Replies

I see you took your time replying this time. Good, that must mean you'll have some new information to share with us.

I admit you were wrong from the start and have been trying to weasel ever since.

Sigh! No, just more of the same.

Slavery was still permitted in the Union and was not abolished until after the war.

Yes, when the Republicans got the votes they needed to pass abolition and send it to the states for ratification. How many times do I have to say this before you stop posting it as if I was making the opposite point?

In fact, abolition was distinctly unpopular before the war and in the early stages of it and none of the national parties endorsed abolition prior to very late in the war.

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

It was not a "breeding program". The birth rate of slaves was not higher than that of the rest of the population...

So what? Women can only have so many babies, and the women who made up the "slave labor" were also needed to do all of their other work.

They were still in a closed environment and their babies were still sold as property. That in itself is the definition of a breeding program, and the fact that they didn't fill out enough paperwork to meet your legal requirements doesn't change that.

and the Confederate Constitution did not differ much at all from the US Constitution on the issue of slavery.

And how many times are you going to keep repeating something we both agree on?

You're of course going to try to ignore that the US Constitution was no different..

It was different in one way, in that its protections for slavery were written generations before the Republican party was even formed and were inherited by the Republicans. OTOH, the Confederacy's Constitution was written from the ground up by the current leaders of the Confederacy to protect slavery.

OBTW, thanks for admitting the Corbomite Maneuver didn't offer slavery any protections it didn't already have. Now that we've cleared that up, I'm sure you won't waste any more bandwidth on it.

and yet somehow try to absolve the Union while damning the Confederacy even though they were not different on the slavery issue.

I never absolved the Union. As I have said several times, Lincoln had to work with all of them including those factions that still supported slavery. Frederick Douglas said it. I've said it. Once again you can't answer any of my points so you resort to strawmen.

Neither Lincoln nor the Republicans favored abolition until very late in the war. Both Lincoln and the rest of the Republicans were overwhelmingly opposed to abolition as was the vast majority of the population of the Northern states until then.

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

Do you have anything else?

I have the truth. What else do I need?

Yes we do - which is why Leftists have been trying to revise history to fit their Leftist political objectives starting in the 60s, really coming out of Academia starting in the 80s and becoming quite fashionable in Academia starting in the 90s...Leftists are trying to claim the CSA and the South were something they were not back then in order to try to smear the South today

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861

knowing full well that the South is the heart of the conservative movement.

The left is attacking all Conservatives, not just Southern Conservatives. Trying to stick us with their, the Democrats', history of slavery is their way of doing it. You've done nothing but help them.

It is you who is providing aid and comfort to the enemy here.

If you think the Republicans who passed abolition are the enemies, then yes. As far as I'm concerned, the enemies are the Democrats who want to stick us with their history.

I'll say it again and maybe you'll understand it if I spell it out. Why should anybody expect Southerners to have imposed even more sudden and wrenching change upon their society while they were already fully occupied trying to get their newly independent country up and running and facing the existential threat of a war of aggression from the tyrant Lincoln?

"Yet the CSA sent an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to England and France to offer abolition in exchange for military aid..." FLT-Bird, FR, 2022

Everything Jeffersonian Democrats were runs directly contrary to Leftism. They favored decentralized power,

Sec. 9. (4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

limited government

Sec. 2. (3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

and balanced budgets.

You mean like balancing the budget to pay for fighting a war to do what? Take it away Confederate Generals...

On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"

Let's ignore the FACT that it was the rejection of slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment by the original 7 seceding states which killed the Corwin Amendment AFTER the REPUBLICAN Lincoln orchestrated it, after REPUBLICANS introduced it to both houses of Congress, after it got the necessary 2/3rs majority in each house AFTER the Southern delegation withdrew and after it was ratified by several states already and after Lincoln endorsed it in his first inaugural address.

You just proved my point for me. Five states ratified it. That proves the rest had the time to ratify it if they had ever intended to, and didn't. Besides, as you have already admitted, the Corbomite Maneuver didn't offer slavery any protections that weren't already there.

You damn the South

I don't damn the South in any way shape or form. I only post what the Democrats themselves said, which is that preserving slavery was at least one of their reasons to secession, and that many of their other grievances were about their perceived right to own slaves. I don't associate the modern South with the Confederacy any more than I associate modern Germany and Japan with their past regimes. The only thing that ties you to the Confederacy is that you choose to be. That's assuming you are what you say you are, and not just a leftist plant trying to pin the Confederacy on Conservatives by pretending to be one and accepting it.

for failing to meet your totally unrealistic expectation even while dealing with other major issues and simultaneously excuse the Northern states for not doing the same even though not faced with nearly as much of a challenge. Your ridiculous bias is clear for all to see.

"Yet the CSA sent an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to England and France to offer abolition in exchange for military aid..." FLT-Bird, FR, 2022

They not only didn't abolish slavery even after the Southern states left, they didn't even try. There was no support for it from the public and no push for it from politicians until very late in the war. Its not the case of "gosh the Republicans wanted to all along but had to wait until they could finally overcome the opposition to it from Democrats. No. They didn't want to and openly said that time and time again until 1864.

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

Nobody denies that they had gradually abolished slavery in their own states....while making sure to give slave owners plenty of time to sell their slave property out of state thus ensuring they would sustain no financial loss. So what? They didn't favor abolishing slavery nationwide... Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

an(d) New England politicians in particular bitterly opposed proposed compensated emancipation schemes to get rid of slavery nationwide.....even though it was New England which had been the epicenter of the illegal slave trade industry for the entire Western Hemisphere for several generations.

FIFY.

Because he said it wasn't in public and in private many times before, during and after the war. The only thing you can cite is a speech he gave years before secession had even happened.

In that speech he said secession was the correct action to take if abolitionists took over. Besides that and the fact that this is exactly what they did, how much more do I need?

Also because his actions backed up his statements. For example he had long advocated offering emancipation to slaves and their families in exchange for military service before getting the Confederate Congress to agree. He had long advocated sending an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to agree to a treaty that would abolish slavery before getting the Confederate Congress to agree. Those are not the actions of a man trying to preserve slavery.

"Why should anybody expect Southerners to have imposed even more sudden and wrenching change upon their society while they were already fully occupied trying to get their newly independent country up and running and facing the existential threat of a war of aggression from the tyrant Lincoln?" FLT-Bird, FR, 2022

There's nothing that looks bad in that. They made the factual case that the Northern states had violated the compact (to return fugitive slaves) - which they did.

How dare they? Who did they think they were, abolitionists?

Relevance? If it were "all about" slavery then why didn't they secede earlier? If it were "all about" slavery then why didn't all the states that still allowed slavery secede?

Now that's funny. You point out that the Confederacy couldn't have abolished slavery overnight, but the fact that slave states didn't secede and join the Confederacy overnight is proof that it wasn't about slavery.

But neither the Republicans themselves and certainly not Northern voters favored abolition until very late in the war...Not(e) he didn't (want to abolish slavery nationally>- not until very late in the war.

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature, Nov. 16, 1858

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

LOL! No. He wanted to have the government pick winners and losers in the market. He wanted Crony Capitalism where corporate fatcats via their lobbyists would get taxpayer subsidies and gain market share at the expense of European companies.

Yes. Having cheap slave labor gave some businesses an advantage in labor costs, just like what's happening with our free trade deals with the Chicoms now. Remember how the free traitors at FR accused us of being "protectionists"?

A tyrant who

ran the country where millions of slaves escaped to, and hundreds of thousands joined the military of.

We're back to you having ridiculous unrealistic expectations of them turning everything in their society upside down all at once and damning them for failing to do so while studiously ignoring the fact that the North did not do so either even though they were under far less pressure.

"Yet the CSA sent an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to England and France to offer abolition in exchange for military aid..." FLT-Bird, FR, 2022. As you said, they could have abolished slavery, but didn't.

The KKK was initially a response to the terrorism of the Union League during the Occupation.

If we accept that you aren't a white supremist, then comments like prove you are a leftist who is posing as a Conservative to make all Conservatives look bad. Conservatives don't defend the KKK any more than we defend Nazis. Got it?

The Democrat created KKK was a terrorist group targeting blacks and Republicans almost from the start of its existance.

Yes, they modeled it based on the "Black Codes" already on the books in Northern states.

Apples and oranges. The Northern "Black Codes" were not passed by Republicans, and they weren't largely enforced anyway, which allowed the black population in the North to grow at a slightly higher rate than the white population. They were abolished long before the Democrats passed theirs, so you're wrong about those laws being "already on the books".

Here's more.

Black Codes

I know you're going to say "but the North blah blah blah". Yes, I'm not defending the injustices committed by the North no matter how hard you try to frame it that way. It is not my intention to say the North didn't have injustices to answer for, but they weren't passed by Republicans.

OTOH, the Southern "Black Codes" were implemented by the Democrats after the CW to keep blacks tied to the plantation after the CW and abolition. They were one reason reconstruction was handled at the Federal level, because it was clear they were going to use every trick in the book at the state level to keep blacks "in chains".

They "could" have undertaken that too in addition to trying to set up a new country AND fight a war of national survival but when one is confronted by the latter two, that tends to take precedence over all else. That they were willing to abolish slavery in order to gain independence demonstrates once again that it was independence they were after - not protection of slavery. Their rejection of the Corwin Amendment also makes that point very clear.

So they couldn't have abolished slavery, even gradually, when they formed their nation if they had intended to, but they could have abolished slavery on the spot to get military aid.

I see you took your time replying this time. Good, that must mean you'll have some new information to share with us.

Yes, I have a life outside of this board. Responding to you is not my highest priority.

Sigh! No, just more of the same.

As if you've ever offered anything different.

The Republicans weren't interested in abolishing slavery until very late in the war. Its not as if they were trying to abolish it earlier.

repeats snipped.

As usual, you have no answer.

So what? Women can only have so many babies, and the women who made up the "slave labor" were also needed to do all of their other work.,/P>

There was not a "breeding program" as you claimed. You were wrong.

There was no "breeding program".

And how many times are you going to keep repeating something we both agree on?,/P>

As many times as you repeat the lie that it was constructed to support slavery.

Slavery was inherited by the Confederate states just as surely as it was inherited by the 13 colonies.

OBTW, thanks for admitting the Corbomite Maneuver didn't offer slavery any protections it didn't already have. Now that we've cleared that up, I'm sure you won't waste any more bandwidth on it.

Just as I'm sure now that you've acknowledged that the Corwin Amendment would have protected slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment, its rejection by the original 7 seceding states conclusively proves secession was not "all about" slavery.

Lincoln and the Republicans still supported slavery until late in the war.

Repeats snipped. I have the truth. What else do I need?

Good! Then you know both Lincoln and the Republicans still supported slavery until very late in the war.

repeats snipped

YAWN. You really don't have anything else.

The left is attacking all Conservatives, not just Southern Conservatives. Trying to stick us with their, the Democrats', history of slavery is their way of doing it. You've done nothing but help them.

Us? No. They've been trying to blame the South exclusively for slavery even though there is plenty of blame for everyone in that. They've especially targeted the South. You are furthering their false propaganda.

If you think the Republicans who passed abolition are the enemies, then yes. As far as I'm concerned, the enemies are the Democrats who want to stick us with their history.

The enemies are those who falsely try to discredit state's rights and decentralized power as well as the South by claiming it was "all about" slavery when it plainly was not.

"Yet the CSA sent an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to England and France to offer abolition in exchange for military aid..." FLT-Bird, FR, 2022

Yes, they were willing to impose that rapid change on their society if it meant gaining their independence. It was always about independence for them - not slavery. The original 7 seceding states made the same choice of independence over slavery when they rejected the Corwin Amendment.

Repeats snipped

As I said, Jeffersonian Democrats wanted decentralized power, limited government and balanced budgets. You have no answer to that.

You mean like balancing the budget to pay for fighting a war to do what? Take it away Confederate Generals... Repeats snipped

You know as well as I that I can post even more quotes from Southerners saying the exact opposite...that includes President Jefferson Davis, Sec of State Judah Benjamin, Highest ranking soldier Robert E Lee, etc etc. But of course slavery has nothing to do with balanced budgets. You have to be really unhinged by the leftist dogma to think otherwise.

A state not ratifying an amendment quickly does not mean they would not ratify it ever. You simply falsely ASSUME that because it suits your pitiful attempts at argument. Besides, as you admit the Corwin Amendment would have protected slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment. The original 7 seceding states rejected it.

Yet a great many Southerners said it was NOT about slavery and of course the original 7 seceding states turned down the Corwin Amendment and the Upper South only seceded after Lincoln chose to wage an unconstitutional war of aggression. In order to back up the false "all about slavery" Leftist Revisionism, you go miles out of your way to trash several principles of Conservatism the South has always stood for like limited government, decentralized power and balanced budgets. If anybody is a Leftist plant here it is you.

"Yet the CSA sent an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to England and France to offer abolition in exchange for military aid..." FLT-Bird, FR, 2022,/P>

Yes they were willing to do so if doing so meant Independence. Thank you for proving that you agree Independence and not the preservation of slavery was what the Southern states were fighting for.

repeats snipped

Its funny how often you fall back on the same quotes which don't even address the point made - like a toddler clinging to his binky you can always be counted on to regurgitate the same 3 quotes.

Repeats snipped

LOL! And again.

In that speech he said secession was the correct action to take if abolitionists took over. Besides that and the fact that this is exactly what they did, how much more do I need?

They seceded years later. That does not prove it was "about" slavery. That was merely the trigger to get out which they had wanted for a long time. Jefferson Davis himself said so several times in the US Senate, as Confederate President to the Confederate Congress, in meeting with Union representatives during the war and in his memoirs after the war. The Southern states wanted out because they were being economically exploited by the Northern states for their benefit. This was exactly what led the 13 colonies to secede from the British Empire.

Yes and? Sending an ambassador with plenipotentiary power to abolish slavery in exchange for Independence supports my argument, not yours.

How dare they? Who did they think they were, abolitionists?

It was a violation of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution - irrefutable proof that they and not the Southern states had broken the compact between the states.

I didn't say they couldn't abolish slavery immediately. I said its understandable they did not choose to take on that major task when faced with getting a new country up and running and oh yeah, fighting a war of national survival. If it was "all about" slavery then why didn't all the states that still allowed slavery secede?

Repeats snipped

LOL! Again. Same 3 quotes that don't answer the question.

We agree here.

A tyrant who ran the country where millions of slaves escaped to, and hundreds of thousands joined the military of.

Actually the Underground Railroad ran to Canada. Northerners didn't want Blacks living in their states. Once the war was on and Lincoln and the Republicans realized they could use Blacks as cannon fodder, they were happy to do so.

Yes, they "Could" have. Is it reasonable to expect anybody in their situation to have done so right away? I don't believe so. Why do you suppose the Northerners did not free their slaves right away? They were under far less pressure.

I didn't "Defend" them as you claim. Their methods were appalling. That said, they didn't come from nowhere. They were a response to the terrorism of the Union League and the massive theft of Southerners' lands and homes at the hands of corrupt Occupation governments.

An essential element of early "Reconstruction" was the disenfranchisement of all of the adult white males in the South, coupled with the voter registration of every last adult male ex-slave. The ex-slaves assisted in the continued plundering of the South by voting en masse to raise taxes that provided precious little in the form of government services. Untold millions were simply stolen by Republican Party "officials." (Property taxes in South Carolina, for example, were 30 times higher in 1870 than they were in 1860, and a punitive federal tax was imposed on cotton at a time when what the South needed was tax amnesty).

The Ku Klux Klan was created to terrorize the ex-slaves out of participating in this political plundering racket operated by the Republican Party. The Republicans kept promising to share the property of white southerners with the ex-slaves, which of course they never did and never intended to do. Had the Republicans not used their victory and their monopoly of political power to line the pockets of the thousands of political hacks and hangers on who were the backbone of the party (the "carpetbaggers") the Ku Klux Klan would never have existed. This in fact was the conclusion of the minority report of an 1870 congressional commission that investigated the Klan. "Had there been no wanton oppression in the South," the congressmen wrote, "there would have been no Ku Kluxism" (Congressman Fernando Wood, "Alleged Ku Klux Outrages" published by the Congressional Globe Printing Office, 1871, p. 5). The report continued that when southern whites saw that "what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation . . . many of them took the law into their own hands and did deeds of violence . . . . history shows that bad government will make bad citizens."

None of that is a "defense" of the Klan. It explains what caused them to arise....that would be oppressive occupation governments that wantonly stole from people after disenfranchising them.

LOL! You are simply wrong about so much of this. Yes Republicans often did not pass these although some like Lincoln certainly supported the passage of some of them. They absolutely WERE enforced and they were NOT abolished before the end of the Occupation. Why do you think Blacks did not move in the millions up to the North and out of the economically devastated South right away after the war? The answer is they were not allowed to. They were stuck living in the South for the most part.

Here's more. Black Codes Here's more http://slavenorth.com/

The Jim Crow laws were modelled on the Black Codes that were still on the books and still enforced in the North. Reconstruction was imposed on the Southern states so that Northern Republicans could have untrammeled political power and so they could line their own pockets stealing from Southerners after disenfranchising them so that they would be powerless to stop the massive theft of their property.

some examples

In addition, there was the burden of discriminatory war taxes and the confiscation laws of Congress. Federal Treasury agents threaded their way through the occupied areas seizing 3 million out of the 5 million bales of cotton which had not been destroyed. They corruptly enriched themselves. "I am sure," said the Secretary of the Treasury, "that I sent some honest agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them remained honest for very long." A special tax of from 2.5 to 3 cents a pound on cotton yielded the federal treasury $68,000,000. Because of its effects on the economy of a prostrate region, this levy was called by the United States Commissioner of Agriculture "disastrous and disheartening in the extreme." As soon as the federal troops got a foothold in the South, property was seized and sold for nonpayment under the Direct Tax Act. (A History of the South, pp. 247-251, original emphasis)

Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. In Stevens’ own words, the purpose of giving this “dependent population” (Blacks) the vote in the South was to “insure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the union. (ie Republicans)”

It was a “democracy” that caused Georgia’s debt to go from “0” in 1865 to 50 million dollars in 1872, whose budgetary practices in Louisiana caused the cost of the 1871 legislative session to be 9.5 times the average cost of a pre-Reconstruction session, and whose budgetary practices in the South Carolina legislature caused the total cost of 6 years of Reconstruction for that not-so-august body to total $2,339,000, (when the average cost of a pre-Reconstruction session of the legislature had been $20,000/year!).

This wonderful “democracy” resulted in the tax rate in Mississippi increasing 14 fold during its 5 year tenure in that state and caused 20% of all privately owned land in that state to be put up for sale on the tax auction block.

In Texas, this wonderful "experiment" resulted in a 400% tax increase, while at the same time, another Southern state, Tennessee, saw its state debt inflated by 16 million dollars.

It was an “interracial democracy” which saw 25% of all the property in Little Rock Arkansas in the hands of former Union General Schenck, who had purchased said property at bargain basement prices after those properties had been confiscated for non-payment of taxes.

It was a “democracy” which saw, in South Carolina, the expenditure by the legislature, “of $200,000 - all of which was spent in furnishing the state capitol with costly plate glass mirrors, lounges, arm chairs, a free bar and other luxurious appointments for the use of the legislators.”

It was a “democracy” in South Carolina composed of black men like Beverly Nash, who admitted to taking a $2500 bribe, and who defended his actions with the words, “I merely took the money because I thought I might as well have it and invest it here as for them to carry it outside the state”. That same type of government, in that very same state, also produced the likes of State Representative John Patterson, a white Pennsylvania transplant, who, when questioned about corruption flippantly replied, “Why there are still 5 good years of stealing left in South Carolina”.

So if you ever wondered why Republicans could not win a race for so much as county dog catcher in the South for 100 years afterwards, that's why.

So they couldn't have abolished slavery, even gradually, when they formed their nation if they had intended to, but they could have abolished slavery on the spot to get military aid.

Its not that they "could" not. Its that they had much higher priorities. Independence was of course the highest priority. In order to gain it, they were prepared to get rid of slavery. What it was "all about" was Independence, not slavery.