Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@TheStapleGunKid The southern states were willing to accept an anti-slavery president, one who won the election legitimately (albeit with the lowest percentage of the popular vote -- less than 40% -- of any president from George Washington to Biden to win an outright majority in the electoral college), so long as that president and his party weren't seeking to turn the constitutionally limited republic that respected the constitutionally protected rights of political minorities into a democracy in which the "majority" (such as it was) could do whatever it wanted, disregarding whatever parts of the constitution it wanted to disregard.
As the Georgia declaration of causes of secession said, "The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract..."
South Carolina summarized what the would-be results of Republicans taking control of the executive branch by saying, "The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy." (And, of course, history proved them right on every point: the guaranties of the constitution no longer exist today (and haven't since the first Republican administration), the right of self-government that once made America exceptional is now dead, etc.)
Texas said in its declaration of causes: "They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights."
So it's undeniable that the southern states seceded over multiple allegations of constitutional violations (which they alone had the right to judge for themselves -- as James Madison said, "...there can be no tribunal, above their [the states'] authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated...")
An anti-slavery president needn't have sought to destroy the guaranties of the constitution, needn't have destroyed the equal rights of the states, needn't have destroyed the right of self-government, needn't have been the enemy of the slaveholding states...
An anti-slavery administration that hadn't done those things the southern states could have accepted (not that they were under any obligation to accept any administration if another form of government seemed to them more likely to effect their safety and happiness.)
But, in any case, the fact remains that the southern states fought for their right to self-government.
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Why the North fought that war?
Official Union declaration: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery], but... to preserve the Union [i.e. maintain control over the southern states against their will, without their consent, and to deny them the right to independence and self-government]"
Lincoln: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union [like a man beating his girlfriend is "saving the union" -- violently subjugating your partners is actually the destruction of union, because it's waging war against voluntary consent, which is what makes a union a union], and is not either to save or to destroy slavery... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."
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@zenever0 But the war, in any case, was clearly all about control, about putting an end to "the Jeffersonian idea, that 'the best government is that which governs least," as Republicans proudly celebrated at the close of the war.
Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have “Abolished Slavery!” That they have “Saved the Country!” ...
"The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... 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,” ...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. ...
"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,” ... 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..."
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Cornerstone speech: "...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."
Cornerstone speech: "This new constitution. or form of government, constitutes the subject to which your attention will be partly invited. In reference to it, I make this first general remark: it amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and liberties. All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers under the laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old constitution, is still maintained and secured. All the essentials of the old constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people, have been preserved and perpetuated. Some changes have been made. Some of these I should have preferred not to have seen made; but other important changes do meet my cordial approbation. They form great improvements upon the old constitution. So, taking the whole new constitution, I have no hesitancy in giving it as my judgment that it is decidedly better than the old.
"Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new."
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@Rundstedt1 You keep repeating the same quote saying that a constitutional amendment (the only constitutionally legitimate way the federal government could have abolished slavery in the slave states) was the threat posed to slavery, as if you believe that. Now you say Missouri and Maryland voted for the 13th amendment, as if that would have happened apart from the war and all of Lincoln's violations of civil liberties in the North, etc. But even if Missouri and Maryland had been on the verge of abolishing slavery and voting for the 13th amendment apart from the war -- nonsense, but even if -- there still wouldn't be enough states, even today in 2021, even counting West Virginia, which presumably wouldn't have become a separate state, even counting Oklahoma which was already firmly on the side of slavery... to ratify the 13th amendment without the support of the other slave states (besides Maryland and Missouri.)
You can keep spouting your nonsense about the Republicans "putting slavery on its path to its ultimate extinction" but until you can explain how they were going to do that, all that's left to your argument is your baseless faith that Yankees, even as they voted for the Corwin amendment irrevocably protecting slavery from federal interference, even as Lincoln raised no objections to its ratification, noting that it wouldn't have really changed anything anyway, were intrinsically holy and therefore deserved to rule over the deplorable South because of what they would one day in some inexplicable way do for the slaves. Not much has changed, has it?
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