Posted on 02/18/2012 11:09:23 AM PST by HMS Surprise
There is nothing more irritating to a warrior-poet than an unwillingness to debate. If speech is troubling, or blatantly false, or amateurish, then it will fall of its own weight. I don’t need, and I suspect a majority of truthseekers don’t want, an administrator hovering above the public forum deciding which issues are too controversial for polite company.
The Civil War has become untouchable, unless you agree with the standard arguments. 1. Lincoln was a god among men. 2. The South was evil. 3. Union is the ultimate goal of the American experiment. 4. The Federal government’s design trumps the rights of the People, and the States. 5. Political bands are eternal, and must be preserved at all costs. 6. The ends justify the means.
The arguments for the necessity of the War between the States are considered unassailable, and I have noticed lately that the political-correctness has reached such a high level that even purportedly conservative blogs are beginning to remove threads that stray into pro-rebellion territory.
I understand the temptation to ignore this issue for political expediency, but the goal of individual liberty (personal freedom), as well as State sovereignty (political freedom), can never be accomplished unless we acknowledge and understand that the Civil War planted the seeds of the eventual unconstitutional federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
Some basics that are undeniable, albiet censorable, follows.
(Excerpt) Read more at teapartytribune.com ...
Thanks for the gratuitous put down. The Constitution is a bulwark, not a guarantee. The Soviet Union had a Constitution, with an actual Bill of Rights that closely mirrored ours. Of course it was ignored completely, and used merely as a diplomatic device. The Colonists had the Magna Carta, something I’m sure your have heard of but may have forgotten momentarily. It also was a bulwark, but not a guarantee. To imagine that a regime, underwritten or not, is to be followed mindlessly because of window-dressing, and notwithstanding actual arbitrary harm, is... to quote recent phrase I read, simply ridiculous. Godspeed and good luck.
Excellent presentation of the facts HMS Surprise. I wonder if any of the “federalists” here have ever read the NY, Virginia and Rhode Island ratification documents? They make it CRYSTAL clear that they (the STATES) reserved the right to “resume” the powers of government to their citizens if the federal (now national, it’s no longer federal because federalism is essentially dead thanks to the immorally and highly questionable ratified 14th Amendment) government exceeds if 30 or so enumerated powers in the Constitution. That it doesn’t fit into the paradigm of the BIG GOVERNMENT types here is NOT authoritative in the slightest that the States do not have the right, power and authority to leave. This is not a hard concept to understand.
Not a “put down,” just an observation, and certainly not gratuitous. You were the one posting anti-American agit-prop.
You Klan people like to imagine yourselves as wealthy Ashley Wilkes whipping hapless Negroes into submission. However, in an actual slave regime, you, as an obviously uneducated, unread person, would more likely be on the receiving end of the lash. Perhaps you should be thankful for the 13th Amendment.
But the taxes were not owed. The tax had been paid in England, in advance by the East India company for the privilege of selling tea to the colonies. Based on that, the colonials were able to prevent the tea from being sold.
Gage and his troops attempted to use starvation to coerce payments to the east India company. When that didn’t work, his soldiers began a series of raids to capture colonial elected officials. The raids didn’t go well (Lexington and Concord).
Yea, I noticed one showed up at post #45...
No. I disagree. Lincoln could not have done that as one man. Any treaty would have to be ratified by the Senate. By contrast, Jeff Davis could have stopped making war, and the war would have stopped. As usual, the Reb arguments are a series of false projections.
*sigh*
Sumter was federal property and Anderson was doing his duty.
Lincoln did not give a rat’s ass about blacks or slavery.
Yea, that's why it was him that kept all the slaves and not those southrons...
Lincoln placed the collection of revenues ahead of the lives of 600,000 people, many of whom were “in his camp.”
Baloney.
On the other hand, Jeff Davis et al. put the continuation of Slavery ahead of the lives of 600,000+ men. He was defe3a Woodrow Wilson attempted to reinstate it through federalization of Jim Crow. FDR sought to have a tame supreme court (like Jeff Davis who just never nominated anyone to that office).
I will point out that Ft Sumter was not within the limits of South Carolina. Rather it was built by the US government on a shoal, using stone from New York and Massachusetts. That also puts the lie to your statement that Federal money was only spent on Northern States. In fact, most forts were built in the south, and slaves were hired during the off season as a direct subsidy to the great men of the south.
South Carolina did attack US forces at Ft. Sumter.
Factually incorrect. These things are inherently difficult to compare, but one estimate is that total taxation in the colonies was 2% to 4% of that in the UK itself.
At any rate, the colonies were taxed almost certainly at <10% of the rate in the Mother Country.
"No taxation without representation" was a political slogan with almost no basis in economic fact. A very effective slogan, to be sure.
I'm not sure this is true.
By the secessionists' own statements, the basic conflict that led to secession was over whether slavery would be allowed to expand into the territories or would remain limited to the states in which it existed.
Yet we're supposed to believe that if the seceded states had been allowed to depart in peace, they would have just accepted their exclusion from the territories rather than demanding a share. This would have put them permanently in the position that they claimed was so unacceptable it made secession imperative.
Seems to me much more likely that a supine surrender to secession would have just been viewed as a sign of weakness by the CSA and would have led to increased demands for a share of the territories, etc.
The fire-eaters also had plans for invasion of Caribbean, Mexican and other Latin American territories to spread slavery. This is a classic example of their refusal to accept reality. Such expansion, given the transport capability of the time, would have had to be primarily by sea.
Leaving the USA Navy out of the equation (which it wouldn't have been), there is no way the Royal Navy, which had been devoted to the extirpation of slavery and the slave trade for more than half a century, would have allowed any such expansion.
For those unfamiliar with CVA, I would like to point out some of the other lines from the poem/song he uses as his tagline.
“I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do,
I hates the Declaration of Independence, too!”
He apparently hates what many Americans consider the basic document defining what America is.
One can make a decent case that the WBTS led to a distortion of the ideals of the American Revolution, but if you “hate the Declaration of Independence” IMO you are rejecting the essence of what it means to be an American.
I take it you mean the sentiments expressed here from Virginia's ratification:
"WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and in behalf 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: that therefore no right of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of Representatives acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes: and that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified by any authority of the United States."
And here from the New York ratification:
"That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, and that government is instituted by them for their common interest, protection, and security.
That the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are essential rights, which every government ought to respect and preserve.
That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several states, or to their respective state governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said Constitution, which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution."
And here from the Rhode Island ratification:
"That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness. That the rights of the states respectively to nominate and appoint all state officers, and every other power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective state governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the Constitution which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed as exceptions to certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution."
They don't say that "they (the STATES) reserved the right to “resume” the powers of government". They say that the people (in one case referring to the people of the United States and in another referring to the people of the several states) may resume or reassume the "powers". They're not saying the States can leave the Union. They're saying the people can replace the Federal (or for that matter the State) government.
You do understand that the Union and the Federal Government are not the same don't you?
I will address your fallacies one by one:
Your comments are in quotations.
“...Ft Sumter was not within the limits of South Carolina.”
It is in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Every source identifies Ft. Sumter as being in South Carolina. By your peculiar logic Galveston Harbor isn’t in Texas.
“Rather it was built by the US government on a shoal, using stone from New York and Massachusetts.”
New England granite was used, because the most accessible granite quarries were in New England. So, it only made sense to use New England granite.
“That also puts the lie to your statement that Federal money was only spent on Northern States.”
I never said federal money was ONLY spent on Northern states. I said federal money was mainly spent in the Northern states; you cannot factually dispute that.
“In fact, most forts were built in the south, and slaves were hired during the off season as a direct subsidy to the great men of the south.”
Most forts and installations were in coastal locations, and the Southern states had by far a much greater coastal area than the Northern states. Besides, most of the installations were pre-existing, having been erected by the Spanish, the French, the British, or the colonies/states themselves, and the federal government just took them over. The size of the garrisons or staff manning those installations was for the most part skeletal, and required little cost to maintain. In fact, work began on Sumter some fort thirty years before the war, and because of miserly federal spending, it was still unfinished and already obsolete by 1861. Your comment that the federal government hired slaves “in the off-season” to build them is ludicrous, but would be deliciously ironic if true.
The legal taxation of the colonies was enacted by the colonial legislatures. Part of the reason why their taxation was low was because the colonies didn’t have the layers of bureaucracy/nobility that was seen in England. the colonies were also funded by sale of land.
The Union was first created by the colonies as the first Continental Congress (Peyton Randall). It later created the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, and the Constitution. The federal government is the latest creation of the union. Pretending to leave the union was the figleaf that the rebels used to justify their rebellion.
I will note that in 1860 the people of the several states had just replaced the Democrat government with a Republican government. It was that decision of the people to replace the government to which the rebels objected. In 1860 the people had elected a Republican President, a Republican vice President, and returned a Republican Speaker of the House, and a Republican Senate Majority leader.
Actually, yes they did try to continue running the US national government, running no less than 3 candidates for president in 1860, as well as the usual slate of Democrat politicians for other offices.
Then also invaded Maryland, and Pennsylvania, not to mention US territory in Arizona, a raid in Vermont, and illegal usurpation of federal authority in various forts, custom houses and arsenals. A number of rebellious militia companies were formed in the District of Columbia, which posed a serious threat to the President’s inauguration until loyal officers demobilized the ones who refused to submit to proper authority.
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