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

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@TheStapleGunKid Whatever the Emancipation Proclamation was about, it (1) came after both sides had already fully committed to war so provides no evidence as to why the South seceded and went to war (and the North officially declared that its purposes in the war had nothing to do with interfering with slavery, which Lincoln reaffirmed after issuing the preliminary emancipation proclamation), (2) didn't apply to the South as a whole (not even to all of the states that had seceded), and was conditional on the areas where it did "apply" (which I put in quotation marks, because it only applied where the North at the time had no power to enforce it) continuing to assert their independence beyond the effective date, which is to say it wouldn't have applied at all if those states had forfeited their American birthright (which was, of course, what the war was really about), and (3) was a war measure, and whatever effect it had on slavery was entirely incidental to its real purpose of subjugating the southern states, as Lincoln himself said. Add all that up and yes, absolutely, it's very fair to say the emancipation proclamation wasn't about the North abolishing slavery in the South. And, yes, Republicans didn't want power in order to help slaves, let alone abolish slavery in the South, which they had no constitutionally legitimate means of doing even if they had wanted to. Republicans wanted power for much the same reasons they want power today: to advance the big business interests that they represented. There was nothing they did with regards to slavery that wasn't in those interests. It didn't do slaves any good to keep them in the South and out of the territories. The benefits of that leading Republican plank accrued to Republicans, not slaves. "All of those things were about the main thing at stake in the war: Slavery." Ha ha! If only you could say what about slavery was at stake in the war! Did those things relate to slavery? The one things that's undeniably clear is that they didn't have anything whatsoever to do with the North abolishing slavery in the South.
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@TheStapleGunKid "You can't reasonably say something was not about doing something it actually did." So you think US participation in WWII was about supporting communism? Or are you just making another stupid, indefensible argument? Of course, you are, because you yourself said it would be absurd to claim that WWI was about digging trenches. "Also, claiming 'it only applied where the North at the time had no power to enforce it', is just silly." Call the historical facts "silly" if you want, but they're still the historical facts. The fact is the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't enforced in any part of the South (or the border states) that were under Union control at the time the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, because it only "applied" where the Union didn't have the power to put it into effect at the time. As the London (England) Spectator said 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.” "To preserve and expand slavery." Here you are begging the question again. None of the things in that long list was about the North abolishing slavery in the South, and therefore, there was nothing to "preserve" slavery against. And the war certainly wasn't about the Confederacy trying to expand its borders by taking territory from the North (or anyone else.) Even you don't believe that BS, but maybe you're enough of a liar to say you do. The day after the preliminary emancipation proclamation was issued Lincoln said, "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 [sic]." And you say it was about the North abolishing slavery in the South - ha!
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@TheStapleGunKid "...100% false. There actually were a few places..." Sounds more like <1% false than 100% false, which is to say >99% true. "Of course, because that's all Lincoln could do with the powers he had as commander in chief." Even if you want to pretend that Lincoln limited himself to the powers he had under the constitution (which matches your usual level of absurdity), the point remains that it wasn't about abolishing slavery. Whether Lincoln would hypothetically have done something about slavery if he had had other powers is beside the actual historical fact that what he did do wasn't about slavery. "You cannot reasonably deny that they saw a threat to slavery and believed that threat was valid." They saw threats, but the threats they described weren't threats of the North abolishing slavery in any constitutionally legitimate way (or in any other way that could fairly be called "abolishing slavery.") And the threats they did see weren't threats that seceding protected against. Seceding did nothing to get fugitive slaves delivered up from the northern states but rather involved the seceding states knowingly and willingly forfeiting those constitutional protections of slavery for the sake of independence.
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@TheStapleGunKid I don't know and I don't really care what exceptions there may have been to the proclamation Lincoln actually issued. The EP begins, ""That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be [asserting their American birthright to alter or abolish their government whenever it to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness] shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free..." So if the EP applied to any other areas it was in contradiction of Lincoln's order. According to the EP itself, what I said is 100% true.
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@jaranarm Insecure about losing slavery? Losing it to what? Murderous terrorist attacks against random Southern civilians until they decided to appease the terrorists? There certainly wasn't any prospect whatsoever of the North forcing abolition on the South according to the rule of law.
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@TheStapleGunKid My statement was 100% true of Lincoln's EP as he wrote it. And all this is irrelevant anyway, because it all came long after the fact. If you want to say that the South went to war because the EP was coming regardless, prove that it would have come if the South hadn't seceded with evidence from before the time the South seceded. Of course, that's ridiculous, because the very first sentence of the EP says it only applies to those areas asserting their American birthright to alter or abolish their government whenever it to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness, which if they hadn't seceded wouldn't have applied (not even ineffectually) anywhere at all.
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@jaranarm "it was the South who kept accusing the North of forcing abolition on them" "forcing abolition on them" is an extremely dishonest propaganda summary of what the South actually said the North was doing, which the North had actually been doing, which was things like trashing the constitution in support of murderous terrorism against random Southerners (including even blacks.) The South never accused the North of forcing abolition on the South by constitutionally legitimate means (of which there were none to be found even if the North had actually wanted to find them, which Lincoln and the Republican party honestly denied.)
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@TheStapleGunKid It's not that you said the South went to war because the EP was coming; it's that the EP proves nothing about what the war was about unless it was coming prior to and apart from secession, which it clearly wasn't. "All that mattered was that he was going to do it..." Precisely, it didn't matter because he wasn't going to. And even if he had, it wouldn't have applied anywhere at all.
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@TheStapleGunKid So what is your point about the EP then? What are you saying it proves? Or what claim of mine are you saying it disproves? You don't actually have a point, do you? "secession and war was the only way they felt they could avoid his efforts." First of all, as to the war, it was Lincoln's North, not the South, that was unwilling to negotiate a peaceful secession. As to secession, what was Lincoln going to do relating to slavery that Lincoln couldn't have done just as well if not better after secession? What are you imagining secession avoided. Certainly not the things to which the southern states objected in their declarations of causes.
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@jaranarm So are you more or less saying the constitution the southern states adopted after secession proves what the war was about?
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@jaranarm Honoring the dead? What makes you think I care about that? But how are you pretending I'm denying or contradicting anything Southerners admitted? Obviously, I don't agree with everything they said, but nothing Southerners said is inconsistent with anything I've said as to the historical facts. What they said most certainly contradicts your revisionist myth. And what I said in my first reply to you remains unassailably true: What were none of those things (in your list) about? The North abolishing slavery in the South. What were none of those things about? Anything that was at stake in the war. What were most of those things about? Gaining partisan advantages over DC for purposes unrelated to slavery. You replied that those things were all about guaranteeing slavery to the South so they wouldn't lose it, but you can't say what threat there was to the South losing it, let alone what threat there was that secession protected against. As to my last question to you, should I take your last answer as a yes, or is that just another one of the evasive responses necessary to exposing the holes in your position?
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@jaranarm I don't disagree with what Southerners said in the sense that anything they said contradicts or disproves anything I said. I disagree much more with Republican Northerners, but what they said doesn't contradict or disprove what I said earlier, particularly not as to the historical facts. If there's anything I've said or anything you think is part of my position that is contradicts by anything in the historical record, try to show me. "pretty much everything they said was about them fighting to ensure slavery in the South and its expansion to the West" Show me even one quote to the effect. That's ahistorical BS. When you say "fighting" do you mean fighting in the figurative, political sense? Or do you mean actually waging war? I'm sure you don't want to say what you mean, because the only hope for your argument is to not define the words you're using. You suggested before that changes in the Confederate constitution (relative to the US constitution) were decisive proof of what the war was about. You still haven't told me if you believe that? If I wanted to "win" you're argument that's yet another point I wouldn't stick around to defend.
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People like every single person in the historical record that said anything about the prospect of war in the immediate lead up to the war or said anything about the war during the war or immediately afterward.
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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]"
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Because your idea of "patriotism" is vile. 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."
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@TheStapleGunKid The subsequent history of the United States (conquering Indian territory, taking over Hawaii, going to war with Spain to take Puerto Rico and the Philippines as war prizes, sacrificing thousands of Americans in the Philippine-American War in order to deny Filipinos their independence (much like the War of Northern Aggression)...) proved the nonsense of that claim. American imperialism obviously didn't depend on slavery at all. But even if what Beecher said had been true, how do you figure that contradicts the Blanchard quote?
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@TheStapleGunKid The end of slavery didn't bring an end to or even slow down America's expansionism/imperialism, so what reason is there to think anything about slavery was especially important to expansionism/imperialist tendencies to start with? Are you suggesting that the South's reasons for supporting expansionism/imperialism were entirely motivated by things relating directly to slavery and that the South didn't share in any of the North's other reasons for supporting expansionism/imperialism, that none of those reasons also applied to the South? You think the South was really that different from the North in other respects, i.e. in those ways not relating directly to slavery?
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@TheStapleGunKid As to the Blanchard quote, where/how did Blanchard assert that the Confederacy was committed, let alone perfectly committed, to the rights, liberties, welfare, and lives of individual men? He didn't. You're just making a straw man argument (that wouldn't even follow from what Beecher said, even if what Beecher said had been true.)
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@TheStapleGunKid Not that I read all that mess, but you didn't answer a single one of my questions (and, no, removing the first part of my first question to take it out of context doesn't count.)
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@TheStapleGunKid Why was he an abolitionist writing articles for the Liberator and whatever else if he was ignoring slavery? Because your analysis is childish foolishness. Do you favor murdering people as a way of resolving political disputes? Apparently so. No wonder you have no ability to understand abolitionists.
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@TheStapleGunKid The question was: "The end of slavery didn't bring an end to or even slow down America's expansionism/imperialism, so what reason is there to think anything about slavery was especially important to expansionism/imperialist tendencies to start with?" The first part of that sentence was there for a reason. You didn't answer my actual question at all. And you didn't even begin to answer the other two questions.
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@TheStapleGunKid "Jefferson Davis who advocated secession to preserve slavery" He certainly never said any such thing. That's just your revisionist propaganda myth because you fear and hate freedom.
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You clearly eat too much soy!
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Sebastian, the southern states had been practicing slavery since 1776 (and before). (So, too, had the northern states for most of the years between 1776 and 1860.) How did slavery suddenly cause anything in 1860? It wasn't slavery but northern states trashing the rule of law that led the southern states to secede. As former (at the time in 1863) President Franklin Pierce said to a crowd in his home state of New Hampshire in 1863: "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?”
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@TheStapleGunKid Sure, the election of a Republican to the presidency pushed the southern states to secede. And you want to summarize the election of a Republican president as "slavery"? But that's the kind of dishonest propaganda that your argument depends on. But to even entertain that foolishness we'd at least have to ask and answer the question of what the Republicans would have done if the southern states hadn't seceded. And the answer is (1) most certainly not abolishing slavery in the slave states, which Lincoln had no means of doing even if he had wanted to, (2) nothing even tangentially relating to slavery that wouldn't have happened anyway and more readily if the North had respected the southern states' right to choose their own government, (3) further exploitation of the agricultural export economy for the advantage of the nascent robber baron class, and (4) with regards to the constitutional order and the rule of law, as South Carolina said in its declaration of causes of secession, "The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist".
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@TheStapleGunKid “'Rebellion' is defined by Webster, 'an open and avowed renunciation of the authority of the government, to which one owes allegiance.' This can only apply to government on the European principle – there can be no such thing as owing allegiance in a government expressly held on the will of the people.”
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@TheStapleGunKid So you prefer a definition of rebellion that could be used to describe a slave's resistance to his master. That's the kind of rebellion you wish to denigrate.
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@TheStapleGunKid So your argument depends on making up your own unique definitions for words?
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@TheStapleGunKid But as per the definition itself, the sort of rebellion you denigrate is precisely the definition that would apply to a slave's resistance to his master. It would make sense to denigrate rebellion by the definition I quoted, but that definition doesn't apply to the South. So you denigrate rebellion by the definition that applies to slaves resisting their masters. And that fits perfectly with your hatred of freedom.
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@TheStapleGunKid You called the Confederate states' secession a "rebellion." Did you not mean to imply any negative connotation to that term? It would be a very odd word choice if you didn't intend any negative connotation and definition. There's more for me to say, but let me get you to answer that question first.
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@jaranarm The slave states that fought on the side of the Union tell us nothing about what the war was about, because "the Confederates failed to take [those states]"? what childish foolishness!
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@TheStapleGunKid "Why would it be an odd word choice not to intend any negative connotation?" So you don't think any negative connotations were implied by people that called the war the "War of the Rebellion"? You're saying that was a completely neutral name? That seems an odd assumption to me, but what ultimately matters about the words you used is what you meant by them. If you didn't mean to imply any negative connotations, so be it. In any case, it remains the case that rebellion in the negative sense (as in the definition in the quote I shared) can only apply to government on the Old World principle. But you said yes, there can be and there was an allegiance owed to a government that derived its authority from the consent of the governed. That is what you meant, isn't it?
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@TheStapleGunKid Is it just a coincidence you asked about two "rebellions" that you oppose? What about the American rebellion of 1776? Or the Warsaw Uprising of 1944? According to the definition you say you want to use, they were just as much rebellions as the ones you asked about, so no, I wouldn't deny that any of the four were rebellions by the definition you've put forward. Would you? But what about the question that gets at more than just semantics? I repeat: In any case, it remains the case that rebellion in the negative sense (as in the definition in the quote I shared) can only apply to government on the Old World principle. But you said yes, there can be and there was an allegiance owed to a government that derived its authority from the consent of the governed. That is what you meant, isn't it?
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@TheStapleGunKid "But I don't find any negative sense regarding the use of the word rebellion." The question, as per the definition of rebellion I originally quoted, is where allegiance is rightfully owed. But if that's a question you didn't mean to address with your original comment, not even with so much as a connotation, then so be it. To return to your original comment, then, when would you say the rebellion started? When the southern states voted to secede? Or when they took up arms against the forces that sought to subjugate them?
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@TheStapleGunKid So if a vote is all it takes, and if you think it odd to even consider any implications of where allegiance is rightfully owed, would you just as readily call Brexit a rebellion then?
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 @TheStapleGunKid Why not? Why would that not fit the definition you're wanting to use?
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@TheStapleGunKid "They didn't just vote to do it and then keep complying with federal laws and the constitution, they voted to do it and then stopped complying with them." In other words, they voted to secede, and then they seceded as opposed to voting to secede and then acting as if they hadn't had a vote at all. But regardless, the question was when the "rebellion" started. (Your original comment to which I first replied was, "They have nothing to do with why the Confederate states started their rebellion.") If the vote was the start of the "rebellion," as you said above, then the vote was sufficient to meet your definition of rebellion, and a vote certainly meets the definition you quoted of an "open resistance to an established government," as much as anything the Confederate states subsequently did (although other things met the "or violent" part of the definition you quoted.) And in that case, Brexit was likewise based on a vote, and the EU is certainly an established government, not just a "trade organization." Calling the EU merely a "trade organization" is ridiculous. Even the name identifies the EU as a Union, the same root word as identifies the US. But based on your reasoning, we should call Brexit a rebellion (even if you defy your own reasoning.)
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@TheStapleGunKid "The EU is a trade Union, not a nation." First of all, I didn't say anything about a "nation," so enough of that straw man. As the the "trade Union" foolishness, how many trade unions have popularly elected parliaments? How many trade unions can people have citizenship in? How many trade unions have courts that have asserted supremacy over their member states?
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@TheStapleGunKid "the fact is the EU has an exit policy" And if we were talking about employment without an "exit policy" we'd rightfully call it slavery. "It certainly doesn't meet the definition of 'An act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler.'" But the first 7 southern states voting to secede does? Why? Because Republicans denied their right to do so whereas the EU didn't deny the UK's right to do so, even though what those 7 states did was the same as what the UK did?
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@jaranarm "The UK signed a mutual treaty with the EU for all sides to recognize its departure and independence from the trade union." Are you referring to the EU as a "trade union." Are you saying it's necessary to sign a treaty in order to exit a trade union? Would the US not be able to exit NAFTA/USMCA without a treaty that all the members states of NAFTA/USMCA mutually agreed to? What do you think would happen if a country tried to exit a trade union without signing an exit treaty beyond that member state simply ceasing to receive (or give) the advantages of the treaty? Your "trade union" foolishness aside, I guess the UK did finally sign an exit treaty, but a No-Deal Brexit was a very real possibility that was much talked about and would have involved nothing more than the discontinuation of special arrangements, certainly nothing essential to the state sovereignty of the UK or the power of the EU. And it's not true that the "The UK signed a mutual treaty with the EU for all sides to recognize its departure and independence..." The treaty had nothing to do with recognizing the UK's departure or independence. The treaty was about EU relations following the UK's departure and independence, which facts didn't depend on the subsequent treaty whatsoever. "It was born purely out of mob rule, nothing more." By "mob rule" do you mean the democratic process? Does representative democracy, by the way, not count as "democratic process" in your book? In any case, the North never contested the process by which the southern states expressed their will; the North contested the right of the southern states to unilaterally secede completely regardless of the process by which they would express their will. But, of course, your argument is little more than obfuscation of the relevant facts.
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@jaranarm "You honestly think NAFTA is a trade union?" I was responding to staplegun classifying the EU as a trade union. That wasn't my terminology. Your terminology (multinational political entity) is a reasonable description of the EU (and of the US prior to the Republicans' war to end free government in America.) "the EU recognized it and made a withdrawal agreement." The "withdrawal agreement" wasn't an agreement to allow the UK to withdraw; it was an agreement on the terms on which the EU and UK would interact after withdrawal. But, yes, the EU recognized the UK's right to self-government, unlike Lincoln in 1861 who fought a war against the right of people to choose their own government. "Yes the Confederacy was mob rule because it was enacted by a very select group of men acting out their own interests well outside the democratic government process." What's the origin of this crazy conspiracy theory of yours? Did you invent it 10 years ago?
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@silencer1286 What Lincoln did in his official capacity is "irrelevant" because of a personal wish that he said he couldn't really act on?
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@silencer1286 "he literally had a draft of the emancipation proclamation when he said the quote" Indeed, so the emancipation proclamation, by Lincoln's own admission was (in his own words) "a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.” In other words, the emancipation proclamation was no proof that Lincoln ever in any way acted on his "personal wish," but rather just another example of Lincoln acting on his paramount objective of destroying government by the consent of the governed, enslaving the American people.
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Money generated from exploiting the southern states. Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner: "The whole affair... has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. ... 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.
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@A.LeeMorrisJr > His priority was trying to hold the union together, not slavery. Even that's a misrepresentation of Lincoln's position: it's not at all true that ending slavery was even so much as a lesser priority for Lincoln (and/or the Republican party.) Lincoln didn't want to do anything to end slavery in the southern states at all. He said he wished that the southern states would end slavery just like he wished Brazil and the Ottoman Empire would end slavery, but he never expressed any more interest in doing anything to end slavery in the southern states than in ending slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
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@A.LeeMorrisJr Don't waste your time reading or replying to anything that dishonest tool says.
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@beans00001 > secession for what? You tell me! Or do you just want to suggest myths that you know are lies?
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@CarlLeith I don't read Rundstedt's comments any more, because I'm fully convinced that he's knowingly lying and intentionally distorting the historical facts, but in case you had the misfortune of reading his response to me and were confused enough to think he made any valid counterargument, let me know in your own words, and I'll dispel whatever counterargument you may be tempted to believe.
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@stevemitz4740 "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
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@stevemitz4740 Indeed, but as the South Carolina theologian James Henly Thornwell said, "If they [the Republican-led North] prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States forever abolished, deriving its powers from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. The Government does not now recognize itself as an ordinance of God, and when all the checks and balances of the Constitution are gone, we may easily figure to ourselves the career and the destiny of this godless monster of democratic absolutism."
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