Posted on 06/06/2009 2:57:37 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
by Charley Reese
Most of the political problems in this country won't be settled until more folks realize the South was right.
I know that goes against the P.C. edicts, but the fact is that on the subject of the constitutional republic, the Confederate leaders were right and the Northern Republicans were wrong.
Many people today even argue the Confederate positions without realizing it.
For example, if you argue for strict construction of the Constitution, you are arguing the Confederate position; when you oppose pork-barrel spending, you are arguing the Confederate position; and when you oppose protective tariffs, you are arguing the Confederate position. But that's not all.
When you argue for the Bill of Rights, you are arguing the Confederate position, and when you argue that the Constitution limits the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, you are arguing the Confederate position.
One of the things that gets lost when you adopt the politically correct oversimplification that the War Between the States was a Civil War all about slavery is a whole treasure load of American political history.
It was not a civil war. A civil war is when two or more factions contend for control of one government. At no time did the South intend or attempt to overthrow the government of the United States . The Southern states simply withdrew from what they correctly viewed as a voluntary union. They formed their own union and adopted their own constitution.
The U.S. government remained intact. There were just fewer states, but everything else remained as exactly as it was. You can be sure that, with as much bitterness and hatred of the South that there was in the North, the Northerners would have tried Confederates for treason if there had been any grounds. There weren't, and the South's worst enemy knew that.
Abraham Lincoln's invasion of the South was entirely without any constitutional authority. And it's as plain as an elephant in a tea party that Lincoln did not seek to preserve the Union to end slavery. All you have to do is read his first inaugural address. What Lincoln didn't want to lose was tax revenue generated by the South.
As Northern states gained a majority in both houses, they began to use the South as a cash cow. Here's how it worked: Most Southerners who exported cotton bartered the cotton in Europe for goods. When the protective tariffs were imposed, that meant Southerners had to pay them. To make matters worse, the North would then use the revenue for pork-barrel projects in its states. The South was faced with either paying high tariffs and receiving no benefits from the revenue or buying artificially high-priced Northern goods.
Southerners opposed pork-barrel spending. Their correct view was that, because the federal government was merely the agent of all the states, whatever money it spent should be of equal benefit. Their position on public lands was that they belonged to all the people and the federal government had no authority to give the lands away to private interests.
Northerners had announced they would not be bound by the Constitution. What you had was the rise of modern nationalism fighting the original republic founded by the American Revolution.
So, regardless of where you were born, you may be a Southerner philosophically.
Yeah, but the current Federal government knows all, does all, and controls all situation is doing the same thing.
When you argue for gun control, which is based on the slave era laws of the South, you are arguing the Confederate position. See what the Democrats did after Reconstruction was abandoned - Jim Crow laws forbidding blacks from owning guns, or VOTING. I say that as an American whose heritage comes from both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Those who argue the abolishment of the Constitution certainly are anti-USA and sadly enough are so inept that they know not what they are promoting with their indiscretions of present directive.
Yep. Time for the south (and the west) to rise again...
Our public screwls had done a fine job ensuring the average person doesn’t know the vast difference between mob rule (aka a democracy) and a Republic.
Too bad that the Confederates cynically prostituted the Constitution in service of what they really cared about, an institution antithetical to the principles underpinning the Constitution and upon which the country was founded. In doing so, they harmed the credibility of everyone who truly cared about the Constitution that came after.
I disagree.
The Constitution is a VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION entered into by the states. The Feds DID NOT CREATE THE STATES, the STATES CREATED THE FED. If you’re under 40, you probably never learned that in school or perhaps have forgotten it. States wishing to void that contract have every right to do so.
We are already hearing TALK of that now and, if BO continues down this road (and as a marxist, he will), it will move BEYOND TALK.
And it might have been helpful it you’d actually READ Charley’s piece.
CWII, coming soon to a neighborhood near you!
Which, mind you, is a right of the people if the government is dictating what is to be done. The framers of the Constitution stated as such themselves.
If you’re talking about slavery, the institution was dying of it’s own inefficiencies and costs of upkeep. And MUCH of the funding for the slave trade was centered in the NORTH!
Then there’s THIS!
Black LIBERATION theology and reparations for slavery?
When a black woman is one of the richest people in America?
When a black man was Secretary of State??
When a black woman was Secretary of State?
When black men have sat — and do sit — on the Supreme Court??
When a black would-be despot sits in the White House?????
When countless black men have risen to the top of the ranks of the richest in professional sports and show business?? Men like Hank Aaron. Men like Bill Cosby who... (Never mind. As we all know, Bill’s either an Uncle Tom or Oreo Cookie, depending on which black race pimp you listen to.)
Liberation Theology?
Liberation from WHAT? The chance to achieve and succeed??
Give me a break!!
Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I supported Herman Cain in his run for the Senate. And if he ever runs again, I would probably support him again.
I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.
Sowell, Williams and Cain – among others — have spoken out against those fellow blacks who castigate and vilify America for a slavery now long in our past. And ALL thinking men and women oppose the periodic calls for reparations. (When he ran, I supported Alan Keyes. I even spoke in his stead on the RTKABA at a Capitol rally and was asked to fill in for him on his radio show at the time. Sadly, while I still consider Alan a good man, I have had to rethink my support since he came out FOR reparations.)
The fact is that the modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE!
Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders —the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be “plaintiffs” would not even exist.
And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by muslims) and Asia today.
95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?
And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. Although the term looks to be related to “slave,” depending on your source, it either means “glory” or “worshipper.” But my family research indicates that many of my of my ancestors LIVED lives of virtual slavery to some despot or other. Do I qualify for reparations? From whom?? And it begs a question: Are most of us now living here are headed into a modern form off that servitude? But that’s a topic for another discussion.
The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-”Selling Poor Steven”, American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90
Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a telling of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers’ Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378
And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!
At the height of his remarkable boxing career, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), once declared “I’m glad my great-grandpa got on that boat.”
And author Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
Next problem!
That's why he was elected President twice, why Congress instituted presidential pensions essentially on his behalf, why he appears on the $50 bill, why the memoirs that he completed just before his death sold over 300,000 copies and earned his family over $450,000, and why Grant's Tomb is the largest mausoleum in North America. Seriously, the claims by Confederate apologists just keep getting more and more absurd.
I wonder why?
I wonder why?
The U.S. government remained intact. There were just fewer states.
I find the "intact" argument quite persuasive. I do think it might have been bad news with fewer states in the Union, opening the likelihood of France or England playing the CSA and USA off each other. But a President other than Lincoln might have succeed in knitting the states back together.
Lincoln broke so much china "preserving the Union" by destroying half of it that we still haven't gotten over his garbling of Federalism. There is still confusion over the powers of the states versus the Federal government, and among the branches of the Federal government, because Lincoln muddied the issues beyond repair.
I still say the 13th and 14th amendments don't trump the previous 12.
Civil War? In the South it is known as the War of Northern Aggression.
The Southern states seceded, and then they were defeated in war. If they wanted to be separate then they should have won the war instead of losing it.
I'm getting less and less enamored of the geographical entity known as the United States. I am getting more and more fond of the freedoms embodied in the "heart and mind" construct we call America.
I am willing to be that no one currently participating on FR will live long enough see the Constitution restored to its full health.
My great-great grandfather came down here with the 80th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and fought at Chicamauga, Vicksburg and went to the sea with Sherman.
And my wife’s people also fought on the Union side.
Now that we know some real history, I fear they were on the wrong side.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.