Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@TheStapleGunKid No, I obviously didn't mean to suggest "it would be nice" was an actual quote (obvious to anyone that isn't as clueless or dishonest -- which is it? or is it both?-- as you, at least.) But you quoted Lincoln saying "I should not object if..." which is essentially the same, a wish with no action to effect it as I put it before you joined in this thread. So I repeat my question: Do you think Lincoln was lying when he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists"? Note, he said "directly or indirectly," so telling me how he really intended to interfere with slavery in the slave states, just not directly, would mean he was lying, right? Personally, I think he was telling the truth there.
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@TheStapleGunKid The questions I asked the other commenter to which you replied were: "How do you imagine Republicans wanted to end slavery? Just a wish with no action to effect it? Or what specific course of action?" I repeat: "end slavery." That's the context of the question of whether Republicans had a specific agenda to effect their wish or merely an "it would be nice..." Yes, Republicans were working to prevent slavery in US territories (in defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of doing so and for their own political advantages and white supremacist agenda, not for the good of any slaves), but that's not "ending slavery." "Ending slavery" means ending it in the slave states, not in territories where it wasn't already established.
So I repeat my question another time: Do you think Lincoln was lying when he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists"? Note, he said "directly or indirectly," so telling me how he really intended to interfere with slavery in the slave states, just not directly, would mean he was lying, right? Personally, I think he was telling the truth there.
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@TheStapleGunKid In hindsight it's clear that slavery, particularly agriculturally based slavery like we had in the States, was on its way out regardless of anything to do particularly with America or American politics because of industrialization. But if your argument is that it would have ended substantially earlier even apart from secession because Republicans would have appointed Supreme Court justices that eventually would of overturned Dred Scott which eventually would have... have you ever even told me in your own words what you think would have happened then? But I know you equate prohibiting slavery in the territories with eventual abolition. Apparently you think it would have actually made a difference in how soon slavery would have been abolished in the South even if the South hadn't seceded? Can you quantify that roughly?
But if your argument is true, it would have applied to other places that practiced slavery outside the US, too, right? Like Cuba? Is there any reason to think your argument would have applied any more to the southern states than to Cuba? If not, let's see evidence that the same argument was made in Cuba or other places besides the US. Otherwise, I'm going with what's consistent with what Stephens said in the Cornerstone Speech, what Davis said in his inaugural address, and what Texas said in its declaration of causes:
"We have all the essential elements of a high national career. The idea has been given out at the North, and even in the border States, that we are too small and too weak to maintain a separate nationality. This is a great mistake. In extent of territory we embrace five hundred and sixty-four thousand square miles and upward... With such an area of territory as we have-with such an amount of population-with a climate and soil unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth-with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our ability to succeed, whether others join us or not?" No need to expand expressed there, is there? Quite the opposite.
"An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union. It must follow, therefore, that a mutual interest would invite good will and kind offices. If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of those States, we must prepare to meet the emergency and to maintain, by the final arbitrament of the sword, the position which we have assumed among the nations of the earth. We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued. Through many years of controversy with our late associates, the Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity, and to obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled. As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation; and henceforth our energies must be directed to the conduct of our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the Confederacy which we have formed. If a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled. But, if this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us, with firm resolve, to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause. ... it is not unreasonable to expect that States from which we have recently parted may seek to unite their fortunes with ours under the government which we have instituted. For this your Constitution makes adequate provision; but beyond this, if I mistake not the judgment and will of the people, a reunion with the States from which we have separated is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of a confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole. Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered which must and should result in separation. Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights and promote our own welfare, the separation of the Confederate States has been marked by no aggression upon others and followed by no domestic convulsion." That's quite the contrary of expansion there, too, isn't it?
"The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States." The importance of the territories from the perspective of the southern states was all about "power in the common government," not anything that would affect an independent Confederacy with its own government, i.e. none of the nonsense you're asserting.
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@TheStapleGunKid "Their view on secession was no different then that of the Union when their own territory did it."
I know I've shared this Stephens quote somewhere in these comments, but have I not shared it specifically with you yet? Vice President Stephens said in a speech before the Georgia legislature in 1864: "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.'"
So clearly leaders of the Confederacy were openly advocating a principle that Lincoln and the Republican party (which is to say the leaders of the post-secession Union) obviously were not.
I don't know enough about the details of the history to say, but I assume you're right when you note that there isn't a history in the North or South of respecting the principles of the Declaration of Independence with respect to parts of states -- I think that's unfortunate -- but there's very much a tradition, particularly in the South, of respecting those principles at the state level.
Thomas Jefferson, for example, said in his first inaugural address, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” And fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in the union …. I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.'”
But although the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence were certainly stronger in the South than in the North, those principles were certainly a part, albeit weaker, of an American tradition that included the North, too. George Bassett, the northern abolitionist, for example, said: “But remember, that when South Carolina falls, she falls not alone. The suicidal hand which strikes down the sovereignty of the people of South Carolina, demolishes that of Massachusetts with it, and the whole fabric of American Liberty falls by the same stroke. Then not one star escapes from the galaxy of free sovereignties, but all are blotted out by this sweeping stroke of despotic usurpation. We are no longer a voluntary confederation of sovereign States, but each and all of us conquered provinces of a centralized and consolidated despotism. We of the North may be voluntary in this subjection, like the more degraded of slaves—yea, we may be the unnatural agents of it; but it is subjection still.”
You said, "... even in their new constitution, they too did not include any right to secession. Making a new constitution would have been the perfect time to write in a right to secession, but they still didn't do it."
That they added "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character" to the preamble is one indication that they respected the sovereignty of each state within the confederacy. "Sovereign and independent" states don't need to depend on other states or the federal government to withdraw from a union, do they?
"The primary purpose of the Confederate constitution was to add in new federal protections for slavery. Other then that, it's almost identical to the American one." It is largely identical to the US constitution, but even despite the very limited differences, there's still clear of evidence of the Confederate States' opposition to overreaching centralized power and crony capitalism:
There's the line from the preamble I just mentioned.
Powers were not "granted" to the federal government, like in the US constitution, but rather "delegated."
The Confederate Constitution added: “The House of Representatives … shall have the sole power of impeachment except any judicial or other Federal officer, resident and acting solely within the limits of any State, may be impeached by a vote of two-thirds of both branches of the (State’s) Legislature …”
The president was given line-item veto power in all appropriation bills.
The power to collect tariffs and other taxes was limited to purposes "for revenue necessary" to running the government.
Tariffs to “promote or foster any branch of industry” were specifically disallowed.
"...neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce” except along waterways and harbors.
"...of the several states" was added to the 9th amendment. The 10th amendment was changed from "to the States respectively, or to the people" to "to the States respectively, or to the people thereof.” You might say those are really insignificant little changes, and they are in one sense, but the fact that the Confederacy made such minor changes on those points shows they were points where they wanted to be abundantly clear about those foundational points.
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@TheStapleGunKid Your legal argument against secession is ridiculous, especially the "perpetual" and "more perfect" part, but before I bother explaining the obvious to you, I'd like to know what difference it would make to you if those words hadn't been in the Articles or the constitution. Would your position change substantially at all? For my part, if I believed your ridiculous argument were sound, it still wouldn't change anything for me, because, like I said before, I don't believe great-grandparents can give any meaningful consent for the government of their great-grandchildren, especially not after the great-grandparents are dead and gone. I don't believe majorities can give their consent for the government of political minorities. And, to add to what I said before, not only do I not believe great-grandparents can give meaningful consent for the government of their great-grandchildren, but I don't believe consent is meaningful if it can't be withdrawn by the same generation.
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@TheStapleGunKid To shed a little more light on Jefferson's views on the right of secession, here are a couple more quotes, first from his original draft of the Kentucky Resolutions, and then from a letter to Madison from 1799:
"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."
“I should propose a declaration or Resolution by their legislatures on this plan... determined... to sever ourselves from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self government which we have reserved, & in which alone we see liberty, safety & happiness.”
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@TheStapleGunKid Jefferson didn't call secession "treason against the hopes of mankind." He called the Missouri Compromise, particularly the federal government deciding in which territories slavery would be allowed, the central point of your defense of Lincoln and the Republican party, treason against the hopes of mankind. If that weren't obvious enough from the quote you shared itself, it's certainly made clear by the other Jefferson quotes I shared. As for compelling states to obedience, it makes sense to qualify that with what Jefferson said in that same sentence about how they were bound to that confederation, namely by themselves, not in any collective kind of way. It's foolish to assume that saying, "As long as you're going to be part of this group, the group is going to enforce its membership requirements on the members" means, "If you try to leave the group, we'll kill you." Your reading makes Jefferson wildly inconsistent. My reading makes all of the quotes you and I have shared come together into one coherent position.
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@TheStapleGunKid As for the Confederate constitution, it's not my problem that you think something like the incorporation doctrine, which wasn't invented until the 20th century, supposedly on the basis of the 14th amendment, which itself didn't come about until after the WNA, must somehow apply to the Confederate constitution. As I said before, there was nothing in the Confederate constitution to stop states from abolishing slavery or otherwise passing anti-slavery laws except as related to citizens of other states and their slaves.
Do you think the US constitution's 1st amendment, for example, authorized the federal government to oversee and prevent state governments from infringing 1st amendment rights in 1861, too? If not, why do you interpret the part of the Confederate constitution you quoted so differently?
Stating things that the federal government isn't allowed to get involved in is the opposite of "textbook big government in action."
"Wrong, the constitution never said anything about slavery in the federal territories."
Whether the constitution did or didn't is beside the point of anything I've said, specifically that the Supreme Court had already ruled the US constitution did. You can reject the Supreme Court's ruling, but the fact that the Supreme Court had decisively ruled on the matter is unambiguous. If you think there's any ambiguity to the Dred Scott ruling, you'll have to explain what other way there is to understand the court's ruling (that I'm pretty sure I've already quoted to you) that, "the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void..."
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@TheStapleGunKid "If they wanted it to only apply to the federal government, they would have said 'congress shall make no law or bill of attainer denying or impairing the right to property in negro slaves'. But they didn't. They didn't mention Congress or anyone else, because they made that prohibition apply to all."
Why, then, after prohibiting ex post facto laws in article 1, section 9 (which you quoted), did the Confederate constitution repeat the prohibition of ex post facto laws in article 1, section 10 when it says, "No State shall... pass any bill of attainder, or ex post facto law..."? Section 10, which leaves out any prohibition of any law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, applies to the states, because it says, "No states..." and obviously the prohibition on ex post facto laws was repeated there, because the prohibition of ex post facto laws in section 9, like the prohibition of laws abolishing slavery, didn't apply to or limit the individual states.
You ought to quit throwing me these softballs that are so easy to knock out of the park. It's not good for my humility.
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@TheStapleGunKid You'll have to define your terms for starters. When you say, "Not really a pro-states rights position, is it?" what do you mean by "states rights"? I would define a "pro-states rights position" as a strong 10th amendment position, in other words a position of respecting the rights of states to do everything except those things clearly and specifically prohibited by the constitution. By that definition, nothing in the constitution (other than the legal principle of the 10th amendment, which was implied by the original constitution even before being made explicit by the 10th) makes for a pro- or anti-states rights position"; rather what makes for a pro-states rights position is the degree to which powers not clearly and specifically delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states are respected as state powers. So expansive interpretations of federal powers, especially when exercise of those powers interferes with those things states would otherwise do, constitutes an anti-states right position, and strict and narrow interpretations of federal powers, particularly when those powers might interfere with things states would want to do, constitutes a pro-states right position.
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@TheStapleGunKid I don't hardly ever think in terms of "states rights." I definitely think about constitutional issues, 10th amendment issues, etc., but I don't think I'd ever be inclined to use the term "states rights" to summarize those issues. So to address your question of whether there was any constitutional principle for which the Confederacy fought which the Confederate constitution contradicted, the answer is no according to the only definition of "states rights" that I could give you... and I can't imagine any other definition of states rights that would make any sense, and you haven't offered another definition.
As to whether there were constitutional issues that led to secession, the declarations of causes make that abundantly clear. South Carolina's declaration of causes is especially clear and succinct with regards to the constitutional issues. Texas, on the other hand, seems to have focused more on the necessary spirit of the constitution, especially the spirit of the union "insuring domestic tranquility." The spirit of insuring domestic tranquility had been sacrificed to such a degree that the northern states were even widely supporting terrorist attacks against random Southerners. So union had come to mean being governed by a political party that was so hostile to the welfare of the southern people that it had supported terrorist attacks against them, all while trashing the letter of the constitution in addition to the spirit of union, and all for the purpose of advancing crony capitalism (as the Georgia declaration makes most clear of the declarations, although a much more in-depth explanation of the North's purposes can be found from the Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner.) Even if secession hadn't been a 10th amendment right -- it irrefutably was, but even if -- what recourse do you think states should have if a majority in Congress and the president simply decide to disregard the constitution in ruling over them? Do you think whoever controls DC should be able to trash the constitution however they please so long as they can maintain control of DC through elections?
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@TheStapleGunKid I agree that the southern states' grievances were mainly directed at the northern states as opposed to the federal government, but it's significant that the Republican party hadn't yet controlled any part of the federal government when South Carolina seceded, so I think it was reasonable to look at what Republicans had done with state power and assume the Republican party would do very comparable things once it gained control in the federal government. The South Carolina declaration, for example, particularly cites two states that had Republican governors for "refus[ing] to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder" in violation of the constitution's extradition clause: "A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime."
"The only things South Carolina accuses the federal government of doing are being hostile to slavery (which is of course not unconstitutional, the constitution doesn't mandate feelings) and excluding the South from the common territory..."
The quote above about violation of the constitution's extradition clause with regards to terrorist (by which I particularly mean not targeted but directed very broadly/randomly at the southern population, including even blacks) murderers clearly disproves that assertion.
And with regards to the fugitive slave clause of the constitution, even Lincoln acknowledged that laws had not been passed "to keep good" politicians' "unanimous oath" to the constitution, noting that, "All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution--to this provision [referring specifically to the fugitive slave clause] as much as to any other."
Those two examples (the extradition clause and the fugitive slave clause) are certainly sufficient to validate what South Carolina said in its declaration: "Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."
So I repeated my question to you: Even if secession hadn't been an unconditional 10th amendment right -- it irrefutably was, but even if -- what recourse do you think states should have if a majority in Congress and the president simply decide to disregard the constitution in ruling over them? Do you think whoever controls DC should be able to trash the constitution however they please so long as they can maintain control of DC through elections?
"This wasn't about crony capitalism or constitutional violations by the federal government." That's exactly what it was about, and even prominent abolitionists said so. Your position is, of course, wholly without any basis in history. You can't even explain what you mean, let alone provide historical evidence to back it up.
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@TheStapleGunKid "From 1850 to 1860, almost every federal law and supreme court ruling went in favor of the South" And what difference did it make? Laws that were supposed to lead to the return of fugitive slaves weren't enforced (and no other attempt to honor constitutional obligations was made in place of federal laws); Republican governors simply didn't fulfill their constitutional obligations to extradite criminals when they had it in their power to do so; Republicans promised to simply defy the Supreme Court's ruling with regards to slavery in the territories at the federal level... So, yes, what you say is true, but it's an empty point, because the North didn't respect the law or even the Supreme Court. As Georgia's declaration of causes said about the fugitive slave law, "The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union." And with regards to prohibiting slavery in the territories, Georgia's declaration said, "we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor."
So what recourse do you think states should have if other states decide 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 (e.g. the fugitive slave clause prior to the 13th amendment), then they should secede. If other states are simply going to dishonor their constitutional oaths, then (1) the states on the losing end of that constitutional abuse can implore them to honor their commitment and if those other states still don't act honorably, 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 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 dishonorable states, but even if you think the federal government should use force to settle constitutional disputes between states, what recourse do you think states should have if the dishonorable states have enough power in DC to prevent force from being used against them? What then? Do you think there should be no recourse for the states whose constitutional rights have been abused, unless they can get enough power in DC to be able to use force against the dishonorable states?
I said, "the Republicans never did anything for the sake of any slaves," and you responded with:
"the republican controlled government:
* Banned slavery the federal territories
* Abolished slavery in Washington DC
* Ruled the slaves who escaped from the rebel states to Union lines were free
* Banned the military from returning any escaped slaves."
Do you actually think they did any of those things for the sake of any slaves? What reason do you have to think any of those things were done for the sake of any slaves? And the only one of those things they even said they wanted to do before they were already deep in a war they had launched for reasons (as they themselves declared) that had nothing to do with slavery was the one that directly defied the ruling the Supreme Court had already issued on the subject. And how was that one supposed to help any slaves anyway? Are you asserting that slaves were better off in Mississippi than being taken to Kansas? That's an absurd argument. But the good of any slaves had absolutely nothing to do with the Republicans motivations in that question anyway.
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@TheStapleGunKid Does the following Lincoln quote not accurately summarize the Republicans' reasons for doing everything they did that happened to benefit any slaves? “Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds … I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.”
Similarly, the abolitionist Spooner said about the Republicans, "The pretense that the 'abolition of slavery' was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of “maintaining the national honor.” Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general – not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. 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."
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@TheStapleGunKid I think by the time of the DC emancipation act it was no longer possible for Republicans to pretend to be anti-slavery (as opposed to just anti-southern simply because they were anti-anything that stands in the way of crony capitalism) without supporting the emancipation of the slaves in DC, and it was necessary to maintain an anti-slavery position to maintain a minimally credible pretense, particularly in the eyes of England and France, which might very well have given potentially decisive support to the South if it hadn't been for the the South's strong pro-slavery stance and the North's pretenses of being anti-slavery, for the sake of the Republicans' real motivations, namely the advancement of crony capitalism.
In any case, positions which evolved after the war was fully underway are irrelevant to questions of what the war was about. That doesn't apply to the question of slavery in the territories, because that was a position the Republicans took well before Lincoln's call to militarily subjugate the southern states.
There are three main reasons/excuses I see for the Republicans' position on slavery in the territories. #1 is the anti-slavery excuse. The notable things about that excuse is that excluding slavery from the territories would have done nothing for the good of any slaves (who would otherwise be kept in more strongly pro-slavery states) and it promised to do nothing for the good of any slaves. Lincoln could make his typical vague politician remarks about "ultimate course of extinction," but although lots of people didn't realize it at the time, slavery was on the ultimate course of extinction (particularly African slavery in the Americas) already, and there was no reason to think that the federal government excluding slavery from the territories was going to make a bit of difference, particularly not a helpful difference -- it could very well have had the opposite effect -- and I've never seen any evidence (and I bet you haven't either) of Lincoln explaining why he thought it would have made a difference. Do you even have a theory of your own?
#2 is the main reason Lincoln gave, namely white supremacy, wanting to keep black people out of the North altogether, to keep them from ever settling in the first place in states where they hadn't already settled, etc. If you're not familiar with the things Lincoln said of that sort, I can share quotes with you. And, of course, Lincoln's anti-black (disguised as anti-slavery) views were common with lots of Republicans. As much as the North liked to pretend to care about slave owners giving their slaves lashings, Republicans in northern states were pushing for (and in some cases passing) laws that punished black people with lashings for simply trying to live in their states. More free blacks chose to remain in the South than lived in so-called free states.
#3 is the political advantage that getting new states to align with the North offered. That was, of course, the reason that the North and South had been admitting states in pairs, one slave state and one free state at a time, going back to the 1700s with Vermont and Kentucky, well before some of the northern states with small numbers of slaves had even voted to begin the decades long process of gradually abolishing slavery. So the political fight for power in DC which had been a factor relating to slavery since at least the 3/5 compromise obviously remained a major issue in 1860. And Republicans, as was noted in the seceding states declarations of causes, were exploiting the issue for political gain in the pursuit of the crony capitalist motivations which had been at play from the beginning and which dominated the Republican party.
As to fugitive slaves, the constitution said that they "shall be delivered up." You do recognize they weren't being delivered up, don't you? Whether or not you recognize that they weren't, do you think the northern states should have honored that constitutional commitment?
That brings me back to what I asked before. I'll repeat:
So what recourse do you think states should have if other states decide 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 (e.g. the fugitive slave clause prior to the 13th amendment), then they should secede. If other states are simply going to dishonor their constitutional oaths, then (1) the states on the losing end of that constitutional abuse can implore them to honor their commitment and if those other states still don't act honorably, 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 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 dishonorable states, but even if you think the federal government should use force to settle constitutional disputes between states, what recourse do you think states should have if the dishonorable states have enough power in DC to prevent force from being used against them? What then? Do you think there should be no recourse for the states whose constitutional rights have been abused, unless they can get enough power in DC to be able to use force against the dishonorable states?
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@TheStapleGunKid "What makes you think the Republicans were only pretending to be anti-slavery?"
That depends in part on how we define anti-slavery. If by anti-slavery we mean willing to sacrifice their other leading goals to any degree for the sake of trying to accelerate (in some clear and reasonable way) legal changes that would bring about the freedom of slaves, then all the evidence suggests Lincoln and Republicans generally were just pretending to be anti-slavery.
As Lincoln said, "It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution--to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause 'shall be delivered up' their oaths are unanimous." And that, of course, is why real abolitionists like Wendell Phillips said, "secession 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."
But at the very least, for Lincoln or the Republicans in Congress to have been meaningfully anti-slavery, they would have had to object to the Corwin amendment, but Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress generally supported the Corwin amendment.
The only sense in which Republicans in 1860 were anti-slavery is the sense in which Republicans today are anti-abortion, which is to say that even when Trump was president and Republicans had a majority in both the House and the Senate, not only did they not do anything to criminalize abortion, but they continued even to pass budgets funding Planned Parenthood -- that was as telling as the Corwin amendment, even if it wasn't as dramatic as passing a constitutional amendment. It's not that Republicans are committed to pro-choice principles; it's just that they're happy to fund raise and campaign on the issue of abortion, to stoke division on a wedge social issue for the sake of the political advantages it gives them so that they can use their political power to hand out big military contracts and do whatever else they actually care about. Is there any reason to think Lincoln was any different from today's Republicans in these respects?
I plan to continue responding to your above comment, but I'll post this for now.
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