Legend of a 'noble South' rises again

You have begged a lot of questions--made a lot of assumptions with respect to relative values--which go way outside the subject of this thread.

However to briefly respond to some of your thoughts, you seem to associate liberty with equality. They are in fact, and always have been, conflicting values. It is impossible to be both free and equal. If you are free, you can succeed or fail. If you are made equal, either you or others must be constrained--usually both you and others, as no one is really free in a Communist, egalitarian system.

The set back to the Southern Negro, to which I referred in Reconstruction, was not primarily because of the ravishes of the War. I was writing in relative terms. The Southern Negro lost ground relative to the poor Southern White during Reconstruction, because he was treated as a pawn by the contemptible alliance of scoundrels--Carpetbaggers, Scaliwags and radical politicians--who promised such nonsense as "Forty Acres & a Mule," i.e. equality and prosperity from Government. It was from this social mess, a loss of many of the skills that they had had in 1865, out of which Booker T. Washington was trying to lift his people. (Let me be a bit more specific without making this unreadable. In 1860 most of the skilled craft work in the deep South--the Gulf States--was being performed by Negro craftsmen. By 1890, the greatest participation in any of the skilled crafts was down to a mere 20%, while some were down to about 2%, and this in States where the Negro was either in a majority or in a very large minority.)

The Southern people have indeed been victimized, and the saddest of all the victims were those Negroes promised the moon, as it were, but led by the pied pipers of the Left to perdition. How much more appealing is the picture proposed by Booker T. Washington, of racial cooperation based upon the ancient ties of two distinct peoples, united in a common culture. (For more on Washington's vision, and how it paralleled that of the Founding Fathers, see The Persuasive Use Of Images.)

William Flax

And you need to be exposed for the foot stomping, howling at the moon insane fool that you are. Keep going. Your posts are doing just that.

And you need to be exposed for the foot stomping, howling at the moon insane fool that you are. Keep going. Your posts are doing just that.

Counter what I say in the record of the day.

Walt

Actually, Gone With the Wind is an anti-Confederacy movie in many ways. It portrays the Old South (represented by Ashley Wilkes) as a hollow delusion. The gun running/pro-market Rheut Butler, an acerbic critic of the status quo, is depicted in more favorable terms.

Like this - Lincoln wrote, "If, however, it be really true that Massachusetts wishes to afford a permanent home within her borders, for all, or even a large number of colored persons who will come to her, I shall be only too glad to know it." It means that it was NEWS to him, that even HE couldn't believe it.

You may be right. But that letter and many other writings of Lincoln belie the idea that he sought a whites only nation.

Walt

The common Confederate soldier fought because their country was invaded by a dictator. All the Confederates desired was to leave a country full of pompous, simpleminded, arrogant morons like yourself that are completety ignorant of the Constitution

Boohahahaha!

South Carolina seceded from the Union before Lincoln was even swarn in. Another bunch seceded on the day of Lincoln's inauguration.

By seceding, they removed themselves from any Constitutional protection. It would be hard to blame Lincoln for violating the Constitutional rights of the break-away states, since they repudiated association with the Constitution before Lincoln could effectively take office.

In fact, though, it was the secessionist states that violated the US Constitution. Here are the pertinent parts they violated:

Article I. Section. 10. Clause 1:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;

Article I. Section. 10. Clause 3:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State ... or engage in War

Article III. Section. 3. Clause 1:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Article VI. Clause 3:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution;

So you can see the secessionist states were treasonous, violated the Constitution by forming a confederation strictly prohibited in Article I. Section. 10. Clause 1.

History is clear who committed treason and who violated the clear wording of the US Constitution -- it was the secessionist states.

Actually, Gone With the Wind is an anti-Confederacy movie in many ways. It portrays the Old South (represented by Ashley Wilkes) as a hollow delusion. The gun running/pro-market Rheut Butler, an acerbic critic of the status quo, is depicted in more favorable terms.

Well, that's interesting.

There -are- some digs at the south. Rhett says at one point (paraphrasing), "the cause of living in the past is dying right before your eyes."

He also says, "All we have are cotton, slaves, and arrogance."

And big Sam says, "we're gonna dig ditches for the sojers to hide in." I remember seeing GWTW as a child and the audience just cracked up at that line.

But Rhett AND Ashley always maintained their honor. That is worth a lot.

I remember seeing GWTW in college at the university center and when Rhett told Scarlett she looked good enough to eat, it almost brought the house down.

Walt

So you can see the secessionist states were treasonous, violated the Constitution by forming a confederation strictly prohibited in Article I. Section. 10. Clause 1.

Oddly enough, Jefferson Davis of ALL PEOPLE maintained that the language of the Constitution prohibited secession!

"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution." In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existance is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."

--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433

EVEN Jefferson Davis said the central government could coerce the states in the matter of conscription. And if in conscription, why not secession?

Oddly, the man Davis sounds JUST LIKE Chief Justice John Marshall:

"In the case now to be determined, the defendant, a sovereign state, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union...In discussing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument as not emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition. "

And:

"To the formation of a league, such as was the confederation, the State sovereignties were certainly competent. But when "in order to form a more perfect union," it was deemed necessary to change the alliance into an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly on the people, the necessity of deriving its powers from them, was felt and acknowledged by all... "

And:

If any one proposition could command the universal assent of mankind, we might expect that it would be this -- that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. This would seem to result, necessarily, from its nature. It is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all; and acts for all. Though any one state may be willing to control its operations, no state is willing to allow others to control them. The nation, on those subjects on which it can act, must necessarily bind its component parts. But this question is not left to mere reason; the people have, in express terms, have decided it, by saying, "this constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof,: shall be the supreme law of the land," and by requiring that the members of the state legislatures, and the officers of the executive and judicial departments of the states, shall take an oath of fidelity to it. The government of the United States, then, though limited in its powers, is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding."

And:

"Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or of creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the 10th amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people," thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair reading of the whole instument... It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objectives designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects,, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That is the idea entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from its language. Why else were some of the limitations, found in the 9th section of the 1st article, introduced? .... The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of the nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done, by confining the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conclusive to the end. " --John Marshall, Chief Justice, writing in McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

How about that?

Sounds like Davis had a copy of McCullough in hs back pocket when he wrote to Governor Brown. Guess he lost it after the war.

Walt

"...we're better off today than we would hve been with a Confederate victory."

That is an opinion, perhaps even an opinion that a reasonable man might hold, but it is an opinion only and nothing more.

How is one to counter such absurdities as your comparison of honoring Confederate ancestors with honoring Nazi death camp guards in the record of any day?

Does --everyone-- have a right to celebrate their history? I mean, everybody? Even concentration camp guards?

Walt

It really doesn't matter if I can or can't. Your attempt to deflect the issue is specious and disingenious. You don't convict a person in court based upon the actions of another - they stand on their own merit.

That's pretty much the answer I expected from you. You condemn President Lincoln as a racist and ignore the fact that the views of every single confederate leaders were worse. You condemn President Lincoln for what you claim were Constitutional infractions and ignore the fact that the actions of Jefferson Davis were worse. You people can't be taken seriously.

The Confederacy was creating another more perfect union - their Constitution added term limits, corrected the voting irregularities of Senators, inclued a line-item veto, the prohibition of protectionist tarrifs or regulations, prohibited payment of cost overruns, eliminated pork-barrel riders to bills, etc.

Protected slavery from government intervention or threat of elimination, safeguarded slave imports, made it harder to amend the constitution, etc.

We can't answer the question of how things would have been different had there not been an attempt at establishing racial equality under Reconstruction. Some have made radical Reconstruction a bogey-man, but racial attitudes being what they were and anger already having been produced by the war and the destruction it brought it's hard to see how things could have been different. The most lenient approach to Reconstruction would probably have brought about pretty much the same results -- and sooner.

Your statistic is interesting, but it doesn't establish a connection between Reconstruction and the decline of Black craftsmen. Without major efforts at fighting segregation and racial discrimination, emancipation would inevitably have meant that Whites would hire other Whites more often than they would hire Blacks. But still, it was an improvement over slavery.

In arguing that the problem of race couldn't have been easily resolved you are taking a line similar to that of Lincoln. That perception is one reason why he put Union above emancipation. Had Southern political leaders remained in the Union, they could have avoided the results that you deplore. The Union eventually allowed for a dispersion of the Black population and a decrease of racial tensions. But that wasn't what the secessionist militants wanted.

"Therefore, it's not wrong to argue that slavery was far more important as a cause of the war than the tariff...."

You are making a very fine distinction that needs to be clarified. To say that the slavery issue was the proximate cause of the Civil War is, I think, inarguable. To have conceded that point is not the same, however, as saying that Lincoln led the Union into war in order in order to end slavery in the United Sates. It is manifestly obvious that this was not Lincoln's pimrary war aim.

It is my contention that slave-based, Agrarian export-led economies of most of the Confederate states come into intractable conflict with the Empire-minded mercantilist economic system (Clays's "American system") favored by Northern politicians including Lincoln. I don't think unfair to say that Lincoln became, after Clay, the primary exponent of American mercantilism. I would further contend that Lincoln only addressed slavery prior to the Civil War as an issue insofar as it effected the implementation of the American system (high tariffs to protect American manufacturers, government-funded infrastructure development, a National bank).

Across a broad range of issues these two economic systems came into conflict: tariffs on manufactured goods (the Confederates states bought finished good primarily from Europe), non-uniform taxation (many Confderate states paid a disproportionate amount of tariff income into the Treasury which funded infrastructure project sited almost exclusively in the North), the non-enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act by several Northern states, the establishment of a National Bank (Southern politicians almost universally opposed this measure), and the use of the Dred Scott decision to allow the partial counting of slaves for purposes of Congressional Representation. The extension of slavery into new states was merely a proxy for this broader conflict between incompatible systems.

I don't think that mainstream Lincoln historians have paid sufficient attention to the importance of the macroeconomic consequences of the enforcement of the Morill tariff would have had on Confderate state economies. In Lincoln's innaugural address he did not threaten to use force over the slavery issue but he did threaten to use it to enforce the Morill tariff. The de facto secession by South Carolina in 1828 when they refused to collect the so-called "Tariff of Abominations" was still fresh in Lincoln's mind.

Lincoln kept the abolitionists as part of his coalition and I am sure that he harbored abolitionist sentiments for the most part and particularly after Gettysburg embraced abolitionism more strongly. I believe, however, that Lincoln did guide his policy before the war with the aim of forcing the Confederate states to accept the "American System".

"the film fudges "Stonewall's" views on slavery...."

If that is the case then it is extremely unfortunate. We have managed to gradually debunk 50 years of Liberal mythmaking concerning Liberals icons such as FDR and JFK. Conservatives should not now do the same thing.