Replies

Nice try.,/p>

huh?

Five states ratified it. That means the rest had the time if they had intended to ratify it. Even with secession and the threat of civil war, they didn't. There was nothing to turn down. Like everything else you try to prove your case with, it went nowhere and did nothing.

States frequently take their time to pass various amendments. Just because they do not do so at first opportunity doesn't mean they never would have.

repeats snipped

it is clear they did not secede over slavery.

Repeats snipped

“In any case, I think slave property will be lost eventually.” Jefferson Davis 1861

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.

"The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism." Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty to seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

I don't need to read it at all. Anyone who knows history knows what they had to work with. On one hand even you point out that there were still slave states in the Union, but then you ignore that the Republicans had to work with them. I don't care how many times you waste FR bandwidth posting it.

You obviously don't care about their direct open statements made over and over again that they were not abolitionists. You don't have any private writings on the part of any of them to the effect that they did not mean exactly what they said publicly - which is that they were not abolitionists.

You use a bunch of cherry picked comments from your Confederacy Amen Corner's approved reading list.

Nope! I use direct quotes and sources.

You mean like the declarations of secession, JD's remarks that secession was the answer to abolition in 1858, and the Confederacy's own constitution? There are a lot more than three quotes in these links backing my claim. I wish I didn't have to keep flooding FR with excerpts from them, but as long as FR is willing to allow you to defame the Republicans who freed the slaves, I'll keep posting them.

Of course you leave out the fact that the declarations of causes were only made by 4 states AND that violating the fugitive slave clause of the constitution actually was unconstitutional. When offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment, they turned it down. As long as you keep spreading PC Revisionist propaganda, I'll keep refuting it with facts, quotes and sources.

It's interesting that you said "They were property", not "The slave owners saw them as property". If you're not tryng to make Conservatives look bad, then the alternative is that you really believe this.

No, I am citing the fact that by law at the time, they were property. You have of course failed to prove there was a "breeding program" as you falsely claimed.

Getting back to your comment, they were only allowed to reproduce within their own plantation, and their children were sold as if they were animals.

Yes. That's what it meant to be a slave. That does not mean there was a breeding program as you falsely claimed.

Here's what the Democrats meant by "protecting states' rights".

What they meant was explicitly recognizing the rights of states, letting states remove officials of the central government, and placing strict limits on the ability of the central government to tax and spend money as well as requiring it to have a balanced budget.

The side they fought for abolishing slavery was just a coincidence, right?

They weren't fighting to abolish slavery. They said so many many times. Abolishing slavery was the result of the war. It was not what they went to war for.

So what's wrong with comparing certain actions that are similar between the two? If JD denied the CW was about slavery in the same way Hitler denied he wanted war in 1939, what's wrong with pointing that out?

You know who was far more similar to the Nazis? The union. They too loved centralized power. They too were vehemently opposed to state's rights. They too trampled on civil liberties. They too started wars of aggression for money and empire. What's wrong with pointing that out?

You should know, being one yourself.

this is an example of confession through projection. It is you who is spouting Leftist PC Revisionist dogma.

So the people who were captured and sold into slavery against their will, and who fought back against their oppressors, are terrorists fighting for "political change" to you? I suppose you think the resistance during WWII were also terrorists fighting for "political change".

Those who used terror to effect political change are by definition terrorists. I suppose you think John Brown was not a terrorist? I suppose murdering babies was OK with you if it served the political cause?

And yes, I understand the implications of what I'm saying. It means a lot of our founders fit into that category. They could be excused by some as being products of their time, but by 1861 all but five Union states had abolished slavery, and JD understood how his nation's institution looked to others by offering to abolish it in return for military aid, an offer he never made good on.

You've finally admitted that the Southern states had not changed very much from 1776 to 1861. They were fighting for the same things their fathers and grandfathers fought for - independence from distant rules who taxed them for others' benefit rather than their own.

<>i>Sounds like the free traitors of today, only the plantations are in China instead of the Confederacy.,/p>

Yep. They even brought in tons of cheap labor at the time from Europe to fill their factories and drive labor costs down.

And we have to believe him why?,/p>

Because he has no reason to lie to a union officer at the time. What benefit would he gain by saying they were not fighting over slavery just as the US federal government had said it was not fighting over slavery?

Of course it was, but that doesn't mean we have any obligation to believe them. By offering to abolish slavery in return for military aid, it was clear JD could see how slavery looked to others, yet even though he could see this he never made good on his offer. You haven't given me one good reason why I should see it as anything other than failed PR.

Davis was perfectly willing to make good on his offer which he proved by vesting his ambassador with plenipotentiary power. President Davis says the CSA was not fighting over slavery. You choose not to believe him and claim they were. Lincoln, the Republicans and even the US Congress say they were not fighting over slavery and you choose not to believe them too and claim that they were. It seems like you are not willing to believe what anybody at the time was saying and trust instead in your amazing mind reading abilities. You don't have any evidence to back up your claims.

As I said, I don't dispute that blacks served in the Confederacy. I just doubt the accuracy of the numbers you keep throwing my way, especially when the Confederacy can't say how many served. I know you'll repeat "eyewitness accounts" but in the heat of battle, who was going to stop long enough to count how many of their attackers are black?

Not all of those accounts were from the heat of battle and they attest to there being thousands of Black Confederates.

My answer above covers this, but all but a few states in the Union had already abolished slavery. The Republicans just couldn't do it on a national level until they had the votes.

They had no desire to do so before that as they themselves said in public and in private.

Thousands of words maybe, but I don't dispute blacks served anyway. I just doubt the numbers.,/p>

Take it up with the eyewitnesses.

So what? Are you now going to circle back to wasting more bandwidth on another discussion of him?

No, just pointing out it was McPherson.

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863, which freed no slaves because it exempted all territories under Union control, there was a massive desertion crisis in the Union army. Union soldiers ‘were willing to risk their lives for Union," McPherson writes, "but not for black freedom." James McPherson For Cause and Comrades; Why Men Fought in the Civil War.

Only a Democrat posing as a Conservative to make all Conservatives look bad would defend Virginia by saying 25% of blacks in Virginia were free as if it was a good thing. BTW, the numbers I found listed a higher percentage of free blacks in Virginia, but your goal is to make Conservatives look bad anyway so that would be beside the point.

I might well accuse you of trying to make Conservatives look bad by posing as one while being an idiot. I cited the % of freedmen in Maryland and Virginia to show that industrialization was spreading southward and as it was doing so it was killing slavery - as it had done elsewhere. That wasn't a value judgment. It was a simple observation of fact.

None of that does anything to refute the fact that secession and the CW were about preserving slavery, and all blacks weren't free until the Republicans freed them.

None of that refutes the fact that secession and the were were not about preserving slavery. Slavery was not threatened in the US.

Is this the same Senator Robert Toombs who owned 49 slaves in two plantations at one point in time, supported legal slavery in the expansion territories, and was a Democrat? And I should believe a Democrat slave owner who says it wasn't about slavery why?

The same Robert Tombs who went out of his way to specifically cite the tariff and the economic exploitation of the Southern states, yes. Why should you believe him when he said that this was a chief grievance? Because he had no reason to lie about it. He was a slave owner himself. Had he thought it was "all about slavery" he had no reason to say otherwise. Yet he did say otherwise and quite explicitly too.

From 1858, "Resolved: That, with our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction"

So they repeated the Declaration of Independence. Great. That doesn't prove your claim.

Thanks for your interpretation of this resolution, but it didn't do anything and was repealed in December 1861 anyway. Like everything else you make your case with, it was nothing.

Its not my interpretation. They clearly stated that they were not fighting over slavery. Deal with it.

In 1864, the Republicans voted for the only policy we've discussed that actually became law, abolition, but were blocked by the Democrats. The following year they passed abolition and sent it to the states for ratification. Nine years after they said they would do it and after the Democrats seceded over it, they did it.

The Republicans didn't even try to abolish slavery until very late in the war. As they themselves had said many times before that, they were not abolitionists.

huh?

I just did the same thing you did.

States frequently take their time to pass various amendments. Just because they do not do so at first opportunity doesn't mean they never would have.

They didn't have any time, in the sense that secession was already happening and a civil war was coming. If they were going to pass this, they would have in the same amount of time that the five states did. They didn't. Your could haves and ifs don't prove anything.

Repeats on the GNDN Corbomite Maneuver snipped.

it is clear they did not secede over slavery.

Why FR allows you to waste their bandwidth defending Democrats like this is beyond me, but here you are again.

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

From Georgia.

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property...

In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution.

Mr. Jefferson condemned the restriction and foresaw its consequences and predicted that it would result in the dissolution of the Union. His prediction is now history. The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.

The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property.

The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.

While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then...

The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity.

That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.

From Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery;

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

From Texas

They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture...

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

From South Carolina

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

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?"

From the Confederacy's Constitution, written by the contemporary leaders of the Confederacy.

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.

Sec. 2. (I) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

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.

Repeat snipped.

More democrat nonsense about how the Confederacy and JD were about to abolish slavery although they never did snipped.

You obviously don't care about their direct open statements made over and over again that they were not abolitionists.

That's right, I don't care. I understand what they had to work with. You understand it too, but you're either unable or unwilling to connect the dots, even as many others including Fredrick Douglas could and did.

Of course you leave out the fact that the declarations of causes were only made by 4 states

From Virginia, "and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."

Besides, what difference does it make that other slave holding states didn't advertise their goal to preserve slavery? They understood they were on the wrong side of history, so why would they go around advertising it.

AND that violating the fugitive slave clause of the constitution actually was unconstitutional.

Rescuing Jews from Hitler's concentration camps was also illegal.

I know you're going to cry to your mommy about how I called you a Nazi again, but the fact remains that the injustices (to put it mildly) both entities were committing were legal according to laws they passed.

As long as you keep spreading ~~PC Revisionist propaganda~~ the Democrat's own statements that matched their actions, I'll keep ~~refuting it with facts, quotes and sources~~ spamming FR with what the Democrats said.

FIFY.

No, I am citing the fact that by law at the time, they were property.

Everything Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did was legal too.

You have of course failed to prove there was a "breeding program" as you falsely claimed.

Introduction to Captive Breeding

Yes. That's (only allowed to reproduce within their own plantation) what it meant to be a slave. That does not mean there was a breeding program as you falsely claimed.

According to this, that's the definition of a breeding program. Your rebuttal only proves the point.

The rights of states to own humans as property, and a balanced budget except for paying for the war to preserve their right to said property.

Let me save you some effort. "It is clear they did not secede over slavery."

Repeats snipped.

What's wrong with pointing that out is that it's all lies written by the slave holding Democrats to cover the fact that they were fighting to preserve slavery. As they themselves said, "That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity."

I would say that lying falls withing the bounds of "the last extremity".

Killing babies is a tragedy under any circumstances, but what about the babies who grew up to die as slaves. Oh wait, they were black and they were legally considered property by the slave holding states, so I guess you don't care about them.

And I just love how you write off emancipation as a political cause. If you aren't a leftist plant, then that shows what you really think.

Yep. They even brought in tons of cheap labor at the time from Europe to fill their factories and drive labor costs down.

So now you want to regurgitate that argument. We've discussed this in posts 677, 681, and 684

Take it up with the eyewitnesses.

No need. If we take the statement "They – the enemy – talked of having 9,000 men." as actual fact and add it to all of your other estimates, you still have less that 1/5 of the number of escaped slaves, and less than 1/10 of the total number of blacks, who served in the Union's military. I can concede all of your numbers and still be correct.

IMHO, he and you have something in common. Both of you are leftists who are trying to associate slavery with the Republicans. Neither of you are succeeding.

So what you're saying as a Conservative is that it was justifiable for the slave holding states to keep their slaves until they didn't need them anymore. Thanks but no thanks. That's not what modern Conservatism is about, so take your propaganda back to DU or where ever you're from.

He had every reason to lie about it, the same as the rest of the Democrats running the Confederacy. Slavery had already been abolished in all but a few Union states as well as the countries the Confederacy was trying to bribe into helping them by promising to abolish slavery. They knew how their defense of slavery looked to others and tried to distance themselves from it, just as they are trying today by associating slavery with the modern right. I'll bet they appreciate all of the help you've given them.

So they repeated the Declaration of Independence. Great. That doesn't prove your claim.

"the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction"

Its not my interpretation. They clearly stated that they were not fighting over slavery. Deal with it.

All they did was abolish it, "but we didn't mean to".

The Republicans didn't even try to abolish slavery until very late in the war. As they themselves had said many times before that, they were not abolitionists.

They didn't have the votes. When they had the votes the voted to abolish it.