Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@TheStapleGunKid No one debunks what I've said, yourself included. They just throw out ad hominem arguments in defense of the indefensible.
Charles Dickens told readers of his monthly magazine in 1862: “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”
John Stuart Mill, hoped the war would be against slavery and was disappointed. “The North, it seems,” Mill wrote, “have no more objections to slavery than the South have.”
War time Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey: “Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery,” he said.
"The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces." ---The London Times, November 7, 1861
“If Northerners... had peaceably allowed the seceders to depart, the result might fairly have been quoted as illustrating the advantages of Democracy; but when Republicans put empire above liberty, and resorted to political oppression and war rather than suffer any abatement of national power, it was clear that nature at Washington was precisely the same as nature at St. Petersburg... Democracy broke down, not when the Union ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent States, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms.” London Times, September 13, 1862
"Many men have many theories about the struggle that went on from 1861 to 1865. Some say it had for its purpose the abolition of slavery. President Lincoln did not so consider it. There were those in the South who would have been willing to wage war for its continuation, but I very much doubt if the South as a whole could have been persuaded to take up arms for that purpose. There were those in the North who would have been willing to wage war for its abolition, but the North as a whole could not have been persuaded to take up arms for that purpose. President Lincoln made it perfectly clear that his effort was to save the Union, with slavery if he could save it that way; without slavery if he could save it that way. But he would save the Union. The South stood for the principle of the sovereignty of the States. The North stood for the principle of the supremacy of the Union." President Calvin Coolidge
"Do we not all know that the cause of our casualties is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, cooperating with the discontents of the people of those states? Do we not know that the disregard of the Constitution, and of the security that it affords to the rights of States and of individuals, has been the cause of the calamity which our country is called to undergo?” -President Franklin Pierce
“It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.” President Woodrow Wilson
“The war... has tended, more than any other event in the history of the country to militate against the Jeffersonian idea, that 'the best government is that which governs least.' The war has not only, of necessity, given more power to, but has led to a more intimate prevision of the government over every material interest of society.” Republican Governor Richard Yates of Illinois, 1865
Abolitionist Joshua Blanchard: “It seems so clear that slavery in the South could not long exist when deprived of the support of the North, that we are surprised that this evident consequence is so overlooked or disregarded... It is plain, then, that this war is not an anti-slavery, but a pro-slavery war.”
Abolitionist George Bassett: “Such is the deranged and distracted condition of the political elements of our country at the present time, that, while the South are bravely fighting the great battle of national liberty in the name of slavery, the North are maintaining the principles of oriental despotism in the name of Liberty! ... I will not say the governing class of the slave States, by the summary repeal of all civil justice, in the enslavement of the poor, have not justly forfeited their sovereignty; but not to a confederacy which is equally guilty with themselves. I will not say that the civilized world should not unite to wipe out chattel slavery, as too inhuman to be tolerated; that they should not unitedly proscribe it, as they do the African slave trade, and inaugurate true popular supremacy in its place. But this is not the question between the United States and South Carolina. With us it is not a question of philanthropy, but of aggrandizement.”
Chinese premier Zhu Rongii told President Clinton in 1999 regarding Taiwan, “Abraham Lincoln, in order to maintain the unity of the United States and oppose the independence of the southern part, resorted to the use of force and fought a war for that, for maintaining the unity of the United States...so, I think Abraham Lincoln, president, is a model, is an example."
“The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States, and in uniting together, they have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so…” -– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America
“The American people, North and South, went into the War as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … What they lost they have never gotten back.” -– H.L. Mencken
NY in ratifying the Constitution said, “the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.”
"The state is indeed divine, as being the great incarnation of a nation’s rights, privileges, honor, and life."
~ Unitarian Minister Henry Bellows (1866), on the meaning of the North’s victory
Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "All these cries of having 'abolished slavery,' ... of having 'preserved the union,' ... 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..."
And I'll throw in one Southerner: “However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.” James Madison
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> no state in the Confederacy was allowed to secede from the Confederacy
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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@Ben00000 The Confederacy stood for the opposite of your pro-slavery position, at least with regards to the conflict with the North. As its vice president said, "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.'"
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@TheStapleGunKid "But not what the South was fighting for. The South was fighting for slavery, which made slavery the cause of the war."
The South was fighting for the mirror image of what the North was fighting for. The South was fighting for "the constitutional liberty of a free government," just as Jefferson Davis said at the start of the war, and the North was fighting to destroy the constitutional liberty of free government.
And what war isn't like that (that what one side is fighting for isn't the mirror image of what the other side is fighting for)? In any case, the War of Northern Aggression was.
But even if the South had been fighting for something other than what the North was fighting against, how do you figure that what one side was fighting for is what the war was all about and what the other said was fighting for is completely irrelevant to what the war was about? That's double nonsense.
"Even an anti-Union abolitionist like Lysander Spooner understood the South fought the war for slavery."
I know you've quoted Spooner saying something that you've used to make that argument. If you think it holds water, let's see it again. In any case, Spooner made it very clear that nothing about slavery provided any justification for the war, that those arguments were false pretenses seized upon after the fact to try to cover up what the war really was about. If you (or anyone else) need me to quote you what he said to that effect, I certainly can, but I assume you're well aware of those facts.
"You just defended your claim about abolitionists by saying it "doesn't mean every abolitionist without exception". But you won't apply the same standard to what I said about the South."
The only abolitionist you pointed to as any evidence to the contrary was advocating for disunion with the slave states even after the first southern states seceded. Obviously, there would have been no war if the North had taken that abolitionist position at that time. So even Garrison proves the point I made that even northern abolitionists denied the war was about slavery in 1861, at least the extent that the war followed from and its causes are inseparable from the war, as you've been repeatedly trying to argue lately.
But as to your "double standard" foolishness are you really so stupid as to see no difference between saying that even Russians have taken Ukraine's side on fill-in-the-blank point and saying that that Russia has taken Ukraine's side on that point? How can you be so stupid? Are you a public school teacher?
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@Rundstedt1 It's absurd to blame South Carolina for starting the war when even abolitionists recognized that Lincoln was completely shutting the door on any other options short of total submission to despotism. As one outspoken Massachusetts abolitionist said in 1861: “Suppose we simply collect the revenue of South Carolina, as the Government proposes to do, and as the people generally demand and claim the right to do, what is she any longer, I ask, but a conquered province? and what is your revenue but a forced tribute? … I hear it every day gravely maintained and with apparent sincerity, by many of the Northern citizens, and they catch it from our members of Congress, that we do not intend to conquer South Carolina, but only to collect her revenue, and probably blockade her ports and keep possession of the military posts! But does any intelligent person fail to see that that is the full extent of political subjugation? Taxation, direct or indirect, is one of the highest functions of sovereignty, and to blockade a port, is one of the most belligerent acts. It is truly ridiculous for grave members of Congress to disclaim any purpose of conquest or war, when they advocate the extreme measures of military hostility.”
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@Rundstedt1 As for a majority of abolitionists advocating secession (what they called disunion), one thing you could look up is an article from a few years ago by the Boston Globe titled "When the North Almost Seceded." The title is misleading, because real abolitionists were much too fringe to effect political changes of any magnitude, but the article does show where real abolitionists were at just a few years before the war.
Another similar gathering of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1844 passed a resolution by a large margin calling for the secession of the free states from the union. Wendell Phillips said in defense of that resolution: "[T]he only exodus of the slave to freedom, unless it be one of blood, must be over the ruins of the present American Church and the grave of the present Union…[T]he abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of their agitation, to dissolve the American Union….[S]ecession from the present United States Government is the duty of every abolitionist; since no one can take office, or throw a vote for another to hold office, under the U.S. Constitution, without violating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the slaveholder in his sin."
And here are a couple quotes from a couple more of the most famous abolitionists:
William Lloyd Garrison said that a primary goal of abolitionists should be "To persuade Northern voters, that the strongest political influence which they can wield for the overthrow of slavery, is, to cease sustaining the existing compact, by withdrawing from the polls, and calmly waiting for the time when a righteous government shall supersede the institutions of tyranny. To endeavor to effect, by all just and peaceful means, such a change in the public sentiment of the North as shall convince the South that nothing but the immediate abolition of slavery can make us a united people."
Lysander Spooner from after the war: "Their pretenses that they have “Saved the Country,” and “Preserved our Glorious Union,” are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call “Saving the Country”; as if an enslaved and subjugated people – or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) – could be said to have any country. This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” of establishing “a government of consent,” and of “maintaining the national honor,” 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... or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want."
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@Rundstedt1 Plenty of truth in that Foner quote. Bassett, the abolitionist, fleshes out some of those same ideas even better: “Strictly speaking, government has no rights. It has duties to perform simply. Its whole object is to protect men in their rights. … And surely it is equally absurd and improper for the people of one section of the country to advance a claim of right to the political allegiance of those of another section. The most arrogant pretensions of ancient royalty, are not more preposterous.”
“...the doctrine of coercion... is the destruction of the government, because it is a political revolution. It is a change of the whole spirit of the government, from a confederacy of sovereign States, held together by mutual interest and common attachment, to a consolidated empire, bound together by military force.
“It is also, to some extent, an efficient cause of the present dissolution of the Union. It is the belligerent doctrines and attitude of the dominant politicians of the North, which have precipitated this movement of secession. If the right of secession had been conceded at the first, the movement would have been deprived of its essential vigor and intenseness. The people, feeling that they had a conceded right to secede at will, would naturally have delayed an act so fearfully pregnant with possible evils. … Nor could so many States have been induced to follow the momentous experiment in such hasty succession. It is very doubtful if the movement could have been effected at all, if the right to make it had not been denied.” -Bassett
“It is constantly said, particularly by speakers in Congress, that if our government cannot prevent a State from seceding at will, it is no government at all. But it is forgotten, that the true glory of our government—the queen beauty of our system is, that it ceases with the will of the people. Its true strength lies not in navies and battalions, but in the affections of the people. Numbers in our midst –editors and members of Congress, are vainly boasting that we propose to show the world that we have a government that is strong enough to meet the exigency and to suppress rebellion. But they fail entirely to apprehend and appreciate the true theory of the American system. Their is the old European, and not the American, idea of government. Gov. Seward well remarked in his festival speech in New York, that 'you cannot force fraternity.' Would that this better impulse of his heart and judgment had not been apparently disturbed in his last speech in the United States Senate!
“The true strength of a free government—and they are the strongest of all, is in the devoted attachment of its citizen sovereigns. Let this be forfeited, and the government falls.
“A government which is strong by the exercise of military power over its own citizens, is not a free government, but a despotism.
“Instead of the peaceful separation of these States being a disgrace to our government in the eyes of the world, it will constitute in all coming time its truest glory, and will demonstrate the infinite superiority of the voluntary system of self-government over the despotic usurpations of the past.” -Bassett
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@TheStapleGunKid "Tariffs applied to the entire nation, they were not 'Northern tariffs'"
Tariffs, especially those which Republicans had campaigned on, were for protecting northern industry, so in that sense they were overwhelmingly "northern tariffs."
As Georgia said in its declaration of causes of secession, "The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all."
"Passing a tariff law through the legislative process is not 'abuse'."
"[F]ostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power"; "giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another"; taking a power that the constitution gave Congress for the purpose of raising revenue and using it for "unequal and partial legislation" to "enrich" the North while "draining [the] substance" of the South is indeed abuse of powers.
"Without slavery there would have been no secession."
Without the northern states disregarding their constitutional obligations under the fugitive slave clause, without Republican stoking hatred of the southern states under shallow anti-slavery pretenses for the sake of advancing their crony capitalist agenda... there would have been no secession in 1860-61. But "slavery" wasn't the cause of secession even then. Specific northern (particularly Republican) policies were the issue.
But the reason we're continuing to debate this 150+ years later is because I would like to live in a union based on the consent of the governed and you want to maintain the despotism established by Republicans in the War of Northern Aggression. Obviously slavery isn't the question that divides people today.
And if Republican violations of the constitution under shallow anti-slavery pretenses hadn't been the cause of secession, other issues would have brought the question to a head. The nullification crisis had come close to leading to violence between the federal government and the states earlier. Other issues would have followed. The federal government had been growing in power, and the number of people looking for an excuse to eliminate constitutional limits on their power had grown ready for a challenge.
"It didn't happen simply because the South was unwilling would not accept emancipation in any form."
It didn't happen because the South wouldn't forfeit its right to self-government. There was never a hint of an offer to facilitate emancipation apart from the South first forfeiting its independence. Emancipation obviously wasn't the sticking point. Self-government was.
"there was no right for the Southern states to take over nearly half the country"
For one thing there was the right on which the United States had been founded and the only right by which the United States government had any legitimacy, namely the right of people to declare their independence from the existing government and establish a new government according to whatever to them would seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
"The Union was formed by "we the people of the United states" and can only be unformed in the same way."
No the union was not formed by "we the people." The union was formed long before the constitution. The government established by the constitution was formed by "we the people," at least in one sense, and it was formed with "unforming" the previous government according to the way it had been formed (by the unanimous consent of the states), so there's no reason to believe the government established by the constitution would need to be "unformed" according to the constitution either. (Not that the union was "unformed" by some states seceding any more than Brexit meant the "unforming"/dissolution of the EU.)
"when their secession reached the Supreme Court"
Not that the federal government can be the ultimate judge of its own powers, but no, no one ever took a case for the constitutional right of secession to the Supreme Court, and even if they had, all the Supreme Court could have said was whether they thought it was allowable under the constitution. But the process by which "we the people" established the constitution wasn't allowable under the Articles of Confederation, so the constitution implicitly recognized the right of the people to simply discard existing law, just as they had done in ratifying the constitution.
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