[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Consent obtained by threats is not consent."

DiogenesLamp: "Exactly the point I make about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments."

rockrr: "So you’re still in favor of keeping slavery alive. Good to know..."

jeffersondem: "That is an interesting comment.
May we see your data?"

Clearly our Lost Causers, typical Democrats, wish to have it both ways on this.
On the one hand they deny the 13th, 14th & 15th were legitimately ratified, on the other they claim to support emancipation and citizenship for former slaves.

The key facts they ignore are:

1. The 13th, 14th & 15th were lawfully ratified by representatives of legal voters at the time.
   Those voters included former slaves but excluded former Confederates.

2. In early 1865 what Lincoln called a "pernicious abstraction" argued Confederate state ratifications were no longer necessary.
   That would reduce the requirement to 19 states.
   But in the end, all 36 states of the time ratified.

3. Congress passed laws requiring former Confederate states to ratify before sending representatives to Congress.

4. The 13th, 14th & 15th were eventually ratified by every state which originally rejected them and no state today remains in opposition to them.

Bottom line: "consent of the governed" depends on who, exactly, is asked to consent.
Slaves were never asked to consent to slavery and Confederates were not asked to consent to abolition at the time.
Today descendants of slaveholders are free to withdraw their states' ratifications of the 13th, 14th & 15th at any time and yet none -- zero, zilch, nada, not one -- has ever chosen to do so.
Nor, so far as I've seen, has any Lost Causer here suggested it.

In my opinion that qualifies as "consent of the governed."

[DiogenesLamp]

Reading anything you write is like listening to North Korean propaganda. Who has time for any of that nonsense? I don't even have to bother. It will always be biased, and contain no objective admissions against interest.

You studiously ignore any information that contradicts your cheerleading position, and so you aren't worth bothering with.

[jeffersondem]

“Clearly our Lost Causers, typical Democrats, wish to have it both ways on this. On the one hand they deny the 13th, 14th & 15th were legitimately ratified, on the other they claim to support emancipation and citizenship for former slaves.”

I'm sure there is a Latin word to describe your faulty logic but I do not know what it is. I just call it wrong-headed.

Yes, I supported Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. And yes, I opposed the mob that attempted his high-tech lynching. But there was no “both ways” about it.

The elimination of the pro-slavery provisions of the United States Constitution was necessary and advantageous but it should have been done peacefully using the agreed upon amendment process without all the war and killings.