Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@Ben00000 You didn't say anything about the northern states demanding that the southern states abolish slavery. You said, "they believed that Lincoln and the new Republican party were going to abolish slavery."
And how did Texas, whose declaration you quoted, assert that the North was demanding the abolition of slavery? To the extent there was a demand, it most certainly wasn't a threat of amending the constitution or anything else according to the rule of law but rather a demand under threat of "invad[ing] Southern soil and murder[ing] unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved." In other words, to the extent there was any demand, it was the demand of terrorists, not anything in accordance with the constitution or the rule of law, not anything justifiable.
Not that the Republican led North was actually demanding the abolition of slavery either (let alone "going to abolish slavery" as you absurdly claimed.) Lincoln's and the Republican party's 1860 platform actually said, "That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
So Lincoln and the Republicans unambiguously forfeited any excuses abolition might have provided for waging war against the South, even if demanding the southern states forfeit their self-government could have been justified (which, even then, would still have been false.) And so it's clear the North had no valid justification for invading and subjugating the South, and the South was entirely justified in resisting the unjust aggression.
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Slavery was abolished in the US when Georgia voted to ratify the 13th amendment, Georgia being the 27th state to ratify the 13the amendment, and constitutional amendments requiring 27 states (at the time) to ratify. Slavery was abolished because Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama, and North Carolina, along with 19 border/northern states voted to ratify the 13th amendment.
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@johnboehmer6683 "I think the primary reason the fact that The Civil War was fought was to free the slaves is contested isn't to protect southern honor, but to yet again deny any decency, or credit the white man with having accomplished such an epic good"
Then why did the white men that supposedly accomplished this "epic good" deny it themselves? Are you trying to say that were motivated by a desire to deny credit to themselves? How absurd is that?
Lincoln, March 1861: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
US Congress (nearly unanimous declaration by both chambers), July 1861: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union..."
Lincoln, Aug 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union..."
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@johnboehmer6683 Are you still digging? You can dig all the way to China and you won't find any quotes of Lincoln contradicting the things he said in the quotes I shared (not prior to or at any time in the early part of the war, and not really even after the emancipation proclamation, which he very clearly said he was issuing for the same reasons he had been waging to war all along.) Did some other Northerners hold abolitionist positions? Of course, but they were a fringe minority not represented by Republicans.
William Lloyd Garrison reported in The Liberator, “...it was decided by a vote of nearly three to one of members present [at the tenth anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society]….that the existing national compact should be instantly dissolved; that secession from the government is a religious and political duty, that the motto inscribed on the banner of Freedom should be NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!” That was the mainstream position of abolitionists practically until the war started, and then they mostly abandoned their principles rather than defend the South's right to independence.
But some abolitionists did continue to stand on the same principles they had all along. Joshua Blanchard, for example, wrote in The Liberator in March of 1861:
"The doctrine that the prerogatives of government are more sacred and inviolable than the rights, liberties, and welfare and even lives of individual men, is now openly maintained by the advocates of an enforced union, in direction opposition to the principle of popular sovereignty.... The success of this compulsory measure, establishing the character of our national government as one maintained by coercion, and not by consent, would be an awful apostacy, a retrogression into the barbarous maxims of European domination, cemented in blood; an utter failure of the first magnificent experiment of popular government, the the exultation of tyrants, the disgrace of our land, the despair of all the friends of freedom in the world.
"...But the harmonious union of the people of this nation, on the principle of general consent, can never be maintained where the sentiments of the two great sections of it are at such irreconcilable variance on the vital question of the right to slavery... The only plan, then, for national reputation, for safety, for justice, and even for humanity, is to give each section an independent government, confirmed to its own ideas of right – that is, peaceable separation from each other."
"Clearly there were plenty of dissenters in the day, some powerful, that would not have been willing to go along willfully if they knew it was about freeing the slaves."
And why do you think politicians would have been any more interested in freeing slaves (in states where they had no constitutional authority to free slaves) than the voters they represented? Because voters are crooked and politicians are too pure and noble for them? What kind of nonsense is that?
"there is a good amount of evidence that freeing the slaves was, at the very least, a major reason for the war."
Let me know when you get to China.
"WHY would he [Lincoln] need to preserve the Union?"
He didn't. He could have let the southern states secede in peace. And he wouldn't have driven the Upper South to follow the Deep South if he had allowed the Deep South to secede in peace. But why did he call for war to deny the southern states the right to self-government? Because (1) it's in the nature of politicians to want to control other people and he wanted power for himself and for DC, and he despised the idea (on which American independence was founded) that he and DC should have real accountability to the people and (2) because the North and particularly the robber barons that Republicans foremost represented wanted to profit off of the southern economy. As the Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner said: "for a purely pecuniary consideration, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North..."
And that's the same thing Alexander Stephens (VP of the Confederacy) recognized: "notwithstanding their [Republicans'] professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor. Their philanthropy yields to their interest. The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after though they come from the labor of the slave."
And that's entirely consistent with Lincoln's actions and his own words: "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere." (March 1861)
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@iamawesome7351 And what do those documents say about the war?
There's a section at the end of the so-called cornerstone speech about the possibility of war (which I'm copying below), but there's no mention of any aspect of slavery anywhere in that section, unless you count the section immediately following where he discusses Republican's motivations and says Republicans "are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor."
"As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln's inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry."
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@TheStapleGunKid "'constitutionally unlimited federal government' that Lincoln never mentioned"
No, of course, he didn't use those words. As Thomas Jefferson said, "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 it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers," and that's exactly what Lincoln said in the very first sentence of the preliminary emancipation proclamation that he was fighting for, constitutionally unlimited federal government.
"the Confederate states did reject compensated emancipation in their rejection of the emancipation proclamation"
If they had first forfeited their independence, forfeited the right to self-government, forfeited government based on the consent of the governed, and forfeited any meaningful constitutional limits on the federal government, then, yes, there would have been an offer to "voluntarily" negotiate a compensated emancipation, which is to say there was an offer to let them keep their slaves, too. And that's what the emancipation proclamation was: an offer by Lincoln to let the southern states keep their slaves on the condition of forfeiting their independence, etc., which of course they refused.
"to save it from Lincoln's plan to place it "in course of ultimate extinction""
And what was that plan? Prohibiting it in the territories (according to you, conditioned on the 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court that had just denied that the federal government had any such authority all of a sudden abandoning that position and letting what they had just said was unconstitutional slide)? As if the War of Northern Aggression hadn't been a war against independence but a war of the North trying to keep the southern states from taking control of the territories (not that the southern states didn't have as much right to the territories as any of the other states, but in any case, that's obviously not what the war was about. The war was obviously fought over the right of the southern states to secede, not over anything to do with the territories.)
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@TheStapleGunKid "No, it was a proclamation that any states still in rebellion at the start of 1863 would lose thier slaves immediately"
And it was announced ahead of time, which is to say it a proclamation that any states which forfeited their right to self-government and submitted to rule by a constitutionally unlimited federal government wouldn't lose their slaves, i.e. an offer by Lincoln to let the southern states keep their slaves on the condition of forfeiting their independence, etc.
"he didn't mention anything about..."
Like I already said, no, of course, he didn't use those words, but that is exactly what he said.
"They had seceded in response to Lincoln's plan to place slavery in course of ultimate extinction"
Yes, I'm sure they seceded in response to Lincoln's vague and dishonest propaganda phrase, uh huh, one which you depend on repeating rather than saying anything in plain English, because there's no case that can be made in plain English.
"Nothing that had happened between 1861 and September 1862 had resolved the issues on slavery that caused thier secession."
Secession resolved all the major issues relating to slavery in favor of the North: the southern states forfeited the right to have fugitive slaves delivered up from the North; the southern states forfeited the right to take slaves to US territories... proving that Republicans hadn't really been motivated by any real anti-slavery position to begin with.
"Once again you are trying to seperate their desire for independence from the reason they wanted it. They wanted it to preserve slavery."
And it's perfectly fair to separate a slave desire for self-government with his reason for wanting it. Self-government is an inalienable right, and it doesn't ultimately matter why anyone wants it.
But, no, of course, they didn't want independence to "preserve" slavery against some inexplicable myth that you can only repeatedly summarize with vague propaganda phrases.
"If the Confederate states thought the supreme court was on thier side, then they could have stayed in the Union and issued the challange to strike down the law, but they did not."
Yes, they could have asked the Supreme Court to repeat what it had already said if their concern had fundamentally been with the territories, what you dishonestly call "expanding slavery," which they proved wasn't their fundamental concern by seceding and forfeiting their right to the territories.
"The Civil War was a war of Southern aggression"
Just like every independence war was a war of aggression by the people seeking independence against the people seeking to subjugate them, right?
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@TheStapleGunKid "Lincoln simply gave the time it would go into effect, and stated that states which ended their rebellion before then could get federal compensation to end slavery."
And the key word that you misleadingly left out was "voluntarily." There wasn't any offer of compensation, only an offer of an offer, and that was an offer of a completely unspecified offer which Lincoln would have had no obligation to make generous and the southern states would have had no obligation to accept or compromise on even if it had been a generous offer.
As the London Spectator said about the emancipation proclamation at the time: "The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
Precisely as I said above, it was a proclamation that any states which forfeited their right to self-government and submitted to rule by a constitutionally unlimited federal government wouldn't lose their slaves, i.e. an offer by Lincoln to let the southern states keep their slaves on the condition of forfeiting their independence, etc.
"But it's not what he said."
Not if you count a fox guarding the henhouse as the henhouse being guarded. Otherwise, yes, he was demanding submission to a constitutionally unlimited federal government.
"Yet you're still convinced you know the Confederate cause better than they do."
First of all, grievances aren't a cause. What do you think the American cause was in 1776? Was it defined by America's list of grievances with England?
Secondly, the right of people to alter or abolish their government and institute a new one that seems to them more likely to effect their safety and happiness is an inalienable right, which means, in part, that no cause can negate that right, just like a slave's right to freedom can't be negated, no matter what a slave's cause may be in seeking freedom.
Thirdly, I believe the Confederate cause in the war was precisely what Alexander Stephens, for example, said it was when he said, "the struggle is continued, as it was begun, for the maintenance of constitutional liberty."
Likewise, I agree fully with the sentiments expressed in August of 1864 (I think in the Richmond Examiner):
"The sentiment [that “We are not fighting for slavery; we are fighting for independence"] is true, and should be publicly uttered and kept conspicuously in view; because our enemies have diligently labored to make all mankind believe that the people of these States have set up a pretended State sovereignty, and based themselves upon that ostensibly, while their real object has been only to preserve to themselves the property in so many negroes, worth so many millions of dollars. The direct reverse is the truth. ...the cause of the war, the whole cause, on our part, is the maintenance of the sovereign independence of these States.…
"The whole cause of our resistance was and is, the pretension and full determination of the Northern States to use their preponderance in the Federal representation, in order to govern the Southern States for their profit. ...neither tariffs nor slavery, nor both together, could ever have been truly called the cause of the secession and the war. We refuse to accept for a cause any thing… than that truly announced, namely, the sovereign independence of our States. This, indeed, includes both those minor questions, as well as many others yet graver and higher. It includes full power to regulate our trade for our own profit, and also complete jurisdiction over our own social and domestic institutions; but it further involves all the nobler attributes of national, and even of individual life and character. A community which once submits to be schooled, dictated to, legislated for, by any other, soon grows poor in spirit;… its citizens, become a kind of half-men, [and] feel that they have hardly a right to walk in the sun.…
"The people of Virginia do not choose to accept that position for themselves and for their children. ... They own a noble country, which their fathers created, exalted, and transmitted to them.… That inheritance we intend to own while we live, and leave intact to those who are to come after us.…
"It is right to let foreign nations, and “those whom it may concern,” understand this theory of our independence. Let them understand that, though we are “not fighting for slavery,” we will not allow ourselves to be dictated to in regard to slavery or any other of our internal affairs, not because that would diminish our interest in any property, but because it touches our independence."
Are you convinced you know the Confederate cause better than they do?
"No it [secession] resolved all the major issues [relating to slavery] in favor of the South. It removed them from all political opposition from the free states, it enabled them to expand slavery to any new territory they could get ahold of, and it provided much better means for preventing the escape of slaves"
1. "Political opposition" isn't an issue. There can be political opposition on issues, but political opposition isn't an issue. That's just nonsense.
2. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act had already given slaveholders the right to take slaves into the territories, and a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court had already declared in 1859 that the federal government had no constitutional authority to withhold that right. Whether Republicans would have succeeded in defeating the existing law and Supreme Court opinion can be debated, but there was certainly a political fight to be made if the slave states had wanted to make it, but rather than trying to defend the right they already had to take slaves to the territories, they seceded. It's absurd to paint that move as enabling them to take their slaves to new territories.
3. The dispute between the North and South had not been over "preventing the escape of slaves" from the South. The dispute had been over slaves that had escaped to northern states not being delivered up. Even Lincoln acknowledged that the issue would "be worse" for the slave states in the case of "separation," because fugitive slaves in the case of separation "would not be surrendered at all".
"one that was started by the rebels themselves, is not like 'every independence war'"
The question was how it was different with respect to aggression. You absurdly claim that the people seeking independence were the aggressors against the people seeking to subjugate them, but you won't even pretend that that could be the case in any other example, which is to say you recognize that the principle of your own argument is absurd: seeking independence isn't aggression; subjugating people is.
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@prestonbeaulieu4379 Even if the North had had the votes to amend the constitution to abolish slavery and had been trying to do so, and even if secession had been illegal according to the constitution, the southern states still would have had every right to self-government according to the same inalienable rights by which American independence was claimed and established.
But, of course, the Republican-led North didn't have anywhere close to the votes, made a point of declaring that it didn't even want to abolish slavery in the South (but rather wanted to let the southern states choose for themselves), and secession wasn't illegal according to the constitution.
So how then could the war have been fought over slavery? What slavery-related demands did either side make of the other? What could either side have conceded with regards to slavery that would have appeased the other side? Clearly the answer is nothing. So the claim that the war was fought over slavery is clearly just nonsense propaganda.
Likewise, what did seceding offer to "preserve" slavery from? Did the southern states want to continue practicing slavery? Certainly (as did Americans in 1776). But to say they seceded in order to "preserve" slavery implies the lie that there was something about remaining in the union that would have prevented them from continuing to practice slavery which seceding offered to avoid or protect against. But that's just an historically baseless nonsense myth.
But these historical lies are propagated to try to continue justifying the system of government that replaced the system of government that was destroyed in the war, government based on the consent of the governed (at least the "governed" that were counted as citizens.) And that's not a "fringe belief" even today. Quite recently the US went to war to defend the right of Kosovo to secede from Serbia. The UK recognizes the right of Scotland to secede if its people should choose to do so. The EU recognizes the right of secession. Sure, there are still plenty of people wanting to subjugate other people, too, but government based on the consent of the governed is far from dead, and fear and hatred of that idea is why people are continuing to tell lies about the 19th century rather than defend government by subjugation directly.
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@TheStapleGunKid Given that no one was denying the southern rights to continue practicing slavery and given that the seceding states weren't trying to expand anything or anywhere, that's proof that wasn't what the war wasn't about slavery.
The abolitionist Joshua Blanchard wrote in the March 1861 issue of The Liberator that forcible reunion would mean “the entire subjugation of one of the parties, maintained by a perpetual occupation of military force, military tyranny over all the states, abandonment of our claim to be a government of the people.... The doctrine that the prerogatives of government are more sacred and inviolable than the rights, liberties, and welfare and even lives of individual men, is now openly maintained by the advocates of an enforced union, in direction opposition to the principle of popular sovereignty.... The success of this compulsory measure, establishing the character of our national government as one maintained by coercion, and not by consent, would be an awful apostacy, a retrogression into the barbarous maxims of European domination, cemented in blood; an utter failure of the first magnificent experiment of popular government, the the exultation of tyrants, the disgrace of our land, the despair of all the friends of freedom in the world.
“...But the harmonious union of the people of this nation, on the principle of general consent, can never be maintained where the sentiments of the two great sections of it are at such irreconcilable variance on the vital question of the right to slavery... The only plan, then, for national reputation, for safety, for justice, and even for humanity, is to give each section an independent government, confirmed to its own ideas of right – that is, peaceable separation from each other.”
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@TheStapleGunKid Of course, Southerners, when they were part of the union, wanted to not only be able to access the territories but take their property with them, including slaves, and the Supreme Court ruled before secession that the US constitution protected the right of slave owners to take their slaves (as with any other property that was legal under the constitution, which slavery at the time was) to the territories, so Lincoln was promising to subvert that constitutional right which the Supreme Court had already upheld. You can disagree with the Supreme Court, but then you need to explain how constitutional disputes should ultimately be resolved if you don't recognize either the Supreme Court or the states as the ultimate arbiters of constitutional disputes. It's worth noting, too, that most abolitionists also recognized how much the constitution protected slavery, and they strongly favored secession (disunion was the term they most commonly used) as the answer to shedding the northern states' constitutional obligations regarding slavery. So even abolitionists mostly agreed with slave owners on the constitutional questions.
What recourse do you think states should have if they believe other states have decided to simply trash the constitution? I can only think of two answers. I think if states don't want to honor the terms of the constitution, then they should secede. If other states are simply going to dishonor their constitutional oaths (at least according to the allegations of the other states), then (1) the states on the losing end of that alleged constitutional abuse can implore them to honor their commitment and if those other states still don't act honorably (according to the states making the allegations), then the only choices left to them are to declare the contract broken and the union dissolved (at least between them and the offending states) or they could choose to let it slide and continue in union with the allegedly dishonorable states; or (2) the other position, which I wouldn't support at all, but it's the only other answer I've heard, is that the federal government could somehow force compliance on the allegedly dishonorable states, but even if you think the federal government should use force to settle constitutional disputes between states (contradicting the Madison quote I shared before), what recourse do you think states should have if the allegedly dishonorable states have enough power in DC to prevent force from being used against them (sufficient to satisfy the demands of the states alleging constitutional neglect)? What then? Do you think there should be no recourse for the states alleging their constitutional rights have been abused, unless they can get enough power in DC to be able to use force against the dishonorable states?
But all of this is clearly irrelevant to what the war was about, because the war obviously wasn't about the seceding states fighting for their rights as part of the union. The seceding states wanted to secede, not claim any rights under the constitution or as part of the union. So it's ridiculous to claim the war was about slavery when you can't name anything about slavery (let alone any direct threat of abolition) that there was any hope of helping by seceding.
You say without slavery there would have been no secession and no war, but that's silly, because slavery was a constant from before the 13 colonies seceded from England through the states joining the re-established union under the constitution until after the southern states seceded from the union. What changed obviously wasn't slavery. What changed was the northern states' willingness to use opposition to slavery as pretense for trashing the constitution. As you've recognized, there was no direct threat to slavery. There was a direct threat to the integrity of the constitution.
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@TheStapleGunKid No, maybe you've forgotten, but I don't think the Supreme Court has any legitimate claim to being the ultimate arbiter of constitutional disputes between states or between the states and the federal government. I believe, as Thomas Jefferson said, "that the several states composing the US. of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style & title of a Constitution for the US. 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; and that whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, it’s acts are unauthoritative, void, & of no force. that to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s 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 it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s 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 & measure of redress."
You, on the other hand, simply avoid the question. You deny what Thomas Jefferson said. You deny the Supreme Court. The only standard you recognize is might makes right, except when you don't like it, which, of course, is no standard at all.
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