Posted on 07/22/2002 12:30:48 PM PDT by Aurelius
wife beater (noun) 1. tank-style underwear shirts. Origin: based on the stereotype that physically abusive husbands wear that particular style of undershirt.
The Yankeenator!
Its a pretty good one, but I think you guys can do better. Though it does have a nice ring to it.
Don't think they will buy it though.
You seem to take things very seriously; too seriously, in my opinion, as I said before.
I used to say that the Civil War was over states' rights instead of slavery, until I actually read the declarations of secession by the various Confederate states, which made it fairly clear that it was indeed about slavery.
Having said that, the Union had no moral leg to stand on in the war, either. The right of self-determination is inherent in the founding of the US, so the federal government has no right to forcibly prevent secession by a state or states. The war and reconstruction involved a lot of unconstitutional abuses.
Honestly, I don't get why anybody argues about this. Everyone involved has been dead for the better part of a century.
Now culturally, I will defend the South vs. the North any day. We are looked down on by Yankees who see Southerners as ignorant or bigoted, when the opposite is more typically true. People who perceive the South as being like it's portrayed in movies are those who are really ignorant. If you think about race relations in this country, the real problems are in places like New York, Los Angeles and Cincinatti. When's the last time anybody heard about a riot in the South?
Remember, YOU said it.
This "goober" as you call him, has more degrees in his little finger than you have knowledge in that Yankee hardtack head of yours!
ROFL! From Southern “Instertutes of Edacashun”, no doubt.
What did you have to color for your thesis?
What is your problem? Surely you didn't think I was serious?
No problem at all. It's all good in the hood.
You didn't leave any inference that you weren't serious like a < /sarcasm> tag or anything like that. In the absense of such, how was I not to take it that you seriously felt this way? I mean, if you do, that's your business. But how else was I supposed to take it?
What did the seceding states say publicly was the reason for their secession?
We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her [New Jersey] more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her [New York's] tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
* * *
The ends for which this Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed 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; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
* * *
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Virginia
...the federal government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of Southern slaveholding states;Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, that the ordinance adopted by the people of this state in convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this state ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other states under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved,...
Georgia
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. 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, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war....[N.B. See the list of "Declaration Of Cause Of Secession" for several states HERE, and note that IN EVERY INSTANCE the ONLY topic addressed is SLAVERY. TARIFFS ARE NOT MENTIONED. "States' Rights" are not mentioned except as in relation to the right of the Slave states to continue the institution].
Alabama
....And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,Be it resolved by the people of Alabama in Convention assembled, That the people of the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, be and are hereby invited to meet the people of the State of Alabama, by their Delegates, in Convention, on the 4th day of February, A.D., 1861, at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of consulting with each other as to the most effectual mode of securing concerted and harmonious action in whatever measures may be deemed most desirable for our common peace and security.
Texas
WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression;...
Walt
Sure, the slave owners duped the non-slave owners into fighting for them. That is a well established interpretation.
Now, there was at least one prominent Texan who was against secession....
"The Federal Constitution, the Federal Government and its starry flag are glorious heritages bequeathed to the South and all sections of our common country by the valor and patriotism of Washington, and all the brave revolutionary soldiers, who fought for and won American independence.
Our galaxy of Southern Presidents-Washington, Jefferson, Monroe. Jackson, Taylor. Tyler and Polk cemented the bonds of union between all the States which can never be broken.
Washington declared for an indivisible union and Jackson made the secession of South Carolina and of other States impossible. Jefferson by the Louisiana Purchase added a vast empire of country to our union, and Polk followed his example by further extending our Union to embrace Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine which for all time preserves and safeguards the Governments of the Western Hemisphere against foreign conquest.
All our Northern Presidents have been equally patriotic and just to the South. Not a single Southern right has been violated by any President or by any Federal Administration. President Lincoln has been elected, because the secession Democratic leaders divided the Democratic party and caused the nomination of two separate Presidential Democratic tickets and nominees. Both branches of Congress are Democratic; therefore it will be impossible for President Lincoln's administration to enact or enforce any laws or measures that can injure Southern rights.
But grant for the sake of the argument that the time may come when both branches of Congress are Republican and laws are enacted and enforced which will injure or destroy Southern rights what shall we then do? I answer that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, nor would there be the least danger of the Republican party ever controlling both branches of Congress and all branches of the Federal Government if the secession leaders would permit the Democratic party to remain a solid indivisible party. But if the day should ever come when Southern rights are ruthlessly violated or injured by the Republican party, we of the South will then fight for our rights under the Stars and Stripes and with the Federal Constitution in one hand and the sword in the other we shall march on to victory.
I believe a large majority of our Southern people are opposed to secession, and if the secession leaders would permit our people to take ample time to consider secession and then hold fair elections the secession movement would be defeated by an overwhelming majority. But the secession leaders declare that secession has already been peaceably accomplished and the Confederate Government independence and sovereignty will soon he acknowledged by all foreign governments. They tell us that the Confederate Government will thus be permanently established without bloodshed. They might with equal truth declare that the fountains of the great deep blue seas can be broken up without disturbing their surface waters, as to tell us that the best Government that ever existed for men can be broken up without bloodshed."
-- Sam Houston, 1861
Too bad Texans didn't listen to Houston.
Walt
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