Posted on 05/20/2014 8:57:04 AM PDT by Sioux-san
Not much media coverage, not much fanfare, not much reflection. A war that carved over 600,000 lives from the nation when the nation’s population was just 31 million. To compare, that would equate to a loss of life in today’s population statistics, not to mention limb and injury, of circa 6 million.
We are in the month of May, when 150 years ago Grant crossed the Rapidan to engage Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee stood atop Clark’s Mountain and watched this unknown (to the eastern theatre) entity lead a massive army into Lee’s home state. Soon there would be the Wilderness, where forest and brushfires would consume the wounded and dying. Days later, the battle of Spotsylvania ensued, in which hand-to-hand combat would last nearly 12 hours. Trading casualties one for one and rejecting previous prisoner exchange and parole procedures, Grant pushed on, to the left flank. The Battle of the North Anna, then the crossing of the James, and thus into the siege of Petersburg. This was 1864 in the eastern theatre.
Today there is hardly a whisper of the anniversary of these deeds, sacrifices, and destruction. Why?
One can suppose that the weak treatment of history at the alleged higher levels of education in this country contributes to the lack of attention. “It was about slavery; now on to WWI.” The War between the States was so much more complicated than the ABC treatment that academia presents. And as the old saying goes, the more complicated the situation, the more the bloodshed...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
This discussion has descended into silliness. You and others have a fifth grade emotional attachment to certain figures you treat as demigods. The Federalists clearly didn’t like the compromise they were forced into in the Constitution and set about trying to get the powers they wanted by going around the Constitution. Hamilton was very aggressive in this and was supported by mercantilist interests.
Go ahead and claim that the Alien & Sedition Act was Constitutional, or that the “necessary and proper” clause allows the government to do anything it deems “necessary and proper” (in which case we can dispense with the rest of the Constitution), that the power to “coin money” means printing up fiat money, or that Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 means the federal government can levy an income tax directly on citizens, or any other nonsense you like. Even if Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson swore on a stack of Bibles that those things are true, they would still be unconstitutional. Your assumption that leaders engaging in acts of realpolitik actually tell us what the Constitution says is either nothing other than a modified version of the doctrine of the Royal Perogative, over which Charles I lost his head, or some mystic vision of Hamilton and others as oracles. The purpose of the Constitution was to have a written document that objectively defined the limited powers of the federal government. It wasn’t some mystical text that required Delphic oracles to proclaim the meaning, and the Federalists were not empowered to declare as law that the Constitution means “up” when it says “down”.
The progressives own you, and you don’t even know it.
SO, you are back to the smear. Anyone who disagrees with your adoration of Lincoln and the leviathan federal government must be in favor of slavery. You are conceding that you have no real argument. This is the sort of thing liberals do. Given your resort to the jurisprudence of the “Living Constitution” and disregard for the actual provisions of the Constitution, I’m not surprised.
I think you probably know that we were talking exclusively of the portion having to do with the federal criminalization of speech. Everybody else did.
The Lincoln you adore is a myth.
All of your prattle trying to wrap this dispute about Constitutional powers and various historical events in “slavery” is as intellectually dishonest a thing as I’ve seen here. No one is interested in the return of slavery, and you know it.
You’re a troll.
Personally I think you would do well to stop gazing into a mirror and try reading something other than neo-confederate agitprop.
BroJoeK...for once I agree with you. There was no such threat, and I think the Fire Eaters wanted secession in large part so that they could be “founders” and men of note - I think that underlying all of it were the ego needs of certain men in the Deep South who exploited grievances real and imagined to further their careers. While I think the states had the right to secede (over which we disagree), I think it was the wrong decision. The Deep South would have been economically marginalized by the developments of the second half of the 19th Century. With a separation from the Union, slaves who escaped North wouldn’t be sent back under the Fugitive Slave Act, which would have reduced the value of slaves generally. With a diminution of the importance and value of the agricultural commodities produced by the Deep South and a large dependent slave population, I don’t see how secession would have resulted in anything but massive social and economic problems for the Deep South. It could well be that over time the non-seceding states would actually have been better off without the Deep South, although that is just conjecture.
Most people approve of Lincoln. Of course, most people detest slavery.
Don't take my word for it. Ask your neighbors.
Yes, you're at your very best when you point out that George Washington just didn't understand as clearly as you do the true meaning of our Constitution . I'm surprised you'd even discuss these matters with peons like us. ;-)
Alright, Sherman, and where is the provision (Article I, Section 9, Clause 2)? It is an Article I power, not an Article II power. As you should know, Article I sets forth the powers given to CONGRESS. The entire discussion has had to do with Lincoln unconstitutionally usurping Congress’ power in this area. People familiar with this area of the law know that well before 1860 even the federal courts had recognized that this was an explicit grant of power to the Congress. John Marshall, years before, had written in an opinion that “if ...the public safety should require the suspension of [the writ of habeas corpus] it is for the legislature to say so.” By the time of Lincoln there was a line of precedent for this very obvious constitutional point. Lincoln ignored a USSC order telling him to stop his unlawful arrests, and the unlawful suspension of the Great Writ continued for some time (and thousands of illegal arrests) before the Congress voted a suspension.
Your conclusion is a non-sequitur, but I think you are right about that. I just disapprove of Lincoln and detest slavery.
I have provided far more source material than anyone else. You seem to believe your position is validated by group think. You can probably find a large group of older people in Russia who still believe the wonderful things they were taught about Stalin and who feel threatened by anyone who points out that the real Stalin (or Lenin) wasn’t exactly what they were taught.
More leftist tactics. That’s a shame.
That's a big, big improvement. I'm very pleased. There is certainly nothing wrong with detesting slavery.
Now, wouldn't it be even more correct to say that you disapprove of some of the things Lincoln did rather than disapprove of Lincoln? ;-)
That the location of the clause in question means that it is inherently and solely a legislative power is certainly a common POV. That it is not the only POV for which a case can be made is shown best by this article.
So, if Washington said that what the Constitution really means is that slaves count for 4/5 or that it permits the federal government to tax people in order to provide the Episcopalian Church an annual subsidy, we should just accept it as the “true meaning” of the Constitution because Washington said it?
There is a reason the document was written. And on every issue on which the Federalists usurped power for the federal government, you can find Founders who participated in the ratification objecting.
This is one of the problems of postmodernism: texts have no meaning; all we have are “narratives” about the text. I think the text speaks for itself on most points, and I don’t regard oracular pronouncements or actions taken by Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, or anyone else as amending the text, which was not the private property of the very small circle of people whose names have been discussed.
The “Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association”? Really. Well I guess that settles it. The fact that the entire and only function of Article I is to lay out the powers of Congress (and some limitations) because it would conflict with Congress), including pointing out areas in which states cannot legislate, doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter that it was well settled law by 1860 that inclusion of the power to suspend in Article I was reserved to Congress or that commentators such as Joseph Story pointed out that this was a Congressional power. No, somebody writes an article that doesn’t address important sources, and dismisses others (e.g. Randall), and now it is all up for grabs. Whee! This Constitutional Law stuff is really easy!
The war was about the rights of states that willingly agreed to join a union - their right to dissolve their membership in that union.
It isn’t an improvement at all. You know that is what I’ve said all along. Lincoln did enough wrong that I disapprove of Lincoln. If it hadn’t been for the War, he probably would be remembered as a minor president who tried to further Henry Clay style crony capitalism.
By the way, I find it interesting that Lincolnolaters are ready to place the race card against anyone who doesn’t worship at the Lincoln Memorial. After all, he was quite at peace with the Corwin Amendment and had vowed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 with a vengeance. That would have cemented slavery into the culture for a long time to come. So, it would be far more reasonable to say that Lincolnolaters are actually the ones who secretly harbor fond thoughts of slavery. Of course, I don’t believe that and don’t believe that you harbor such views. Nonetheless, it is ironic.
Your posts haven’t exactly been filled with sources or arguments. This thread has discussed almost every conceivable topic relating to these issues. If you have something to say, do go back and find the relevant section and make a sourced, well-reasoned argument.
The issues that they were discussing are bit more complex than the hypothetical that you have framed. One of the issues concerned the proper meaning of necessary in the "necessary and proper" clause. As Hamilton put it (in substance), does something have to be absolutely or indispensably necessary to be "necessary" for purposes of that provision? From what you have said in other posts, that seems to be your view.
But, consider this: if there exists more than one alternative means to accomplish something (and that something is constitutional), can it be said that either means is indispensably necessary? Since neither means is the only means, how can either means can be viewed as the absolutely necessary means. This suggests that there are problems with interpreting the word necessary to mean absolutely necessary or indispensably necessary. And, of course, a more flexible standard for "necessary" broadens the range of acceptable ("constitutional") means.
That is just one aspect of the questions that Jefferson and Hamilton were debating. I don't believe anyone who understands the issues can deem the answers to be obvious. They're inherently complicated.
Again, Washington sided with Hamilton.
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