The Union And Confederacy Contradictions In Freedoms And Rights

The Sierra Times ^ | April 10,2003 | Dorothy Anne Seese

[Aurelius]

The founding fathers of the United States of America knew exactly what they meant by freedom, or liberty, and the liberty for which they fought and established this nation.

I'm concerned that our generation doesn't understand liberty. It is the right to make free choices within the boundaries of laws that protect the citizens. Freedom is the right to live one's life according to one's own choices, also within a framework of laws designed to protect people from one another.

Freedom is not anarchy and it is not "government" or unauthorized control of one set of people by another. Anarchy obliterates freedom because it takes its own as being superior to that of others. Government control is the antithesis of freedom because laws enacted by the few without the consent of the many are the substance of tyranny.

It is decidedly regretful that the Union won over the Confederacy and that the fiction of emancipation of the slaves was used as the cover-up and many people to this very day, if they know there was a War between the Union and the Confederacy, believe that Lincoln freed the slaves and that the North was morally superior to the South ... the former being good and the latter being evil. That such a myth could be foist upon the American people in the first place is bad. That it should persist to this very day is absurd, an evidence of the lack of substance in our system of education.

Union was not the objective of the founders. King George III (the British king, not the present George II) made an agreement with the thirteen individual colonies, not with Washington D.C. or a union called the United States. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights enumerating what government may not do, stated clearly that states' rights prevailed over any government power not specifically delegated to the central authority.

For many years the moniker "states' rights" has meant -- to most Americans -- the right to forced segregation and prior to that, the belief in the benefits of slavery. Actually, at the time the Union was fighting the Confederacy, "northern" states also had legalized slavery. All slavery was ended by the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was credited with freeing the slaves but in actuality, the power of the Christian faith and the idea that one person might own another person were moving like a Bradley fighting vehicle though nineteenth century thought. Slavery was wrong. It would have disappeared from the South under far friendlier terms had the Confederacy survived.

Additionally, the survival of the Confederacy would have prevented America's future ills by prohibiting the federal government from seizing powers that belong to the states via Supreme Court interpretations and opinions that override the original Constitution and Bill of Rights without power to do so, other than that granted by the courts to themselves.

Why is this important? Because the more Union we have the less unity we have as a nation and the less freedom we have as individuals. Just as cultures differ between nations, they differ in regions of large nations.

The plain fact is, the United States was designed to be a confederacy and not a centralized union. The idea of union simply crops out as some individuals saw "needs" that were more in their own ideas than in the facts of the time. What Lincoln did was not to free the slaves as much as to make slaves of us all to the Union system of centralized, powerful government that has now grown into a budding monarchy.

Various documentaries have tagged Lincoln's many failures and then shifted gears to show his outstanding "success" as the man who liberated the slaves. Malarkey. In the 1820's there was a plan afoot by the churches and some states, with the approval of the fed, to buy Liberia (which was done, incidentally, and I think the US would do well to enforce its ownership of that piece of Africa) as a home for all blacks who wished to return to their native land. It could now be used as a base for saving white Afrikaners and others who oppose the African National Congress and other communist/Marxist organizations that are destroying the people and animals of the dark continent while raping its enormous mineral wealth.

As I said, slavery was on its way out long before Lincoln. His contribution, if it can be called that, was not in freeing the slaves but in establishing union over confederacy as the governmental model for the USA.

What we would not have if we had a confederacy as originally constructed is a burgeoning bureaucracy where the idea of control of the masses grows like toxic mold amidst the marshes of government employees and departments, bureaus and administrations so that it is hardly known just how much money the government actually spends, on what, with what results, and at what cost to the people. No federal income tax could have been perpetrated on a confederacy. With a union, it was a cinch, legal or not.

Even at the birth of this nation there were those on hand who wanted a strong central government rather than a free confederacy of sovereign states.

When the Union won, this nation was on its way to a quasi-monarchy or oligarchy that the founders would have found reprehensible, noxious and contrary to the intent of the entire Revolutionary war. The moment much power is vested in or appropriated, unchallenged, by a central government and a central leader, then the freedoms guaranteed to the people become privileges extended to the masses by the elites. That is precisely the opposite of the original intent of creating the US.

If we were a confederacy, then each state would have to debate whether or not we wished to go to war, and Congress would not dare delegate its constitutional responsibilities to the executive branch. Executive orders would be few, far between, issued in emergencies only, and never used as a substitute for legislation that a president feels he might not receive from Congress.

A confederacy would put a sudden halt to the bizarre globalist world. A sovereign nation comprised of sovereign states would never go along with the objectives and tyranny of globalism, so the question of America becoming a part of the Global Village would be totally moot. It could not, would not happen.

Each state could defend its own borders with our neighbors to the south and north of us, protecting the persons and property of the owners and occupants of the land and with undisputed authority to do so. As it is, a whole bunch of ineffective government agencies are figuring out ways not to offend illegal aliens to the detriment and endangerment of our own citizens.

This travesty on freedom is ridiculous and deadly.

Over two hundred and fifty thousand Americans died on U.S. soil in the war between the North and the South or, more correctly, between the Union and the Confederacy.

Oddly enough, our strongest patriots are still in the South. The North is home to most of the liberals who have not only joined hands with the globalists but have led the march toward tyranny and anti-American sentiments that delight our enemies abroad.

In its own way, the war between the Union and the Confederacy not only devastated the South for generations, but it paved the way for all those ills that now plague us by reason of a strong, bloated and tyrannical central government.

Slavery would have been abolished eventually in every state. Public pressure and churches would have eventually caused abolition to come to pass.

What we would not have is slaves of all colors to a federalized regime that is totally out of control by the people who are supposed to be the "consenting governed."

If we don't consent then we are tagged as enemies of the state. More properly, the nation.

Meantime, our freedoms have been absorbed, abrogated or negated by a central government against which there is, absent a time machine, no way to control or downsize.

Thanks a bunch, Abe.

[Non-Sequitur]

Slaves in the North had to wait till after the war for freedom.

As well as those living in areas of the south that had been restored to local control when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Don't forget about them.

[Hacksaw]

True, but as the Supreme Court ruled in 1869, unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states was illegal. It was the manner in which they chose to act, not the act of secession itself which was wrong.

A court ruling after the fact is meaningless. It is like saying that since the Warren court legalized abortion, anti-abortion laws were always unconstitutional.

[Non-Sequitur]

A court ruling after the fact is meaningless. It is like saying that since the Warren court legalized abortion, anti-abortion laws were always unconstitutional.

Are you suggesting that the Supreme Court is supposed to issue ruling before the fact? How is that supposed to work?

The Supreme Court always rules on the constitutionality of matters made prior to the court hearing the case. And yes, the court can rule that such actions were unconstitutional when passed and always were unconstitutional. That's the way the court works. When the court ruled that the southern states had violated the constitution when they passed their secession legislation, it ruled that those laws had no basis in law and were invalid from day one. That decision was entirely valid and proper, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

[Badray]

. . ."one nation, indivisible. Do rebels who are still fighting the Civil War say that part of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

Actually, I do pause when I get to that part.

[SCDogPapa]

You too? :)

[Badray]

"You too? :)"

Yep, and I was born and raised in PA. I have always been a rebel at heart. The fact that I love my country is the reason I hate what has happened to it's government and what it is trying to do to us.

The way I look at it, if Lincoln was any damn good, would the government schools be saying nice things about him?

[SCDogPapa]

"Yep, and I was born and raised in PA. I have always been a rebel at heart. The fact that I love my country is the reason I hate what has happened to it's government and what it is trying to do to us."

Well bless your rebel heart!! :)

"The way I look at it, if Lincoln was any damn good, would the government schools be saying nice things about him?"

No. You know how it goes, once you tell a lie, you have to back it up with another and another and so on.

On the Pledge, I don't say "indivisible",,,because I don't think it ever was and will not stay that way. Maybe not in my lifetime, but someday, it will divide again. BUT I to love this country.

[Colt .45]

"The States surrendered their right to unilaterally secede when the signed the Articles of Confederation. "

Its time to throw my hat into the ring here. your statement is the dumbest thing I've ever read. You need to go back and study up on your history. When the Constitution was ratified, the repealed Articles of Confederation were null, void, and of no force. Now during the ratification debates, several legislatures of the respective States (Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusettes, South Carolina, and others) incorporated ordinances in their respective States to the effect of (quoting from the Virginia Ordinance of 1788) "We the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation of the General Assembly and now et in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of teh Federal Convention and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, do in the name of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the People of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will."

It was well understood at the framing of the Constitution that if the Federal Government was ever to become usurping of its Constitutionally mandated limited powers to the extent that States felt that their "Pursuit of Happiness" was no longer being looked after, that delegated power could be resumed by the People.

Amendment X of the United States Constitution - "The powers not delegated to the United States by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

'Amendment X added nothing new, but was meant to stress again that the regular governments of the several States and of the Union were but public corporations, not vessels but creatures of sovereign power; that, as between these regular governments, what was not granted to the Union was reserved to the several States; and that sovereign power, including the prerogative to make or unmake the constitution and the Union, WAS VESTED IN THE PEOPLE, NOT OF ONE NATION, BUT OF THE SEVERAL STATES.' - 'A Constitutional History of Secession' - John Remington Graham

[Colt .45]

"Show me where is specifically allows unilateral secession and I'll agree with you."

Article X of the Bill of Rights!

[contributor]

There was no motivation by the aristocracy to do it, and for white tradesmen, the thought of freed slaves competing against them would have been anathema.

Slavery would have certainly disappeared with the invention of the automatic cotton picker. Since most people of the South did not own slaves, it was hardly an issue for most Southerners.

What the majority of the South did not want was a chaotic situation where competing with freed blacks would have destabilized both society and the economy. Perhaps, this isn't right, but the North was no better in this matter. They just wanted the South to have deal with the problem while they pretended moral superitrity. Most Northern states did not allow blacks the right to vote at the time of the Civil War. Also they are the ones who wanted Sotuthern blacks to be treated as nothing more than property politically, thus resulting in the 3/5 compromise. (Yes, I know it was politics, but the facts stand.)

I can withstand the simpleton, "it was all about slavery" arguments, but what irks me are the infantile "the North was morally superior arguments."

[Aurelius]

"....the only purpose intended of the Emancipation Proclamation (aside from the slight hope it might lure some seceded states back into the Union with the hope they might then keep their slaves) and the only purpose that it actually served, was to sway British and European opinion to favor the Union." (Post 77)

It freed no slaves.

[canalabamian]

Interesting point about the 3/5 compromise. I've never thought of it from that perspective. Thanks.