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Patrick Cleburne
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Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "Lex Clips" channel.

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@dustybaron5942 > none of the articles of secession at that time mentioned tariffs That's not true, not that it matters, because they weren't declarations of war, nor were they even declarations of what the southern states sought to gain by seceding -- that would be like if a woman split up with a man because the man didn't help with the dishes or vacuuming or any other such housework, the man felt he had a right to a continued relationship with her with or without her continued consent and he violently beat her to force her to continue in the relationship... that would be like claiming that the woman's grievances about the relationship proved that the beating she received and her resistance to that beating was about trying to force the man to do his share of the housework, when in reality she wasn't trying to force him to do anything but was just wanting to go her own way -- but the basis of your claim nonetheless isn't even true. > The Southern states at that time were far more worried about losing their slaves And what threat of losing their slaves would you like to imagine the southern states faced by remaining in the union that they wouldn't have faced if they had won their independence? That's nothing but an inexplicable revisionist myth. Official declaration of the US Congress, not about the causes of the break-up but about the objectives of the war itself: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. maintain control over the southern states against their will, without their consent, and to deny them the right to independence and self-government]"
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@88Kakyoin88 > If slavery was a cause for the succession that lead to the war, then slavery was the cause of the war. Let me expose the foolishness of that reasoning: If Islam was a cause for the 9/11 attacks that led to the US invasion of Iraq, then Islam was the cause of the war in Iraq.
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Why not expose what a biased fool he is?
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@colinmurphy8393 > The USA would not be able to end slavery in an independent CSA any more than It could end it in Brazil And in 1860-61 when the southern states seceded and when Lincoln called for war there was no more prospect of the USA ending slavery in the southern states than there was of the USA ending slavery in Brazil. Slavery was only finally abolished in the USA because multiple former Confederate states voted to ratify the 13th amendment.
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@aaronfleming9426 "anti-slavery" in what sense? In the sense of being pro-protective tariffs for northern industry (and pro-other crony capitalist measures)? If he was anti-slavery" in the sense of denying slaveholding interests anything else they might have gained by seceding, why don't you say what that was?
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@aaronfleming9426 > 1. Was established by the People, not the States In what sense? You didn't read the Madison quote I just shared explaining how the constitution was actually established, did you? > 2. Removes earlier language codifying the sovereignty of the States Whatever powers the states had under the Articles that weren't delegated to the federal government or prohibited by the constitution to the state were explicitly reserved by the constitution to the states (not that they wouldn't have been implicitly reserved otherwise.) > 3. Explicitly denies the States certain powers normally enjoyed by sovereign nations None of which have any relevance to the issues at play in the secession of the southern states' secession (or you'd actually be able to make a relevant argument instead of just hinting at an argument that can't actually be made.) > their masters who, far from being an oppressed party, were actually OVER-represented in their own government That's why Republicans were able to win an outright majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate (which is to say before counting any blacks at all), right? Tell me again who was over-represented? > northern whites had more claim to being oppressed Those people that the constitution allowed to win elections with only thirty-some percent of the electorate, that's who you're calling "oppressed" by the constitutional system, right? > The secessionists did not for one moment believe in the right to revolution as a principle. They certainly believed in the right of states to secede and maintaining the Confederacy only on the basis of the voluntary consent of the member states. Alexander Stephens: "Ours is a government founded upon the consent of sovereign States, and will be itself destroyed by the very act whenever it attempts to maintain or perpetuate its existence by force over its respective members. The surest way to check any inclination in North Carolina to quit our sisterhood, if any such really exist even to the most limited extent among her people, is to show them that the struggle is continued, as it was begun, for the maintenance of constitutional liberty. If, with this great truth ever before them, a majority of her people should prefer despotism to liberty, I would say to her, as to a wayward sister, 'depart in peace.'" Jefferson Davis: "The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will... "...never was there a people whose interests and principles committed them so fully to a peaceful policy as those of the Confederate States. By the character of their productions they are too deeply interested in foreign commerce wantonly to disturb it. War of conquest they cannot wage, because the Constitution of their Confederacy admits of no coerced association. Civil war there cannot be between States held together by their volition only. The rule of voluntary association..."
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@aaronfleming9426 > I read the Madison quote, I just don't agree with him. Do you have any reason for disagreeing with what he said? If so, explain why what he said isn't factually correct. Or do you just not like the facts he laid out? > reserved to the states or the people And why do you think that's relevant? Why do you think you have a point here? Remember the context of this part of the discussion was what you said about the sovereignty of the states under the Articles. > Hey, when the vote splits 4 ways, you can win a majority in the EC without 50% of the electorate Do you think that's how Republicans won in the electoral college in 1860? It wasn't. Republicans won over 50% of the vote in enough states to win a majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the entire electorate. Republicans would have won exactly the same if the other sixty-some percent of the electorate had united behind a single candidate. And part of the reason they didn't unite behind a single candidate is because the rules didn't incentivize them to do so. If Northern Democrats had won enough northern states to block Republicans from winning a majority in the electoral college, then Republicans wouldn't have won. Those are the rules, and those are the rules Democrats played by. You may be ignorant enough to think the presidency can be won with a plurality in the electoral college, but that's not how it is. > You may not like the rules, but that's how it is. How convenient of you to forget what the point was. The point wasn't to complain about the rules. The point was that you said the South was over-represented when in reality it was the North's sectional party, Republicans, that the rules allowed to win a majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate. > any representative government where people can secede just because they don't like the results of a free and fair election is more anarchist than republican First of all, any relationship that's based on violence and threats of violence rather than on continued voluntary consent isn't a union. It may be an empire, a despotism, a democratic kleptocracy... but a union can only be a union if it's based on the continued voluntary consent of the members. That's what a real union is, and that's what the United States began as and what Republicans continued to pretend they wanted to preserve, but you can no more preserve a political union through violence and threats of violence than you can preserve a marriage by beating your wife. If you're using violence and threats of violence, whatever you're preserving isn't a union, and that change in the nature of DC is very significant. Secondly, while the election itself may have been free and fair, the issue was that the party that won the election had already proven that its willingness to disregard the constitutional rules. If Candidate Smith from Party X runs for president promising to disregard the constitution in order to advance an agenda that his constituency supports and he's able to win a free and fair election (even with just thirty-some percent of the electorate) and his party is able to win enough seats in Congress to block any attempt to impeach him, and if Party X is willing to destroy the constitution, would you summarize that as a "free and fair election." That's missing the point, isn't it? > Obviously Davis and Stevens believed in the right to secession (for themselves, at least) But those quotes were both from after secession and the establishment of the Confederate constitution. They weren't talking about the right of secession under the US constitution. They were talking about the Confederate constitution and the rights of the Confederate states under it. You can ignore the fact or pretend it doesn't matter, but the clear historical fact is that the leaders of the Confederacy believed in the right of Confederate states to secede and in maintaining the Confederacy only on the basis of the voluntary consent of the member states, and that's obviously a stark difference from what the "Union" [sic] stood for.
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@kninezbanks > there would have been no secession without the will to secede to protect slavery Secede to protect slavery??? That's just nonsense, nothing but an inexplicable revisionist myth. What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any prospect of protecting against?
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@aaronfleming9426 > Because you're wrong that Lincoln had no objection to slavery I didn't say anything about Lincoln. All I said was to ask, "How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?" So what are you talking about? > Of course everyone knew that if slavery wasn't allowed in the territories, there would soon be enough free states to change the Constitution "Everyone"? Who's "everyone"? All your imaginary friends and/or bogeymen? Do you actually believe that preposterous myth? Really? Despite the complete lack of historical evidence? Despite the fact that you have no idea how many "free states" it would have taken to ratify a constitutional amendment without the support of the slave states? > I'm not sure how you can rationally blame Lincoln for a war that had started before his inauguration. Lincoln held the final responsibility for refusing to withdraw Union forces from the Confederacy. And the war didn't really start when the South, without killing a single Northerner, evicted northern forces from its own territory. The war really started when Union forces on Lincoln's orders invaded the southern states. > Then there's the fact that states like Texas held flagrantly illegal secession conventions, denying seats to counties the rebels suspected would not support secession. Show me which counties Lincoln didn't declare to be in rebellion, or show me which counties Lincoln ordered dealt with differently by the Union army; otherwise your argument has no standing to even begin with. > The Corwin Amendment was a losing proposition from the beginning Indeed, because it didn't address the real issues. If the threat had been a constitutional amendment (1) there would be historical evidence to prove it and (2) an irrevocable amendment precluding such a threat to slaveholders would have appealed to at least some of the slaveholding interests, but there's no historical support for that myth either.
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@aaronfleming9426 By that stupid logic, no future threat to slavery could have played any role in secession either. But unlike the revisionist myths of threats to southern slaveholding rights posed by Republicans, the Morrill tariff was a real, articulable threat, actually passed before the war even started, and clearly articulated in the platform Republican ran on before any of the southern states had seceded.
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@aiauc > Start telling them what to do... and make them abolish slavery like UK did in 1834 (about 20 years before the US). Do you actually believe anyone was trying to force the southern states to abolish slavery? Or are you just repeating what you know is a revisionist propaganda myth on purpose?
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@Gangreene > What about that Confederate Constitution? Explicitly enshrined Slavery for the CSA, and did not allow any new States that might join to NOT allow Slavery. Not that it would be any proof of what the war was fought over if that were true, but the Confederate constitution did no such thing. It guaranteed the right of slaveholders to take slaves to any territories of the CSA, but that was no different than what the US Supreme Court had already said the US constitution implicitly guaranteed. The Confederate constitution very clearly did NOT prohibit states from abolishing slavery, nor did it prohibit states that had abolished slavery from joining the Confederacy.
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So they were pro-slavery racists. So were the Americans that fought in the First American Independence War in 1776. That didn't give the North any more right to rule over the South without their consent than it gave England a right to rule over the 13 colonies after they chose independence for themselves. And the North's leaders were plenty racist, too. Lincoln: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races …there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
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> So while slavery most definitely was a big issue There were issues relating to slavery that led to secession (like whether the northern states would fulfill their constitutional obligation to deliver up fugitive slaves or whether slaveholding rights would be protected in US territories like Kansas as a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court had already declared the constitution guaranteed), but not even any of those issues relating to slavery were at stake in the war. Neither side fought for anything to do with slavery. Your main point was very well said, though.
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@EPUEPUEPUEPU > The south attacked first, literally destroying your analogy. No, it doesn't. The South didn't attack the North in the North. The North refused to leave the South and the South only attacked northern forces in the South, only to the point of expelling them from the South. If a husband and wife have separate houses and continue to live in their separate houses after they get married and while they're married they jointly hire a security company to provide armed security for their houses, the husband has no absolutely no valid reason and no right to try to control the security of his wife's house after she splits up with him, and she has every right to evict, with force if necessary, his armed agents from her property. But even if she had overstepped her rights and done something wrong in evicting her husband's armed agents from her house, in any case it most certainly doesn't give the husband the right to send more armed agents back to take control of everything that belonged to his ex-wife and force her back into a relationship with him forever. Obviously it's over-the-top absurd to suggest that a woman would have to let her husband's armed agents control who enters and leaves her house after she splits up with him, but that's exactly what you're suggesting in denying a woman's right to have those armed agents evicted after she splits up with her husband. > Second lets change your analogy and replace Husband with master and wife with slave and that would fit your scenario better. Indeed it would! A husband can't beat his wife in order to prevent her from leaving him; that's the relationship of a master and slave, not any relationship that can rightly be called a union. > Finally all states left because of slavery. What kind of vague, meaningless nonsense is that? The first 7 states that seceded left because of what Republicans, the party that won the votes of the North in 1860, had done and were doing. Can you even say what that was? Or can you only hide behind vague, one-word nonsense like "slavery" that in no way summarizes what the northern states had done and were doing? The next 4 states decided not to secede for the reasons the first 7 states seceded, but seceded in opposition to Lincoln's call to go to war and destroy the union, destroy government by the consent of the governed, and destroy any accountability by the federal government to the constitution.
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@aaronfleming9426 If the North didn't want a war, it shouldn't have kept its flag in the South without the consent of the southern states. But, of course, the North did want a war, because it (or at least its leaders) wanted to destroy the rule of law and the limits of the constitution and any effectual limits on the power of DC, and so it asserted a right to rule over the southern states without their consent forever, and so after exhausting all attempts at a negotiated secession, the South exercised its right to expel foreign forces from its territory.
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@aaronfleming9426 > So let's not fool ourselves by thinking that evil wars of conquest are somehow a northern thing. Except when they're between North and South, in which case it's absolutely and entirely a northern thing.
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@aaronfleming9426 As one northern abolitionist wrote in early 1861, "When a government becomes so corrupt as to forfeit the respect and support of the citizens in whose name it is exercised, and for whose protection and benefit it professes to act, it is very apt to resent disloyalty with the charge of treason and rebellion. … "The secession of South Carolina has been called in Congress 'a revolt,' and 'rebellion.' But this charge could come only from a total misapprehension of the nature and object of free government. Revolt is resistance to the supreme authority. But the true idea of free government is, that the people themselves are this supreme authority. How, then, can a whole united people be chargeable with this crime? Can they 'revolt' against themselves? The idea is absurd."
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@aaronfleming9426 Are you now intentionally changing the subject away from the question you originally raised? The question was whether and to what extent evil wars of conquest are a northern thing. The fact remains that in the only war between the North and South, it was only and entirely the North that waged an evil war of conquest. And the best counterargument you can make is to try to split hairs between wars of "suppression" and "conquest." Conquest means "to gain control of or subdue by military force" or "to defeat in war." By any normal definition "conquer" is unambiguously what the North did to the South. > What changed since 1814 - and 1832, and January 23, 1861 Who do think called secession treasonous in 1814? In any case, even if someone said something of the sort in 1814 that was 38 years after American independence and 27 years after the constitution was written. If secession was treasonous according the principles American independence was founded on or according to the constitution, why did it take multiple decades for anyone -- anyone! -- to say so? Obviously it wasn't. > if it was intended to be broken by every member of the confederacy at will But that wasn't the question in 1860-61. The southern states didn't secede "at will." They declared the constitutional compact broken by the northern states. As South Carolina said in its declaration of causes, "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." And what other remedy could there be for situation where a majority of the states (like the non-slaveholding states represented in 1860) break their constitutional obligations to the other states? As Thomas Jefferson said, " the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government... to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." > And how could representative government ever work if every member could break it at will and time they don't like the results of an election? Just like the EU, for example, and "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge," to quote Jefferson again. What alternative do you think there is?
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@aaronfleming9426 > Not changing the subject at all. In my viewpoint, unilateral secession is illegal But the point you made and the point I was responding to was about evil wars of conquest being/not being a northern thing, so if you're making some stupid legal argument, yes, obviously you're changing the subject. And if you thought your legal argument were worth defending, you could respond to the challenges I also then made to that argument, but I bet you can just change the subject yet again, can't you?
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@aaronfleming9426 Indefensible arguments (including arguments that can only be maintained by changing the subject) are indeed stupid. Conquest means "to gain control of or subdue by military force" or "to defeat in war." By any normal definition "conquer" is unambiguously what the North did to the South.
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Britain is rapidly becoming an Orwellian dystopia.
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@TheStapleGunKid "All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war." In other words, all believed in this vague and inexplicable "somehow" myth. "Lincoln had nothing to do with [the Corwin amendment]." Presidents play no role in amending the constitution. But Congress passed the amendment because Republicans with views just like Lincoln's supported it. The fact that he was the president-elect instead of a congressmen is an irrelevant deflection. "Finally, the Corwin amendment never even came close to being ratified, so it was really a non-issue." Only because the war broke out. There's no reason to believe Northerners at the state level would have otherwise been any less supportive of the amendment than their representatives in DC. "the Corwin amendemnt was insufficient to preserve slavery, since it wouldn't stop Lincoln from banning the expansion of it." Then secession was insufficient to "preserve" slavery, since secession wouldn't stop Lincoln from preventing the "expansion" of it. "Lincoln would never compromise on his election platform to ban slavery's expansion, not even to save the Union." And it's at least as true and infinitely more relevant that Lincoln would never compromise on DC control over the southern states, not even to free all the slaves immediately.
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@boatdetective > Lincoln was demonstrably anti slavery. Not with regards to slavery in the southern states, not unless you could being pro-protective tariffs for northern industry as "anti-slavery." > The Confederacy was openly racist. So was the North. > a moral stain on all of Southern culture due to its refusal to openly accept and denounce its own sins So what's your argument? Than morally superior Yankees therefore had a right to rule over Southerners without their consent? You sound an awfully lot like the people that argued the superiority of white Americans entitled them to rule over blacks and to enslave them without their consent. But it's also a fact that the Union continued to practice slavery in slave states that hadn't seceded throughout the entire war, so how morally superior was the Union to the Confederacy anyway?
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@davidr3359 > While I would say they were in the minority of the whole population, they were clearly on the right side of history and saw slavery as morally wrong, criminal and inexcusable from our nation's founding on. And what did they want to do about it? The majority of northern abolitionists wanted to secede because of it. You know what else is morally wrong, criminal and inexcusable? Invading and subjugating neighboring states, and forcing your government on them without their consent (and killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.)
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Suggestion for would-be Commentators on “Was the Civil War about slavery?” Before posting your comment, read at least one or two historical documents from prominent sources that even mention the war. > the state legislature’s reasons for secession, and to justify that action. South Carolina: "We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. 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."
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@Carneades2012 If you want to try to prove to me what the war was fought over, why don't you try to find at least one or two historical documents from prominent sources from the time of the war that even mention the war or at least some dispute particularly between the Union and the Confederacy? Is it because all the clearest evidence is too hard to misrepresent? > The reason for secession was the failure of the non-slaveholding states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 The South Carolina declaration never even specifically mentions the Fugitive Slave Act. So, no. But the refusal of the Republican-led North to abide by the constitution (particularly including the fugitive slave clause) was certainly a reason for declaring the constitutional compact broken. > but the threat to slavery was the cause of secession What "threat" was that? All you have is some vague, unintelligible myth, don't you? The declarations of causes of secession certainly don't describe any "threat to slavery." And I bet you won't even try to describe it yourself.
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"We can be clear about two things, first the South was trying to leave the Union because they felt their institution of slavery was threatened" What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any hope of protecting against? Your claim sounds like complete nonsense. "and second every southerner who fought against the Union or supported those who did was, by definition, guilty of treason and murder" No more than George Washington, Patrick Henry, etc. were. And actually much less so, because American government rested on an entirely different foundation, on the consent of the governed: "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." -James Madison "'Rebellion' is defined by Webster, 'an open and avowed renunciation of the authority of the government, to which one owes allegiance.' This can only apply to government on the European principle – there can be no such thing as owing allegiance in a government expressly held on the will of the people." -Joshua Blanchard “When a government becomes so corrupt as to forfeit the respect and support of the citizens in whose name it is exercised, and for whose protection and benefit it professes to act, it is very apt to resent disloyalty with the charge of treason and rebellion. … “The secession of South Carolina has been called in Congress 'a revolt,' and 'rebellion.' But this charge could come only from a total misapprehension of the nature and object of free government. Revolt is resistance to the supreme authority. But the true idea of free government is, that the people themselves are this supreme authority. How, then, can a whole united people be chargeable with this crime? Can they 'revolt' against themselves? The idea is absurd.” -George Bassett, 1861
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@jonnie106 > I'm gonna guess he thought the threat was actually aimed at the expansion of slavery and not slavery itself Who knows who you're referring to when you say "he" but regardless... the question was, "What threat do you think there was to slavery that seceding offered any hope of protecting against?" If you answer is protecting the right of slaveholders to take slaves to the western territories, you're left with the inconvenient fact that there was never any expectation that secession would protect the right of slaveholders to take slaves to the western territories but rather meant forfeiting rights that they only had so long as they remained in the union.
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@aaronfleming9426 In other words, anti-slavery in no sense that Republicans in the North couldn't have been just as effectually anti-slavery and even more so if they had allowed the southern states to exercise their right to self-government and independence from the North. But you want to imagine the war was somehow fought over any of those things???
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@aaronfleming9426 > Want me to help you out Yes, please! I don't need the help, but you need to think things through, so please try to explain to me. > a deeply dangerous neighbor to have on one's doorstep Now you're just being an idiot.
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@aaronfleming9426 The Confederate States prohibited the slave trade in their constitution, so they obviously weren't looking for a way to re-open the slave trade. Did secession help efforts to suppress the slave trade? Insofar as shipping was overwhelmingly a northern industry and it was northern, not southern, pirates that were still trafficking in slaves -- I say "pirates" because the slave trade had been illegal in the US since 1820 -- cutting ties between the North and South only made it more challenging for northern ships to do business with the South, including illegally trafficking slaves. > Why don't you actually make an argument instead of stooping to ad hominems? You don't actually expect anyone to take that particular argument that I responded to seriously, do you? Go ahead and spell it out a little if you think it's worth anything more than the response I gave it. I'm sure it's not.
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@aaronfleming9426 James Madison, Federalist #39: "That it will be... the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."
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How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?
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@aaronfleming9426 You don't lose a beat even after recognizing that the pre-secession dispute over the territories had nothing to do with any constitutionally legitimate possibilities of the North interfering with slavery in the South! Maybe when your central argument is disproved you should question the propaganda you've been consuming a little more. Why don't you try answering the question I actually asked, which would require not cutting off and ignoring the second half of the sentence? The question I actually asked again: "How does it make sense to say that secession was about slavery in the territories if seceding meant that the seceding states intentionally forfeited their rights to the territories (which they did)?" Sure, it's a fact that the southern states believed in the right under the constitution so long as they remained in the union, in the words of a 7-2 majority of the US Supreme Court, of "Every citizen...to take with him into the Territory any article of property which the Constitution of the United States recognises as property. The Constitution of the United States recognises slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it. And Congress cannot exercise any more authority over property of that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other kind." But it's obviously complete nonsense to suggest that the southern states seceded to secure rights they intentionally forfeited by seceding. Your argument is like saying that a woman divorced her husband to get her husband to help with the housework, because when she gave her reasons for splitting up with him she said he wasn't doing his share of the housework, as if she had any expectation of her ex-husband doing more of the shared housework if she divorced him and established a separate household. > What's not a mistake is that an increasing number of free states would steadily erode the political power of the slave holders. The composition of the Supreme Court might change, endangering the Dred Scott decision; the balance of power shifting toward freedom might lead to the rollback of the Fugitive Slave Act; and so on. All you need to do to demonstrate that the slave states were in full freak-out mode over the threat Lincoln and the Republicans posed to slavery I repeat: Your argument is like saying that a woman divorced her husband to get her husband to help with the housework, because when she gave her reasons for splitting up with him she said he wasn't doing his share of the housework, as if she had any expectation of her ex-husband doing more of the shared housework if she divorced him and established a separate household. You still haven't been able to cite any threat to slavery that secession offered any prospect of protecting against (other than the mythical threat of a constitutional amendment you've since recognized as the historically baseless myth that it is.) Secession, insofar as it could actually be achieved, only guaranteed that no fugitive slave would ever be delivered up from the northern states (or any of the slave states remaining in the Union) again. But you want to imagine there was some threat to slavery that secession was intended to protect against??? > Lincoln had the constitutional duty to make war on a foreign power that was attacking American forts and soldiers, stealing other American property at gunpoint So if South Korea decided that it no longer needed or wanted US military forces in South Korea, asked the US to withdraw its forces from South Korea, offered to negotiate compensation for any property of the US that it needed to possess in order to defend itself, and finally forcibly evicted US soldiers from South Korea (while continuing to offer compensation for any property the US had any claim to), you'd say that the US president would have a constitutional duty to wage war against South Korea? > What do you suppose would happen to Cuba today if it drove American troops out of Guantanamo Bay by shooting at them until they were forced to surrender - whether or not anyone was killed? First of all, the purpose of the US military in Guantanamo Bay was never to protect Cuba, so there's a night and day difference between Guantanamo Bay and a fort that the people of South Carolina wanted established for their own defense. (South Korea would be much better comparison, wouldn't it?) Secondly it's ridiculous to suggest that the southern states had no right to any of the property that had been administered by the federal government, as if when a man violates his wedding vows and the woman leaves him, the woman ought to forfeit all of their previously jointly held property rather than dividing their previously jointly held property as part of the divorce. And thirdly it's ridiculous to suggest that the southern states didn't spend months trying to peacefully negotiate a withdrawal from Fort Sumter before finally forcibly (but bloodlessly) evicting hostile military forces from their soil. But even if we lay all that aside, what argument do you have even then? That what would happen if Cuba seized Guantanamo Bay is that the US would have a right to conquer and subjugate all of Cuba and rule over the Cuban people forever? > What Lincoln did or didn't do after the fact is completely irrelevant to a discussion of the process of Texas' secession. So you think the fact that neither Lincoln nor anyone else acting on behalf of DC or the North objected to that aspect of the process is irrelevant? You can object to Texas' process all you want, but whatever objections you might raise, those issues can't provide any justification for any of the North's actions if the North didn't object to them. And, in any case, they (to the extent there's any historical substance to your claims at all) obviously had nothing to do with what the war was fought over.
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How would it even have been possible for the South to have fought to keep what their opponent was granting their right to keep without a fight? And, no, the North never fought to end slavery.
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@dylancloud97 The first step??? How would Republicans winning the presidency possibly have led to abolition? Not in any way that secession offered any prospect of preventing. Are you just pushing a completely unintelligible myth? And why do you think Southerners didn't actually care about all the things Republicans had already done and the things Republicans had actually said they were going to do, i.e. the things they actually said were the reasons they were seceding? You're saying Southerners wouldn't have really cared about any of those things apart from this inexplicable myth you have trying to tie those things to eventual abolition. That's pretty ridiculous even apart from the fact that you can't actually tie any of those things to eventual abolition or show how secession would have prevented Republicans from doing any of those things anyway (like sheltering fugitive slaves, excluding slavery from Kansas... which secession would have only made it easier for Republicans to do.) > The north was fighting to end it after 63. The Union continued to practice slavery itself throughout the entire war and beyond. Obviously the war was fought from beginning to end for the same purpose, and that was never to abolish slavery.
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So why do you figure just about everyone on earth at the time, North and South and European..., pro-slavery, abolitionist, not-pro-slavery-but-willing-to-get-along-with-slavery... was, according to you, blind with regards to just about everything that was said directly about the war?
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"And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before... "All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one – when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..." Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner
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@ApostleMarduk The two sides spun things differently and made different arguments but as to what they were fighting over they said the same thing. Jefferson Davis: "we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone" Official Union declaration: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. to deny the southern states the right to be let alone]"
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None of the declarations of causes say anything about the war (which hadn't even started yet.) Nor do they say anything about any threat to slavery that secession would have offered any prospect of protecting against. So that leaves you with nothing but an unintelligible revisionist myth.
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If South Koreans decided they no longer needed or wanted US military forces in South Korea but the US refused to leave and after months of attempts by South Korea to negotiate the withdrawal of US forces and repeated warnings South Korea finally forcibly evicted the US forces from South Korea (but without killing a single American), would you likewise conclude the US then had justification to conquer and subjugate all of South Korea and force DC rule on the South Korean people forever?
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@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 > nobody was forbidding them to have slaves!! Not only that, but there wasn't any chance in the foreseeable future of the northern states having anywhere close to the votes to do so, and the North then went to war with Lincoln offering his support for a proposed constitutional amendment to make the right of states to practice slavery constitutionally irrevocable.
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@aaronfleming9426 > The other section, while it certainly had racial injustices and labor abuses, had a free economy Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware contradict that childish narrative (and so did Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee until Lincoln called for an army to invade and subjugate the states that had initially formed the Confederacy.) > It is quite correct to say that the south had dominated federal institutions in the middle of the century. Until the North imported enough people with no attachment to America's founding principles and figured out it could win an outright majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some percent of the electorate (which isn't counting the South's black population at all) and proceed to rule without regard to constitutional limits.
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@aaronfleming9426 > the fault lines were clear: slavery. If the fault lines were clearly over slavery, then pro-slavery states wouldn't have fought on the supposedly anti-slavery side, continued practicing and legally protecting slavery throughout the war, and voted against abolishing slavery at the end of the war. And you wouldn't have to make your lame excuses for all the other ways in which the union didn't divide along pro- and anti-slavery lines. > As events played out, we can see they had no intention of heeding the Constitutional authority of the commander in chief. Certainly they didn't support a war to destroy government by the consent of the governed and against any meaningful constitutional checks on the federal government (which there wasn't any constitutional authority for the commander in chief to wage anyway), but until it came to that they (and AR, TN, and NC) chose to remain in the union under DC rule. > The slave holders held to the letter of the Constitution in regard to slavery, but in precious little else; and that's to say nothing of the spirit of the Constitution. In what respect would you like to imagine the southern states didn't hold to "the spirit of the constitution"? What "precious little else" other than "in regard to slavery" are you referring to? Or are you just entirely pulling vague nonsense entirely out of your ars?
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BS!
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Exactly right, except you can't honestly call anything a union that's based not on voluntary consent but on forcible subjugation.
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The Confederate constitution prohibited protective tariffs. Fact.
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None of those documents even mention the war. Nor do they mention an abolition amendment or anything else of the sort. Nor do they mention any more marginal issues relating to slavery that southern independence would have resolved in favor of southern slaveholders. The only issues relating to slavery that they discussed were issues like northern states not fulfilling their constitutional obligation under the constitution's fugitive slave clause, an obligation the northern states would have been absolved of with respect to the seceding states if they had just let them secede. But the documents that actually do tell us what the war itself was fought over make exceedingly clear that it wasn't fought over anything to do with slavery. For example, Congress officially declared by nearly unanimous votes of both chambers that, "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. maintain control over the southern states against their will, without their consent, and to deny them the right to independence and self-government]"
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@EPUEPUEPUEPU > however it did not deal with the expansion of slavery Neither did secession, so that obviously wasn't what they were to any degree even indirectly fighting for.
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