ABRAHAM LINCOLN: AMERICA’S GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL

Southern Caucus ^ | ? | Ron Holland

[#3Fan]

But it's fun. And secession was not illegal, even Lincoln said it was ok. And of course, we all know that "honest" Abe Lincoln never lied. And we only had 8 amendments in the Bill of Rights.

If it was illegal, do something about it. If you're not going to do something about it than you don't deserve what you wanted in the first place. You lost, get over it, game over.

[Colt .45]

Here's a concept for you ...

In a truly free society, the right of secession is inherent!

The Constitution was ratified (approved or agreed upon) by the individual states, and while it was agreed to, its compact didn't alter the State's rights. Leave aside anything added to the Bill of Rights after the War of Northern Aggression, and deal only with what was in place in 1860. If we were truly a "free society" then the South had the inherent right of secession! I don't believe that when the Constitution's framers signed the document, they were signing away any of their rights or liberties they fought so hard for. They did it to establish a credible form of government, to compete on the world's stage. However, Lincoln was a proponent of a strong central government which goes against the fundamentals of liberty. It becomes an instrument where the few dictate to the many. This is in clear contradiction to the principles of liberty.

Slavery was a moot issue, the Northern industry had profited from slavery as well, so it was really disingenuous of Lincoln to use it as a foundation for his war. Had the South have won, slavery would've died out anyway.

But then it all comes down to this ... who ever wins, makes the rules. Your assertion that the Supreme Court ruled the Southern States secession was illegal, is only common sense when you think about it. What were they going to say " Oops ... we f**ked up!" They are the interpreters of the Constitution, and we all know that interpretation does not always contain the original intent of its founders! Interpretation is subject to human frailty (predjudice) and opinion. So by their ruling they admitted that we do not live in a truly free society.

When Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg address " Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal ..." He was really saying that what he was doing was NOT engaging in the original intent. For liberty means freedom from onerous constraint of the power of another!

[Aurelius]

Interpret it as you like.

[stainlessbanner]

Did Sherman cut & paste, too?

[Hans Moleman]

Your sixth grade education is showing. Go back to school.

[stainlessbanner]

It's comments like this that us Southrons love. You yanks smile a hesitant smile and say "you boys lost the war, get over it", all the while they are twitchin' something fierce, afraid the South's gonna do it again.

[stainlessbanner]

I'm curious, how do teach your students about the WoNA? Do you discuss slavery, Lee, Jackson, States Rights, Secession, the Constitution, Lincoln, etc?

[Colt .45]

"Your sixth grade education is showing. Go back to school."

Spoken like a true leftist PC Nazi! Perhaps you should go back and study the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and study what "Free Speech" MEANS! You're really getting personal now. I serve to protect your right, yet you would deny me mine. A true Nazi ... in every sense of the term!

[poet]

Wait awhile. Pretty soon they'll be saying he was gay!

[poet]

Were they "hung" or hanged? LOL
Did you hear about the plastic surgeon who "hung himself"?

[Hans Moleman]

I serve to protect your right, yet you would deny me mine.

Just what right am I denying you? Free speech? I did not ask you to be quiet. Education? You have denied yourself of that.

[poet]

I don't understand that "distance cognito" stuff either.
People who can't explain their positions use an excess of words so as to confuse those of us who are the Duh brigade.

[Colt .45]

I did not deny myself any education. I've attended the "higher institutions of learning." However, I am capable of self thought, and self determination. You on the other hand, seem to believe that everything the public school system teaches you is "gospel". If you had an open mind (which you obviously don't) you would take the time to research things. But seeing as how your totem is the Three Toed Sloth, I can understand why open mindedness doesn't figure into your thought patterns. You don't have the capability!

[Non-Sequitur]

In a truly free society, the right of secession is inherent!

Next time I would get it in writing.

...so it was really disingenuous of Lincoln to use it as a foundation for his war.

Lincoln did not make it a foundation of the war well after it began. Rather it was the south which made defense of slavery the cornerstone for their reasons for secession.

Had the South have won, slavery would've died out anyway.

I have no doubt that had the south won slavery would have died out eventually. But what moral justification is there for 20 or 40 or 60 or more years of slavery and what evidence is there that the lot of the ex-slaves would have been any better had it died a natural death?

As for the Supreme Court, I would ask what better alternative do you suggest? The need for someone to interpret the Constitution is there. Who else other than the Supreme Court?

[Hans Moleman]

"I pledge allegience to the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands
One nation, under God, indivisible
With liberty and justice for all."

[4CJ]

Documented. Nothing pithy. I did leave out Ratification documents, and the 9th and 10th Amendments (previously posted).

"Where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. The States then, being parties to the constitutional compact and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal above their authority to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated, and consequently that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."
James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions, Jan. 1800 (Elliot 4:546--50, 579 House of Delegates, Session of 1799--1800).

"If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,—amicably if they can, violently if they must." 
Massachusetts Representative Josiah Quincy [speaking against  the admission of Orleans Territory as a State], Abridged Congressional. Debates, 14 Jan 1811, Vol. iv. p. 327.

"Resolved.-That if the application of these States to the government of the United States, recommended in a foregoing Resolution, should be unsuccessful, and peace should not be concluded and the defense of these States should be neglected, as it has been since the commencement of the war, it will in the opinion of this Convention be expedient for the Legislatures of the several States to appoint Delegates to another [constitutional] Convention, to meet at Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, on the third Thursday of June next with such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momentous may require."
Report and Resolutions of the Hartford Convention, (delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), 4 Jan 1815.

"[I]f tyranny and despotism justified the American Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861"
Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, 17 Dec 1860

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."
Abraham Lincoln, Congressional speech, 12 Jan 1848.

"That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."
Declaration of Independence, signed by John Hancock, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton, William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton, Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin. Harrison, Thomas. Nelson, Jr.,  Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, Robert. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross, Caesar Rodney, George Read, William Floyd,  Phillip Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris, Richard. Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark, Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery, Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott.

Quite a few honorable men believe in secession. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Quite a few honorable men believe in secession.

Then why doesn't the word 'secession' appear in any of the documents you mention?

No one is denying a right to revolution,and that is what the quotes you provide are referring to. It is especially egregious to provide that quote by Lincoln. You must figure your readers for morons. Or perhaps only a moron could find a right to secession in that quote by Lincoln, or any quote by him. Similarly, there is no reason to provide segments of the D of I; it is not the supreme law of the land; the United States Constitution is.

Walt

[Aurelius]

The 1848 Lincoln quote doesn't contain the word "secession", but can you explain why it would not apply to the situation of the southern states in 1861?

[billbears]

Walt,

Tell me, honestly, when are you going to start paying taxes to the Crown again? Really, I'm just wondering. Because you do realize(at least I hope you do) that in 1776, the American colonies SECEDED from the British Empire!! They didn't use the word secede in the documents, by their actions and the ensuing war I imagine it was pretty apparent to King George that the colonists didn't want to be part of England anymore!!

[ChiMark]

I believe the Civil war was far more complex than a simple explanation of Lincoln the tyrant. Undoubtedly a split union would have dissolved the United States. But I have come to accept the arguments that Lincoln effectively ended a conservative union of states. The overreaching authority of the federal government began the era of big government. I find it interesting that it is rural America along with the South that is still conservative while the North became whacked out.