Posted on 05/01/2017 3:39:29 PM PDT by Timpanagos1
US President Donald Trump has stirred debate by asking why the American Civil War happened, and pondering whether it could have been "worked out".
In a radio interview, he suggested the conflict might have been avoided if President Andrew Jackson had still been in office.
The 1861-65 Civil War between the northern and southern states was principally caused by slavery.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
But the Confederacy considered themselves to be a real country. Why didn’t they declare war before attacking?
James Madison, the father of the constitution, would disagree with you;
TO N. P. TRIST. … MAD. MSS.
Montpellier, Decr 23, 1832.
Dr. Sir I have received yours of the 19th, inclosing some of the South Carolina papers. There are in one of them some interesting views of the doctrine of secession; one that had occurred to me, and which for the first time I have seen in print; namely that if one State can at will withdraw from the others, the others can at will withdraw from her, and turn her, nolentem, volentem, out of the union. Until of late, there is not a State that would have abhorred such a doctrine more than South Carolina, or more dreaded an application of it to herself. The same may be said of the doctrine of nullification, which she now preaches as the only faith by which the Union can be saved.
I partake of the wonder that the men you name should view secession in the light mentioned. The essential difference between a free Government and Governments not free, is that the former is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of them therefore can have a greater fight to break off from the bargain, than the other or others have to hold them to it. And certainly there is nothing in the Virginia resolutions of –98, adverse to this principle, which is that of common sense and common justice. The fallacy which draws a different conclusion from them lies in confounding a single party, with the parties to the Constitutional compact of the United States. The latter having made the compact may do what they will with it. The former as one only of the parties, owes fidelity to it, till released by consent, or absolved by an intolerable abuse of the power created. In the Virginia Resolutions and Report the plural number, States, is in every instance used where reference is made to the authority which presided over the Government. As I am now known to have drawn those documents, I may say as I do with a distinct recollection, that the distinction was intentional. It was in fact required by the course of reasoning employed on the occasion. The Kentucky resolutions being less guarded have been more easily perverted. The pretext for the liberty taken with those of Virginia is the word respective, prefixed to the “rights” &c to be secured within the States. Could the abuse of the expression have been foreseen or suspected, the form of it would doubtless have been varied. But what can be more consistent with common sense, than that all having the same rights &c, should unite in contending for the security of them to each.
It is remarkable how closely the nullifiers who make the name of Mr. Jefferson the pedestal for their colossal heresy, shut their eyes and lips, whenever his authority is ever so clearly and emphatically against them. You have noticed what he says in his letters to Monroe & Carrington Pages 43 & 203, vol. 2,1 with respect to the powers of the old Congress to coerce delinquent States, and his reasons for preferring for the purpose a naval to a military force; and moreover that it was not necessary to find a right to coerce in the Federal Articles, that being inherent in the nature of a compact. It is high time that the claim to secede at will should be put down by the public opinion; and I shall be glad to see the task commenced by one who understands the subject.
I know nothing of what is passing at Richmond, more than what is seen in the newspapers. You were right in your foresight of the effect of the passages in the late Proclamation. They have proved a leaven for much fermentation there, and created an alarm against the danger of consolidation, balancing that of disunion. I wish with you the Legislature may not seriously injure itself by assuming the high character of mediator. They will certainly do so if they forget that their real influence will be in the inverse ratio of a boastful interposition of it.
If you can fix, and will name the day of your arrival at Orange Court House, we will have a horse there for you; and if you have more baggage than can be otherwise brought than on wheels, we will send such a vehicle for it. Such is the state of the roads produced by the wagons hurrying flour to market, that it may be impossible to send our carriage which would answer both purposes.
Well yes he could have done that if he ignored his constitutional duties as President. He probably would have then been impeached and replaced by some one who would put down the southern rebellion.
The lost losers always want to blame Lincoln for the war but fail to realize that any of the republican candidates (Seward, Chase, etc.) would have done the same. Except for the copperhead democrats, the rest of the United States did not believe the rebellious states should just be left alone. And once they fired on Fort Sumter this feeling became even stronger.
So you’re saying we wouldn’t have had the Civil War if Jackson was president a few years later because Jackson “had a big heart” that Lincoln didn’t.
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What? I think you’ve passed this on to the wrong person. I haven’t mentioned Jackson in any of my posts!
The slaves had every right to rise up against their self-styled "masters". An action which I would have gladly supported.
Agreed. I would also support insurrection against our ‘masters’.
But it only takes a simple reading of the documents of the period to see that the Southern states seceded over what they saw as the Republican threat to the expansion of slavery and did go to war to further their goals.
In what way and with what rhetoric?
They walked out without discussion, walked away from obligations for debt and treaties, and took every bit of federal property they could get their hands on. Why didn't the other states have the right to oppose that?
The North was the aggressor.
By not allowing the South to take yet another piece of federal property? If I refuse to give up my purse to a mugger am I the aggressor?
Or might have provoked it earlier. The Southern states were firm in their intent to leave the Union after Lincoln's election. There was nothing wishy-washy about their actions or their motivation of defense of slavery. A threat to resort to military force would not have caused them to back down. It would have resulted in the South calling up their own troops and the war beginning a few months earlier than it did.
600,000 used to be the accepted number of CW killed, but you are correct that this number has been rising in recent years as more complete scholarship becomes available.
The 1860 census counted 31.4 million Americans.
To have 750,000 killed out of 31 million is a tremendously high amount. If females were one half of the population, now you are looking at 750,000 out of 15 million men, or 5% of the male population. Of fighting age population, the figure goes much higher.
In the South, many of these men were the head of a farming household. To lose this man would have impoverished an entire family.
You are aware that when Lincoln penned that letter to Horace Greeley, the Emancipation Proclamation had been written, reviewed by the cabinet, and was only awaiting a military victory before being released?
600,000 deaths could have been avoided.
Which makes the South's war to defend slavery all the more tragic, don't you think?
If states are sovereign entities then can they, at any time, expel a state from the Union with them regardless of that state's wishes and for any reason? If states are sovereign entities then was South Carolina right when they said that they could decide for themselves what laws were constitutional and what tariffs they would collect?
Otherwise, who gets to define "intolerable abuse"?
If one state claims "intolerable abuse" then why don't the other states have a right to deny the abuse? Are they always guilty with no opportunity to prove innocence? Does the Constitution only protect the state claiming abuse and provides nothing for the states that are accused of it?
To believe otherwise makes them a simple vassal of the Federal government, a condition no in which no States would have ratified the constitution if this was what was what they thought they were getting into.
It make them a member of a compact where one member has no more rights than any other member has.
If one is a conservative with any hope of reigning in Federal power, supporting succession is absolutely necessary, and this means supporting the South's decision.
Nonsense. I consider myself a conservative and disagree with the South's actions, their motivations, and their resorting to war.
Their actions where intended to cause the conflict that led to their downfall then.
walked away from obligations for debt and treatiesTreaties were when they were under the Feds, they were void to them afterwards.
So the Constitution protects theft by walking away? Really?
Their share of the debt could have been negotiated like civilized human beings.
But they didn't negotiate like civilized human beings. They walked out without discussion or negotiation of any potential issues of disagreement and your response to that was, "Yes,so?"
Could you point me to discussions where the Feds tried to communicate with the Confederacy for compensation, or where the Confederacy refused?
Can you point to me when the South did likewise?
None of this comes close to justifying 600,000 dead and Lincolns persecution of Politicians, Judges, and Activists who opposed him.
Again, if it does not justify the 600,000 dead then why did the South start the war that led to those deaths?
Hahahahahahahhaha. Oh wait your serious? Your actually saying the father of the constitution was wrong? How many constitutions have you helped write? How many countries have you help found.
I thought conservatives believed in the original intent of the founders? I think your on the wrong forum and need to go to stormfront or some other white power site. You are just given liberals ammunition for their claim that all conservatives are racist.
What taxes caused the Civil War.
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