the end of slavery. One who thought that a Black man stood on equal footing as a White man. Just one southern leader, that's all I ask.
ML/NJ
Sorry, I guess I gave you to much credit. But that is my own fault, as anyone with even a partially open mind can see the common sense of Lincoln's position.
You say that the so-called seceded states were ready to settle up affairs. I say there is no equitable way to settle up affairs, if you consider the land acquired and the debts incurred --in--the--name--of--all.
I definitely addressed one of your points. I can't imagine why you would suggest otherwise, unless you, like all the neo-confederates, are fond of blue smoke and mirrors.
I like to take one point from a post and address it in its own post.
All that cutting and pasting can be tiring and confusing, I think.
Walt
In the 21st Century, Mexico eventually got what they wanted.
In 1863 General Cleburne of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee circulated a memo arguing that since the South was losing a war of demographic attrition, it's only hope was to enlist blacks. And the only hope of enlisting blacks lay in emancipation. For that memo, he was passed over for command of the Army of the Tennessee. Everyone soldier in that army knew that Cleburne should have been commanding the army, not Bragg or Hood which caused severe morale problems.
If there had been any Southern nationalism, blacks would have been emancipated and enlisted because the 10% of the Union Army that was black was the North's margin of victory, as Lincoln admitted. A nation does what it has to in order to survive. But minus slavery there was no real point in the Confederacy so this was never done.
And conservatives wonder why they never make any headway with black voters.
They are lucky it was Lincoln and not Jackson. Jackson would have hung them all.
"On the question of states' rights versus supremacy of the federal government, Jackson clashed sharply with his vice president, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Calhoun had earlier proposed a theory of nullification, under which a state could refuse to obey acts of Congress it considered unconstitutional. Congress then would either have to drop the disputed act or obtain its approval through a constitutional amendment. Calhoun hoped to win the president to this states'-rights view. But Jackson revealed his strong feelings on the issue at a banquet in 1830, when, looking directly at Calhoun, he offered the toast, "Our Federal Union--It must be preserved."
This issue came to a head the next year, when South Carolina adopted an ordinance of nullification declaring that the high protective tariffs, or taxes on imports, of 1828 and 1832 were invalid within its borders. Privately, Jackson threatened to hang Calhoun. Publicly, he prepared to use military force against South Carolina. In a proclamation he denounced nullification as treason: "I consider the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it is founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed."
http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/nbk/bios/07pjack.html
Unilateral state secession is not allowed in our system of government.
It's dishonorable to think you can just walk away from your just debts, or think you can take what is not yours.
Now, will you will aver that you think that had Lincoln received these commissioners, and told them that no settlement would be made under any circumstance, that they would have subsided, and the rebellious states not attempted to overthrow the government?
Because if they --weren't-- willing to do that, they and their masters were no better than common thieves.
Walt
I asked you to lay out a "long train of abuses" prior to 1860. Can you do that or not?
Walt
I think you forgot a smiley faced wink. ;-)
You know where I stand.
Davis, Lee and the rest were traitors, not only to the best government yet devised, but also to the future.
Walt
Which position? That he wouldn't negotiate with the Southerners? Or pretends that they were not interested in negotiating? That he raises straw-dog arguments when he prefers to avoid some issue? That he just couldn't let them "go in peace"?
When attacking someone elses intellect it's probably best not to get to and too confused. As for open minds, I used to believe as you do, but I've read a lot of source material and have found that all they taught me in high school about this stuff isn't all there is to know. Have you read either of the books I mentioned?
You say that the so-called seceded states were ready to settle up affairs. I say there is no equitable way to settle up affairs, if you consider the land acquired and the debts incurred --in--the--name--of--all.
I don't "say" really. This isn't an opinion. It's history. You "say" it wouldn't have worked, and you consider the land acquired and debts incurred. I'm not sure what land you are referring to. As for the debts, the people of the South were obviously responsible for their proportional share of those debts whether they seceded or not. If they could pay that share as part of the Union, why couldn't they pay it from outside? And, of course you ignore the Southerners' share of the assets of the North. I don't know that the Crawford delegation was even going to raise this point, but certainly Southerners had helped finance things like the arms that were eventually used against them.
I definitely addressed one of your points. I can't imagine why you would suggest otherwise, unless you, like all the neo-confederates, are fond of blue smoke and mirrors.
The one point you did address was maybe the date of the Lincoln quote. Big deal. What about the substance?
"Blue smoke and mirrors," indeed!
ML/NJ
Learn some economics boy.
But why would the South want to secede? If the original American ideal of federalism and constitutionalism had survived to 1860, the South would not have needed to. But one issue loomed larger than any other in that year as in the previous three decades: the Northern tariff. It was imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through public works. But it had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods and disproportionately taxing it to support the central government. It also injured the South?s trading relations with other parts of the world.
In effect, the South was being looted to pay for the North?s early version of industrial policy. The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the "tariff of abomination." Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime. The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.
But why 1860? Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery, but he did pledge to "collect the duties and imposts": he was the leading advocate of the tariff and public works policy, which is why his election prompted the South to secede. In pro-Lincoln newspapers, the phrase "free trade" was invoked as the equivalent of industrial suicide. Why fire on Ft. Sumter? It was a customs house, and when the North attempted to strengthen it, the South knew that its purpose was to collect taxes, as newspapers and politicians said at the time.
To gain an understanding of the Southern mission, look no further than the Confederate Constitution. It is a duplicate of the original Constitution, with several improvements. It guarantees free trade, restricts legislative power in crucial ways, abolishes public works, and attempts to rein in the executive. No, it didn?t abolish slavery but neither did the original Constitution (in fact, the original protected property rights in slaves).
Before the war, Lincoln himself had pledged to leave slavery intact, to enforce the fugitive slaves laws, and to support an amendment that would forever guarantee slavery where it then existed. Neither did he lift a finger to repeal the anti-Negro laws that besotted all Northern states, Illinois in particular. Recall that the underground railroad ended, not in New York or Boston-since dropping off blacks in those states would have been restricted-but in Canada! The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery, a process that would have been made easier had the North not so severely restricted the movements of former slaves.
I will only post one time and then only to say that slavery was an evil, an evil that might have been resolved by statesmanship which was entirely lacking in the North and in short supply in the south.
Had a means of emancipating existing slaves and drawing labor (cheap Irishmen such as flooded the north) to the agrarian south, had the north not used southern taxes to fatten the then dominant half of the country, and had the north not desired to finally crush it's counter balancing opposite (and its very profitable export trade); we'd be in a hell of a lot better shape today.
Davis was a nut case also, Lincoln was the imperial dictator Washington sought to avoid, and 136 years of ongoing propaganda have left all of us with an utterly useless lesson in history.
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Here, you make the same sort of mistake that Princeton Scholar James McPherson does. You assume some sort of continuity between the government of Madison and the Boys, and the government left to us by Lincoln. McPherson calls one of his books Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. It is more hymnal than history to my mind. It's full of the usual pap: Lincoln restored order. Lincoln saved the Union.
Lincoln didn't save or restore anything. McPherson in the preface quotes a Harvard professor, George Ticknor, four years after the war ended as saying, "It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born[in 1791]." Now you don't think this Harvard professor was referring to slavery, or even "reconstruction," do you? He was talking about the government that affected him, a professor living in Massachusetts. He was lamenting the passing of "the best government yet divised." You may think yourself in good company with McPherson, but I would suggest that neither of you are able to see beyond the history written by the Northern victors.
ML/NJ
Why not, the yankees are dumb enough to dole it out to all their enemies.
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