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To: jdege
The Confederacy would have been an economic wreck - an impoverished third-world country, rather than the slavery-spreading empire the secessionists were dreaming of.

You're sick. Lincoln was a butcher and destroyed states rights. We are all slaves now thanks to your corrupt hero.

9 posted on 03/07/2010 3:22:43 PM PST by central_va ( http://www.15thvirginia.org/)
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To: central_va
For those who think that Lincoln was the aggressor, I point you to his first inaugural:
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

and

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices.

and

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

As for those who insist that the South seceded for reasons other than the preservation of its ability to expand slavery, I point you to the declarations of secession:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.


12 posted on 03/07/2010 3:34:01 PM PST by jdege
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To: central_va

What the country won dont match what the country lost in that war.
We saw slaugher on a scale unkown before that war. We also saw the trampling of civil rights under Lincoln. The case that Obama could use the same excuses today can be made.
Big Government equals oppression. I used to hate the south, but know I see thier point. It wasnt really about slavery, but it was about states right. Lincoln was ham handed, using the “save the union” response to suspend basic rights.
And the troubling thing is that history tends to repeat itself.


21 posted on 03/07/2010 6:02:29 PM PST by Yorlik803 (better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)
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