No he couldn't. He was not a king or an emperor. He was a president of a democracy that had a constitution which limited his power. What stopped Lincoln until 2 years into his presidency? Its funny you want to blame Davis for doing what no US President had done.
There was a difference. Until 1865, slavery was still protected by the Constitution in the US. It could have been abolished in ALL states before the CW ended if the Democrats had voted for the 13th Amendment, but they blocked it to protect "states' rights", their words.
The 13th amendment did not even get proposed or gain any significant support until well into the war. Slavery was protected by the US and Confederate constitutions.
OTOH, there was nothing stopping JD and the Confederacy from abolishing slavery, if that had been their intention. Of course it wasn't, as the Confederate Constitution was deliberately written to protect slavery.
Yes the Confederate Constitution protected slavery as did the US Constitution. Who said the CSA intended to ban slavery at the start? They did not and neither did the US. Both became willing to ban slavery over the course of the war if they thought it would be helpful to them to do so.
And you can't excuse them as being products of their time. The fact that they offered to give up slavery in return for military aid shows they understood the rest of the world could see the evil in slavery, assuming they couldn't see it themselves.
and you can't expect them to have viewed the world through 21st century eyes. It wasn't that "the rest of the world" could see the evil of slavery. It was that the 2 most military powerful European countries had banned it. Slavery continues to this day. I just watched a report complete with footage about the open slave market in Tripoli, Libya.
That would have been unconstitutional according to the Confederate Constitution.
The Confederate Government apparently felt they could do so as a war measure - just as Lincoln did.
I find it very interesting that much of your case is built on policies that were never ratified. The Corbomite Maneuver or whatever it was called, strengthening fugitive slave laws, and abolition in return for military aid, were never ratified. OTOH, you just brush off the one policy we've discussed that was ratified, which is total abolition of slavery in ALL states.
I find it how D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E you are to pretend the Republicans/Lincoln did not offer slavery forever by express constitutional amendment and that they did not pass it through each house of the Northern dominated Congress with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority and get it ratified by multiple states - AND that the original 7 seceding states did not turn down that offer flatly. You're so rattled you can't even say the name. What all of the above show quite clearly is that neither side was fighting over slavery. You've been told a fairy tale and can't process it no matter how much concrete evidence is laid out in front of you.
They never gave up their slaves until defeated.
But they chose independence over slavery both times.
Hitler didn't personally shove any Jews into the ovens either, but that doesn't excuse him.
LOL! Back to the Godwins. Davis did not initiate slavery. It wasn't his idea. He didn't order it. It started well before he was born. He is not personally responsible for the existence of slavery in North America though you seem to want to act as if he were.
Because they couldn't be freed until the Constitution was amended, which could have happened in 1864 if the Democrats hadn't blocked the 13th Amendment.
Davis finally managed to convince the Confederate Congress to allow him to offer abolition in exchange for military alliance with Britain and France. That would have happened in 1864 had they agreed.
I knew you wouldn't answer this so I'll post it again. Hitler said he didn't want war in 1939. Do you believe him?
Godwin. LOL! This is so pathetic. Get some new material.
In case you haven't figured it out, I'm going to keep giving you the same old response if you keep trotting out the same old ridiculous question.
C'mon, we all know you're a plant, so why not just go for it, say "yes", and try to make us look like Nazi sympathizers in addition to trying to tie us with the Democrat's history of slavery? Isn't that what you're here for anyway?
Its funny you call me a plant when you are the one spouting PC Revisionist LEFTIST propaganda that came straight from Leftists in Academia starting in the 1980s. The goal of course was to portray the federal government as the good guys, any decentralized power as bad/backward/hateful and of course to spew bile at the South for being at the heart of the modern conservative movement.
repeats snipped. You can also read the Confederacy's Constitution. Just search for the words "slave" and "Negro" to get to the relevant parts.
Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war "was for the defense of the institution of slavery" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim "demagogues." Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted "the Confederates were not battling for slavery" and that "slavery had never been the key issue" (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).
Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a "moral and political evil" years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232). By late 1864, Davis was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy. Duncan Kenner, one of the biggest slaveholders in the South and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives, strongly supported this proposal. So did the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. Davis informed congressional leaders of his intentions, and then sent Kenner to Europe to make the proposal. Davis even made Kenner a minister plenipotentiary so as to ensure he could make the proposal to the British and French governments and that it would be taken seriously.
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination." - President Jefferson Davis The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14, Number 83
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.” Union Colonel James Jaquess
“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.” Jefferson Davis
Davis rejects peace with reunion https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/jefferson-davis-rejects-peace-with-reunion-1864/
"Neither “love for the African” [witness the Northern laws against him], nor revulsion from “property in persons” [“No, you imported Africans and sold them as chattels in the slave markets”] motivated the present day agitators,"…... “No sir….the mask is off, the purpose is avowed…It is a struggle for political power." Jefferson Davis 1848
“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Jefferson Davis 1860 speech in the US Senate
"The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control." Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861
Slavery was one of those "states' rights".
Actually slavery was protected by the US Constitution.
It was legally abolished long before secession and the CW, but the slave holding states were relying on breeding their own slaves by then.
The grandfather clause in the constitution for carrying out the slave trade expired in 1810 but it was carried out illictly on a large scale for generations after that.
But if it wasn't about slavery, why would this matter?
It was merely the pretext for rightfully saying the Northern states violated the compact.
repeats snipped.
Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war "was for the defense of the institution of slavery" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim "demagogues." Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted "the Confederates were not battling for slavery" and that "slavery had never been the key issue" (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).
Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a "moral and political evil" years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232). By late 1864, Davis was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy. Duncan Kenner, one of the biggest slaveholders in the South and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives, strongly supported this proposal. So did the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. Davis informed congressional leaders of his intentions, and then sent Kenner to Europe to make the proposal. Davis even made Kenner a minister plenipotentiary so as to ensure he could make the proposal to the British and French governments and that it would be taken seriously.
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination." - President Jefferson Davis The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14, Number 83
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.” Union Colonel James Jaquess
“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.” Jefferson Davis
Davis rejects peace with reunion https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/jefferson-davis-rejects-peace-with-reunion-1864/
"Neither “love for the African” [witness the Northern laws against him], nor revulsion from “property in persons” [“No, you imported Africans and sold them as chattels in the slave markets”] motivated the present day agitators,"…... “No sir….the mask is off, the purpose is avowed…It is a struggle for political power." Jefferson Davis 1848
“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Jefferson Davis 1860 speech in the US Senate
"The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control." Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861
How many of those Southerners would support the Confederate Constitution as it was written and ratified in March 1861?
Probably the vast majority - as I would guess did the vast majority of people in the 13 colonies support the US Constitution when it was ratified.
It's you who want to tie the Confederacy, and in effect slavery, to the right.
That is false. That is what the PC Revisionists try to do.
In case you haven't seen the news in the past year, the "Conservatives" in Georgia caved to the Democrats when they could have made a stand and forced a validation of the election results.,/p>
Those weren't conservatives. They were Republicans but they were not Conservatives. There is a difference.
Read the Confederacy's Constitution if you want to see what the South believed in in the 1860s, and tell me that's still true today.
I didn't say there have been no changes in people's views over the last 150-200 years. There have been some quite considerable changes. Most of those for the good, some for the bad. There have also been a lot of ways in which views have not changed - at least for Conservatives which most Southerners are. We still believe in the principles of the original constitution for the most part. Its the Leftists who do not.
Jimmy Carter was a patriotic conservative compared to the bunch we have now, and I'm not just talking about Democrats.
You're being too kind to him. He endorses all the far left BS of the Democrats today. He isn't as vitriolic is some of them, but he believes in the radical Leftist dogma.
One more year of Brandon and we'll all be begging for a return to the Carter years.,/P>
I was a kid but so far it seems an awful lot like the Jimmy Crater years. The economy sucks, fuel is becoming ever more expensive, foreign policy is an utter disaster, the regime is completely adrift and the country is pissed off and demoralized. Just waiting for Biden to put on a wimpy little cardigan and tell us all we're going to have to get used to shivering because we can't afford to turn up the heat or because we owe it to Earth Mother Gaia or some such laughable BS.
One is sitting on the other side of your computer.
FIFY
Given the condition of the modern Conservative movement, I'm not sure that's something to brag about.
Just watch what happens in November.
Same with abolition in 1865, and that wouldn't have happened without the CW.
I tend to think it could have been ended more quickly than many think with a generous compensated emancipation scheme - like just about everybody else in the West used to get rid of it.
A democracy that was JUST FORMED, with a BRAND NEW CONSTITUTION that was DRAFTED and RATIFIED by the leaders of that nation.
What stopped Lincoln until 2 years into his presidency? Its funny you want to blame Davis for doing what no US President had done.
You answered that yourself, the Constitution.
The 13th amendment did not even get proposed or gain any significant support until well into the war.
Granted, it wasn't an easy process. A lot had to happen to pass abolition. The CW did speed that up, as war often does.
Slavery was protected by the US and Confederate constitutions.
The difference was that the Union inherited the Constitution with its protections for slavery, while the Confederacy drafted their Constitution from the ground up, deliberately adding protections for slavery.
Yes the Confederate Constitution protected slavery as did the US Constitution. Who said the CSA intended to ban slavery at the start? They did not and neither did the US. Both became willing to ban slavery over the course of the war if they thought it would be helpful to them to do so.
The Republicans in the North attempted to pass the 13th Amendment in 1864, but were stopped by the Democrats over "states' rights".
and you can't expect them to have viewed the world through 21st century eyes.
But they could see it, or they wouldn't have offered to abolish it in return for military aid.
It wasn't that "the rest of the world" could see the evil of slavery. It was that the 2 most military powerful European countries had banned it. Slavery continues to this day. I just watched a report complete with footage about the open slave market in Tripoli, Libya.
Granted.
I find it how D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E you are to pretend the Republicans/Lincoln did not offer slavery forever by express constitutional amendment and that they did not pass it through each house of the Northern dominated Congress with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority and get it ratified by multiple states - AND that the original 7 seceding states did not turn down that offer flatly. You're so rattled you can't even say the name. What all of the above show quite clearly is that neither side was fighting over slavery.
The Corbomite Maneuver and the Corwin Amendment were similar, in that they had no impact on anything.
Well that's not entirely true. The Corbomite Maneuver made money for those who made it up, while the Corwin Amendment went no where and did nothing.
You've been told a fairy tale and can't process it no matter how much concrete evidence is laid out in front of you.
Your idea of concrete evidence is policies that were never ratified or implemented, while mine are policies that were implemented. My concrete evidence includes the conditions protecting slavery in the newly minted Confederate Constitution, and the abolition of slavery after the CW and the attempt made before the end of the CW that was blocked by Democrats.
But they chose independence over slavery both times.
They never chose anything over slavery. Defeat was the only thing that made them give up slavery.
LOL! Back to the Godwins. Davis did not initiate slavery. It wasn't his idea. He didn't order it. It started well before he was born. He is not personally responsible for the existence of slavery in North America though you seem to want to act as if he were.
True, but the newly created Constitution ratified by the newly created Confederacy in 1861 preserved slavery, when they could have abolished it. In fact, the Constitution explicitly forbid member states and territories from passing laws that would make slavery illegal. This was in contrast to the North where the states could abolish slavery at the state level. So much for states rights in the Confederacy.
Davis finally managed to convince the Confederate Congress to allow him to offer abolition in exchange for military alliance with Britain and France. That would have happened in 1864 had they agreed.
Another policy that was never implemented that you think proves something.
In case you haven't figured it out, I'm going to keep giving you the same old response if you keep trotting out the same old ridiculous question.
I know. I want others to see it.
Its funny you call me a plant when you are the one spouting PC Revisionist LEFTIST propaganda that came straight from Leftists in Academia starting in the 1980s.
Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
Repeat snipped.
The goal of course was to portray the federal government as the good guys, any decentralized power as bad/backward/hateful...
Both the federal governments and the states abolished slavery, so I don't see how you came up with this.
and of course to spew bile at the South for being at the heart of the modern conservative movement.
Well someone has to take the blame for what the modern Conservative movement has become.
Actually slavery was protected by the US Constitution.
Yes it was, but you can't see that Lincoln and the Republicans had to change that to get abolition ratified, which they did.
The grandfather clause in the constitution for carrying out the slave trade expired in 1810 but it was carried out illictly on a large scale for generations after that.
Granted, but it was illegal.
It was merely the pretext for rightfully saying the Northern states violated the compact.
The Confederacy's Constitution as well as the declarations of secession clearly state it was about slavery.
Confederacy propaganda that can be refuted by the Confederacy's own Constitution snipped.
Probably the vast majority - as I would guess did the vast majority of people in the 13 colonies support the US Constitution when it was ratified.
I was asking about Southerners today, as I figured you were referring to them when you said "Ask Southerners.....", since I can't ask the Southerners from 1861. I'll restate my question. How many Southerners from today would support the Confederacy Constitution as it was written in 1861?
Those weren't conservatives. They were Republicans but they were not Conservatives. There is a difference.
They came from the South, but granted otherwise.
FIFY
Yawn.
Just watch what happens in November.
I hope you're right.
I tend to think it could have been ended more quickly than many think with a generous compensated emancipation scheme - like just about everybody else in the West used to get rid of it.
The Confederacy's Constitution made abolition unconstitutional.
Gotta run, see you in a few weeks.