Patrick Cleburne
TED-Ed
comments
Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "Debunking the myth of the Lost Cause: A lie embedded in American history - Karen L. Cox" video.
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@qcthesxientist Are you suggesting that the North wasn't willing to allow plantation owners to continue holding humans as cattle? If so, what evidence is there of that? If not, how could there have been a war over it?
As the London (England) Spectator said after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, “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.”
Lincoln himself had said in 1861, after the the original 7 Confederate states had seceded but before the start of the war, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
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@careyfreeman5056 "There are ways to go about being recognized as a separate country."
Not when the North refused to even negotiate.
Here's what a couple northern abolitionists said about it at the time:
"...the advocates of "unbroken Union" abruptly refuse to negotiate with the receding party (who offer compensation for what they must take with them), thereby finally denying their right to become a separate party, and pronouncing the final word that the Union recognizes no two parties who can negotiate with each other; which is equivalent to saying that the political Union (or clanship) is more sacred than persons, or property, or freedom, or any other inalienable human right. Thus completely destroying the last vestige of union between the parties, and forcing both into hostile attitudes, and both prepare to destroy each other."
"It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?" -George Bassett
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@cadenvanvalkenburg6718 It was clearly an independence war, right? The South fought for the right to self-government. The North fought to destroy the principles the United States were founded on, that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, that no men have a natural right to rule over any other men, that people have a right to alter or abolish their form of government whenever it to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
And the North fought to destroy the constitution: "to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress." Thomas Jefferson
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@N0noy1989 If the South was "obviously wrong," why did so many Northerners, abolitionists, foreigners, etc. at the time (including all those I mentioned in my last comment and lots more) fail to see the "obvious"?
As for names, if you want to call it the Southern Revolutionary War or the Second Revolutionary War or the Second Independence War or the Southern Independence War, those are all good names, too.
However, the 13 colonies didn't really have a legal argument for independence. Their claim to a right to independence was based on the inalienable right of all people, regardless of the existing laws and political structures, "to alter or to abolish it [the existing government], and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." And, of course, the southern states had that inalienable right, too, but on top of that inalienable right (which was more than sufficient) they also had a legal (constitutional) right, and that was the primary argument they made, and that legal argument was valid, too.
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@justintime1343 OK, it's fair enough to call the shelling of Fort Sumter the start of the war, but that didn't happen until after the southern states gave the northern states multiple months to negotiate a peaceful separation. The southern states peacefully voted to secede, then gave the other states multiple months to peacefully negotiate terms, then gave the occupying forces multiple warnings, and only then fired on the occupying forces.
As the northern abolitionist George Bassett wrote before the shelling of Fort Sumter:
"...the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
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@Michael Rogers Slavery had been around since 1776. Slavery wasn't the cause of anything that happened in 1860/61. Northern states trashing the constitution and the rule of law was what led to secession.
"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 (from New Hampshire) 1863
And as to the Republicans' reasons for trashing the constitution and the rule of law, another New Englander, the famous abolitionist Lysander Spooner wrote, "The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, 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 Congress and the president are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them. 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!' That they have 'Preserved our Glorious Union!'"
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@farmsalot1233 "the southern constitution was an exact copy of the usa constitution except it added slavery."
So where are the following clauses (from the Confederate constitution) in the US constitution?
"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry..."
"...but 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 for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; in all which cases such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof."
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@thankyoucaptainobvious7707 You ask, "The South wanted to leave the Union in order to continue the practice of what" as if the South wouldn't have been able to continue practicing slavery in the union, but that's the historically baseless propaganda of the Righteous Cause Myth. How are you imagining the South's desire to practice slavery was threatened by remaining in the union? What are you imagining the North was going to do to prevent the southern states from continuing to practice slavery?
As to the question of "freedom to do what," is like asking what slaves that tried to escape slavery wanted to do with their freedom. Asking "freedom to do what" completely misses the point. Even if they wanted to continue working on the same plantations where they had worked as slaves, they had a right to freedom. Even if they wanted to lie to the public in order to get elected to office and use their salary to waste their lives away in drunkenness, they still had a right to freedom. Freedom doesn't depend on what you want to do with your freedom. If your freedom depends on whether someone else approves of what you want to do with your freedom, then you're not free.
So, no, it's not at all true that the South wanted to leave the union in order to continue practicing slavery, although it is true that the South wanted to leave the union and that the South wanted to continue practicing slavery, just like it's true that the South wanted to leave the union and wanted to continue drinking water. If you want to add an "in order to" to that sentence, then you need to answer the questions: How are you imagining the South's desire to practice slavery was threatened by remaining in the union? What are you imagining the North was going to do to prevent the southern states from continuing to practice slavery?
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@mackmckinney5206 There have always been Americans with imperialist/expansionist ambitions (the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Indian wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Vietnam War, the proxy war in Ukraine... and that's not even close to a comprehensive list of wars supported by Americans with imperialist aims), but the Confederacy didn't fight for imperialism, and it's absurd to characterize the Confederate cause as imperialist just because some of America's many imperialist hawks happened to be Southerners; the Confederacy only fought one war, and it was an anti-imperialist war, fought against the North's imperialist ambitions. As the London (England) Times said in November of 1861: "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."
And as Jefferson Davis said in his presidential inaugural speech: "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."
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@sbnwnc What David Wenger says is true, and the differences between the Confederate constitution and US constitution provide proof on multiple points. The Confederate constitution, for example, does away with the US constitution's "general welfare" clause, specifically limits Congress' taxing power to "revenue necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States …" (contrary to the taxing power that the Supreme Court used to justify the individual mandate, for example), the Confederate constitution added a clause that “… no bounties … shall be granted from the Treasury…”, disallowed any tariffs to “promote or foster any branch of industry”, prevented Congress' power to regulate commerce from being "construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce” except along waterways and harbors, added a line item veto in opposition to pork barrel spending... and I could go on, but that's more than enough to show you need to do a whole lot more reading on your own and not from your usual propaganda sources.
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@sbnwnc He could hardly have said what he was fighting for before he was fighting, but as to what he would fight for, he said in his inaugural address: "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."
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@Fr99763 Have you read the first part of South Carolina's declaration of causes of secession, the part that deals with the historical and legal basis for the right to secession (including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the peace treaty with Great Britain, the process by which 11 of 13 states established a new government under the constitution initially without the other 2 (even though, although South Carolina's declaration doesn't mention it, the Articles required unanimity for any amendments), and the 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights which "to remove all doubt... declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people"? It's only 10 short paragraphs, just one or two sentences each. I'll quote that whole section in a separate comment. Do you disagree with anything South Carolina said there?
And was the constitution itself not established by the same legal principles as the southern states seceded in 1860-61? You say there is no legal due process in the constitution about secession, but there was no legal due process in the Articles about secession either.
And is it not true as Thomas Jefferson said in 1798 that, "the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress"? If that's true, how could there have been any legal due process for secession anyway? Such a process would have required a judge, but the constitution was as Jefferson said, a "compact among powers having no common judge".
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@Fr99763 Quoting from South Carolina's declaration of causes of secession:
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."
They further solemnly declared that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments-- Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article "that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."
Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: "ARTICLE 1-- His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof."
Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were-- separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.
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@RageTyrannosaurus What other honest defense of the union and the constitution was there?
“If there are provisions in the Constitution of your country not consistent with your views of principle or expediency, remember that in the nature of things that instrument could only have had its origin in compromise,” Pierce explained to a New York City audience in 1853. “[A]nd remember, too, that you will be faithless to honor and common honesty if you consent to enjoy the principles it confers, and seek to avoid, if any, the burdens it imposes. It cannot be accepted in parts; it is a whole or nothing, and as a whole, with all the right it secures, and the duties it requires, it is to be sacredly maintained... It is no matter what our peculiar views may be, or what prejudices may take possession of our minds or hearts. If, as American citizens, we find ourselves constrained by a law higher or more imperative than this law, we then deny the obligations which the Constitution imposes, and can have no just claim to the protection and blessings which it confers.”
Personally, I side with the abolitionists that wanted to ditch the union and the constitution. As Wendell Phillips said in 1844, expressing a sentiment shared by overwhelming majorities of abolitionists (at least those active in the leading abolitionist organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society), then and for many years after (including the 1857 Worcester Convention of abolitionists, for another example), "[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."
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@metal_fusion Not sure what you meant to reference with that quote from the Russian foreign minister, but here's a quote from the time that mentions Russia and another that describes it more generally:
“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
"It is constantly said... 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... 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...
: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." George Bassett
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@evanhunt1863 Do you realize that presidents aren't elected by popular vote? That coming in second place in a state is no better than not getting a single vote?
Like you said, if they hadn't seceded, there's a good chance that slavery would not have been abolished as soon. If you think they were fighting for slavery -- as if the North had been fighting for abolition -- then you can say "whoops." But what they were actually fighting for was summed up by the northern abolitionist George Bassett in 1861 before the war even began:
“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.”
Whoops!
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"The confederate constitution not only permitted states to allow slavery, but took it a step further, forbidding them from banning it."
No, it didn't. (It banned the central government of the Confederacy from abolishing slavery -- which the US constitution at the time implicitly did, too, according to Lincoln and practically everyone else, and Lincoln likewise said he had "no objection to" a constitutional amendment which would have made that protection of slavery "express and [going beyond the Confederate constitution, even] irrevocable" -- but the Confederate constitution made a point of not prohibiting states from abolishing slavery, and it even provided for issues that would arise in states that would abolish slavery.)
And you're advancing an absurd re-definition of states rights, too. States rights are the constitutional rights of states. If the constitution prohibits states from granting titles of nobility, it's not anti-states rights to oppose states granting titles of nobility, because it's explicitly not a state's right.
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@richardcaves3601 How was slavery an issue in the war?
Jefferson Davis, April 29, 1861 (emphasis added): "...we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; *all we ask is to be let alone*; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, this we must, resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is abandoned the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to enter into treaties of amity and commerce that cannot but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we will continue to struggle for our inherent right to *freedom, independence, and self-government.*"
And that's exactly the opposite of the Union's position, as Congress officially declared: "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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@sbnwnc The following accounts are all from the South Carolina WPA slaves narratives collected in the 1930's from former slaves that were still alive at that time. These quotes are all from parts of their narratives about the arrival of the Union army:
Heddie Davis: "Yes ma’am, the Yankees, I hear my daddy talk about when they come through old Master’s plantation and everything what they do... Oh, they was the worst people there ever was, Pa say. Took all the hams and shoulders out the smokehouse and like I tell you, what they never carried off, they made a scaffold and burned it up. Lord, have mercy, I hopes I ain’t going never have to meet no Yankees."
Louisa Davis: "When the Yankees come they took off all they couldn’t eat or burn, but don’t let’s talk about that. Maybe if our folks had beat them and get up into their country our folks would have done just like they did. Who knows?"
Lewis Evans: "The Yankees come. First thing they look for was money. They put a pistol right in my forehead and say: ‘I got to have your money, where is it?’ There was a gal, Caroline, who had some money; they took it away from her. They took the geese, the chickens and all that was worth taking off the place, stripped it. Took all the meat out the smoke-house, corn out the crib, cattle out the pasture, burnt the gin-house and cotton. When they left, they shot some cows and hogs and left them lying right there. There was a awful smell round there for weeks after."
Victoria Adams: "The Yankees asked us if we want to be free. I never say I did; I tell them I want to stay with my missus and they went on and let me alone. They destroyed most everything we had except a little vittles; took all the stock and take them with them. They burned all the buildings except the one the master and missus was living in."
Frances Andrews: "I married Allen Andrews after the war. He went to the war with his master. He was at Columbia with the Confederate troops when Sherman burnt the place."
Charley Barber: "When the Yankees come they seem to have special vengeance for my white folks. They took everything they could carry off and burnt everything they couldn’t carry off."
Anderson Bates: "I was fifteen when the Yankees come thru. They took off everything, horses, mules, cows, sheep, goats, turkeys, geese, and chickens. Hogs? Yes sir, they kill hogs and take off what parts they want and leave other parts bleeding on the yard."
Adeline Jackson: "The Yankees that I remembers was not gentlefolks. They stole everything they could take and the meanest thing I ever see was shoats they half killed, cut off the hams, and left the other parts quivering on the ground."
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@sbnwnc ...continuing...
Amos Gadsden: "Sherman set fire everywhere he went—didn’t do much fighting, just wanted to destroy as he went."
Adeline Grey: "I remember when they shoot down the hog. I remember when they shoot the two geese in the yard. They choked my Ma. They went to her and they say; ‘Where is all the white people gold and silver?’ My Ma say she don’t know. ‘You does know!’ they say, and choke her till she couldn’t talk...
"I remember when my Ma saw the Yankees coming that morning she grab the sweet potatoes that been in that oven and throw them in the barrel of feathers that stayed by the kitchen fireplace. Just a barrel to hold chicken feathers when you pick them. That’s all we had to eat that day. Them Yankees put the meat in the sack and go on off. It was late then, about dusk. I remember how the Missus bring us all around the fire. It was dark then. ‘Well children,’ she say, ‘I is sorry to tell you, but the Yankees has carry off your Ma. I don’t know if you’ll ever see her any more.’ Then we children all start crying. We still a sitting there when my Ma come back. She say she slip behind, and slip behind, slip behind, and when she come to a little pine thicket by the side of the road, she dart into it, drop the sack of meat they had her carrying, and start out for home. When we had all make over her, we say to her then: ‘Well why didn’t you bring the sack of meat along with you?’
…Ole Miss had give my Ma a good moss mattress. But the Yankees had carry that off. Rip it up, throw out the moss, and put meat in it."
Fannie Griffin: "The worst time we ever had was when the Yankee men come thru. We had heard they was coming and the missus tell us to put on a big pot of peas to cook, so we put some white peas in a big pot and put a whole ham in it, so that we’d have plenty for the Yankees to eat. Then when they come, they kicked the pot over and the peas went one way and the ham another. The Yankees destroyed almost everything we had. They come in the house and told the missus to give them her money and jewels. She started crying and told them she ain’t got no money or jewels, excepting the ring she had on her finger. They got awfully mad and started destroying everything. They took the cows and horses, burned the gin, the barn, and all the houses except the one master and missus was living in. They didn’t leave us a thing except some big hominy and two banks of sweet potatoes. We chipped up some sweet potatoes and dried them in the sun, then we parched them and ground them up and that’s all we had to use for coffee. It taste pretty good too. For a good while we just live on hominy and coffee."
Hester Hunter: "Oh, my God, them Yankees never bring nothing but trouble and destructiveness when they come here, child."
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@hadara69 "Define "states' rights" without slavery."
Thomas Jefferson's 1798 Kentucky Resolutions had nothing to do with slavery:
"Resolved that the several states composing the US. of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style & title of a Constitution for the US. and of Amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, it’s acts are unauthoritative, void, & of no force. that to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress."
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@Dr.TJ1 "even though that right had yet to be taken away from the southern states"
As if Republicans in DC were going to! As if they had any constitutional authority to do so even if they had wanted to! What BS!
Douglass and Brown had no authority to do anything to alter the legal status of slavery. And the South didn't wage war against Douglass and Brown. The South waged war against the Union. And neither Lincoln nor Congress nor the Supreme Court, which is to say no one with any power to challenge the legal right of the southern states to continue practicing slavery was challenging that right.
As I already said to the person that started this thread, sure, slavery was threatened (as it was threatened everywhere inside and outside the union, in Cuba, Brazil, etc.), but you seem to be saying that slavery in the southern states was threatened particularly by remaining in the union. Is that indeed what you're suggesting? And if so, how do you think the union threatened slavery? And how do you think seceding offered any hope of protecting against those threats?
Righteous Causers never have any real answers to those questions, which is to say they can't explain their own Righteous Cause Myth. It's inexplicable nonsense, BS propaganda, historically baseless myth.
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@ And the southern states try everything they could to peacefully secede.
As one northern abolitionist said shortly before the start of the war, "In reference to this [the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States], as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
The impartial record of history does indeed condemn the North for declining all the thorough attempts made by the southern states to secede peacefully.
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@RARenfield So are you saying what Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798 is contrary to a democratic republic? " ...the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That 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 parties 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."
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What those "poor dirt farmers" lost along with all other Americans was a government of their own choosing deriving its powers from their consent. In other words, what they lost was the freedom that Americans fought for in the First American Independence War.
As one northern abolitionist said very shortly before the start of the war, "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."
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How about we talk about what political party stood for the rule of law and for meaningful constitutional limits on the federal government?
“If there are provisions in the Constitution of your country not consistent with your views of principle or expediency, remember that in the nature of things that instrument could only have had its origin in compromise... and remember, too, that you will be faithless to honor and common honesty if you consent to enjoy the principles it confers, and seek to avoid, if any, the burdens it imposes. It cannot be accepted in parts; it is a whole or nothing, and as a whole, with all the right it secures, and the duties it requires, it is to be sacredly maintained... It is no matter what our peculiar views may be, or what prejudices may take possession of our minds or hearts. If, as American citizens, we find ourselves constrained by a law higher or more imperative than this law, we then deny the obligations which the Constitution imposes, and can have no just claim to the protection and blessings which it confers.” President Franklin Pierce
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@sbnwnc > How are Viginians ethnically different from people from Maryland or Ohio?
Maryland and Ohio not as much, but there was a world of difference between the people that settled Massachusetts in order to establish their own theocracy and the people of the settled the southern states, not because they were marginalized in Britain but mostly because they wanted land to farm. And those differences manifest themselves in countless ways even today: the Bible belt, views on gun rights, views on masking for the pandemic, initial support for Obamneycare, views on a border wall, support for involvement in foreign wars, etc., etc. If the people of the North and South were all one people, how do you explain the strong geographical divisions on all these sorts of issues, both today and even more so in the 19th century?
> Thanks to the 3/5th Compromise, white Southerners were over-represented in Congress.
Except Republicans, which had practically zero support in the South were able to win a greater proportion of the seats in Congress than the proportion of the electorate they represented, so whatever advantage the 3/5 compromise gave the southern states, there were obviously bigger disadvantages that worked against them. And Republicans were able to win an outright majority in the electoral college with only thirty-some of the electorate, so who was really over-represented?
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@neoverse "but was slavery to be allowed?"
According to Republicans (and Democrats), yes:
" May 17, 1860
Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States in Convention assembled... unite in the following declarations:
...
"4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends..."
"Slavery was the main States Rights issue they were arguing for."
It's impossible to fight for something your opponent isn't trying to take from you.
But to respond to that purely hypothetical question which has no basis in history, if Republicans had been trying to deny Southerners the "right to own slaves," as you said, they would have had nor more legal right and been no more justified than if they had been threatening to force Brazil to abolish slavery, would they have? Do you believe the federal government should just disregard the constitution and the rule of law and the democratic accountability that constitutionally limited government represents whenever it says it has a good reason, even if that reason is just a shallow pretense for enriching robber barons?
Lincoln, after all, said he believed it was "implied constitutional law" that "the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service," and he backed that up by saying he had no objections to amending the constitution to make those constitutional protections of slavery "express and irrevocable," which amendment Republicans had already passed through both chambers of Congress and sent to the states for ratification.
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@neoverse "Just seems your intent on defending Democrats by listing Republicans first."
Although it's true Democrats shared the same position, Democrats' position is really completely beside the point in answering your question. Your question was, "Lincoln was tyrannical in his actions IMO, but was slavery to be allowed?" The answer is simply, yes, he and his party were absolutely going to "allow" slavery.
Wasn't your question essentially a question of whether tyranny could find some justification for the good cause of abolishing slavery? But Republicans were totally going to go along with it, not abolish it, so that can't have been any justification for their actions.
You asked, "Is it right to support immorality under the cover of law?"
I think one can take the position that Wendell Phillips (and many other abolitionists) took before the war: "...the abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of their agitation, to dissolve the American Union….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." In other words, I can understand if someone would refuse to take an oath to uphold unjust constitutional provisions, but I can't see any justification for swearing an oath to uphold unjust constitutional provisions and then refusing to uphold those provisions because they're unjust.
And, in any case, that wasn't the position of Republicans. As Lincoln said in his inaugural address, "It is scarcely questioned that this provision [of the constitution] 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."
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@MrMah-zf6jk What does it matter? Do you think you have a right to deny your girlfriend the right to split up with you, to kill her children, and to physically beat her into submission, because she left for the "wrong reasons," all while you deny that her wrong reasons have anything to do with why you're beating her?
But to answer your irrelevant question anyway, they seceded because they didn't want to be ruled entirely by a political party that (1) didn't represent them and their well-being at all but was rather entirely a sectional party and that (2) not only didn't represent their well-being but was so outright hostile to their well-being (probably mainly for the sake of stoking sectional animosities that they could exploit to their political advantage) that it had even supported and celebrated the murder -- murder! -- of random citizens of their states, and which (3) had proven that it would advance the North's interests at their expense without even respecting the terms of union and the limits imposed by the constitution (which is to say accepting their rule wouldn't mean accepting Republican rule for the sake of continuing in the union founded on the constitution but rather would mean forfeiting the constitution and the rule of law as the basis of government.)
And that's precisely how South Carolina, for example, summarized the alternative of what continuing under Republican rule would have meant, "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. Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation..."
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@sbnwnc I am sticking to the topic, to Lincoln's war against government by the consent of the governed, against free government, against government of and by the people. Your argument is precisely analagous to saying Germany was on the right side of WWII because I haven't provided any historical documents to prove that the USSR fought for reasons unrelated to Stalinism. That's nonsense.
As for the documents you've cited, I don't dispute the historical accuracy of anything they actually say. But your interpretations of them are absurd and indefensible, and that proof of that is that you haven't even tried to make sense of them. If the line you've been quoting from Lincoln's 1st inaugural meant what you claim it means, then you'd be able to explain what territory was at stake in the war, what territory the Confederacy could have forfeited rights to that would have appeased Lincoln and gotten him to recognized the southern states independence. Obviously that's complete BS, though, and you surely know it, whether you admit it to yourself or whether you know you're as dishonest as you are.
I can provide historical evidence to support anything I've said. It's not on me to provide historical evidence that directly contradicts your inexplicable historical myths. If you can't even explain what you mean, then it's certainly not on me to provide evidence to the contrary.
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@manilajohn0182 The North didn't consider Fort Sumter "United States territory" any more than it considered all the rest of South Carolina "United States territory," which is the same as saying the North was unwilling to respect the southern states' right to self-government. The only reason Fort Sumter particularly mattered is because it was a critical component to controlling the rest of South Carolina.
As one northern abolitionist, George Bassett, wrote in early 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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"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." I want to see no Maryland this side of the Potomac."
-Alexander Stephens, speech before the Georgia legislature, March 16, 1864
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Of course, they were done wrong, and not only the southern states, but the North did the people of their own states wrong, too.
“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.” George Bassett, 1861
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@sbnwnc James Madison, Federalist #39: "That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution."
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@skipperx5116 And perhaps even more telling of what the constitution really was from the beginning, particularly as it relates to the War of Northern Aggression, consider one of the reasons Pennsylvania's delegates opposed to ratification gave for their opposition in 1787: “Thirdly, the absolute command of Congress over the militia may be destructive of public liberty; for under the guidance of an arbitrary government, they may be made the unwilling instruments of tyranny. The militia of Pennsylvania may be marched to New England or Virginia to quell an insurrection occasioned by the most galling oppression, and aided by the standing army, they will no doubt be successful in subduing their liberty and independency. But in so doing, although the magnanimity of their minds will be extinguished, yet the meaner passions of resentment and revenge will be increased, and these in turn will be the ready and obedient instruments of despotism to enslave the others; and that with an irritated vengeance. Thus may the militia be made the instruments of crushing the last efforts of expiring liberty, of riveting the chains of despotism on their fellow-citizens, and on one another. This power can be exercised not only without violating the Constitution, but in strict conformity with it; it is calculated for this express purpose, and will doubtless be executed accordingly.”
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@thepalerider Republicans fought for abolition??? Which ones were those?
Republicans in 1860 ran on a platform which declared, "That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend..."
Almost every single Republican in Congress voted for the Crittenden Resolution which declared, "that this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions [i.e. slavery] of those States..."
Lincoln declared in March of 1861, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
And which Republican ever said, "I support your right to independence, but I believe in waging war to free your slaves"?
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@thepalerider The war also, by the way, "presented an invitation" to raise tariffs and subsidize railroad companies and usher in the Age of Robber Barons (i.e. to enrich the core Republican constituency, people that wanted the government to help them get rich.) And it also "presented an invitation" to destroy any checks on the federal government overreaching its constitutional limits, to, as Thomas Jefferson said, "ma[k]e it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers..." The war presented lots of invitations, but it was fought over the right of the southern states to secede, their right to independence, to self-government.
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"...or they would have had to have won the war and thus, formed and kept it."
The war isn't over yet!
But the abolitionist George Bassett also had a point when he said before the war had even started: “If the people of any territory have the natural right of revolution, it can not be the right of any power to put that revolution down... The right of revolution, and the right of the suppression of the same, cannot co-exist. Senator Wade, in sounding the bugle-blast of that civil war which now threatens to convulse and desolate the land, concedes the right of revolution, and says, if successful, the revolutionists are heroes. But he maintains the co-existing right of the general government to put them down by force, and, if successful, to constitute the revolutionists traitors instead of heroes; and a vast number of Northern politicians have followed his lead. But what is this sentiment but that old atheistic monster, that 'might makes right.' The sentiment is altogether unworthy of civilization...”
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It was the same fight as when Jefferson and Madison opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts. It was the same fight as when Anti-Federalists demanded the supposed protections of the Bill of Rights be added to the US constitution. It was the same principles that Americans declared as the basis of the claim to independence in 1776. Why defend those principles over the years from 1860-65? Because that's where they're most under attack (under the false pretenses of anti-slavery). If people were defending the Alien and Sedition Acts today like they're defending the Republicans' war against the principles of 1776, then that would be the place to defend America's founding principles, but that's not where the main attack is now.
“If they [the 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. The progress of regulated liberty on this continent will be arrested, anarchy will soon succeed, and the end will be a military despotism, which preserves order by the sacrifice of the last vestige of liberty.
They are now fighting the battle of despotism. They have put their Constitution under their feet; they have annulled its most sacred provisions; The future fortunes of our children, and of this continent, would then be determined by a tyranny which has no parallel in history.” -James Henly Thornwell
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@sbnwnc You clearly haven't ever read the declarations you keep referring to, have you?
Quoting directly from South's Carolina's declaration:
A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."
They further solemnly declared that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments-- Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article "that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."
...
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.
...
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences. [This last point is almost exactly what Jefferson said in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, so South Carolina was clearly echoing the principles Jefferson spelled out then.]
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@jaranarm John S. Mosby, lawyer for Yankee railroad company... and that's a vague propaganda phrasing anyway that avoids any description of what the supposed threat to the southern states' desire to continue practicing slavery supposedly was. It also absurdly equates declarations of causes of secession with a declaration of war as if a union to which states belonged by their own free choice weren't an option. The fact remains that the Union made zero slavery-related demands of the Confederacy and that there was nothing either side could have done about slavery that would have gotten the other side to quit fighting.
“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 [i.e. czarist Russia]... 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
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@jaranarm Lots of the founding fathers that opposed ratification of the constitution, after the constitution was ratified acted as if they no longer believed their reasons for opposing the constitution, too, even though their stated reasons clearly weren't addressed by the Bill of Rights. What's significant is that (1) none of the one or two quotes you can find seemingly supporting your position are from any of the four full years when the war was actually being fought, and even more significant (2) you can't even make sense of what you're trying to suggest by saying (a) what the Confederacy could have conceded with regards to slavery that would have appeased the Union -- the answer was obviously nothing, but you can only hide from rather than address that reality -- and (b) you can't explain or address what the supposed threat to the southern states' desire to practice slavery supposedly was even if they had remained in the union. The only threats described in the southern states' declarations of causes that related any more directly to slavery than tariffs were (1) the northern states refusing to respect their constitutional promise and obligation to deliver up fugitive slaves, (2) the northern states refusing to respect their constitutional promise and obligation to deliver up fugitives from justice like, for example, participants in murderous terrorist attacks against random Southerners that had been committed under shallow anti-slavery pretenses, and (3) the Republican party platform of doing what the Supreme Court had already ruled the federal government had no constitutional authority to do with respect to the territories. None of those three things was justified (not without seceding from the Union as abolitionists had been calling for) and the seceding states clearly forfeited all three of those points when they seceded, so they very clearly weren't things that the war was in any way about. And not only did seceding mean the seceding states completely forfeiting those points -- point which were really about fair play under the constitution and not about slavery, otherwise it would have made no sense for the southern states to forfeit them as they did -- but seceding would have meant victory on those points for the Republicans, so the Republicans' refusal to allow the southern states to secede and seize the victory on those points exposed the fraud of any claim that those points were what they cared about (and, of course, their own words, official declarations, etc. exposed the fraud of that argument even more clearly.)
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@CosmoShidan What's there to explain about them?
And whatever you mean, can you likewise explain the following March 1775 resolution by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress?
"Whenever the army under command of General Gage, or any part thereof to the number of five hundred, shall march out of the town of Boston, with artillery and baggage, it ought to be deemed a design to carry into execution by force the late acts of Parliament, the attempting of which, by the resolve of the late honourable Continental Congress, ought to be opposed; and therefore the military force of the Province ought to be assembled, and an army of observation immediately formed, to act solely on the defensive so long as it can be justified on the principles of reason and self-preservation."
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@jeffreyestahl "that same CSA constitution explicitly forbade any ability to secede"
Where do you get that idea?
In any case, Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, said in a speech 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.'"
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@sbnwnc > If taxes or tariffs had anything to do with the conflict then why did not one of the South's official declarations of the causes of the war mention taxes or tariffs?
First of all, the declarations of causes did mention tariffs. All the declarations of causes together aren't very long. If you're going to keep trying to use them in your arguments, you ought to just read them.
Secondly, the war was fought over southern independence, which is exactly what the declarations declared and exactly what the war was fought over: "We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."
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@sbnwnc But, granted, it is "silly" now post Lincoln's war to destroy government by the consent of the governed and the constitution. As James Henly Thornwell said in 1862, "If they [the 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. ...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...
They are now fighting the battle of despotism. They have put their Constitution under their feet; they have annulled its... provisions..."
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@jaranarm The Greeley letter coming after Lincoln's drafting of the emancipation proclamation further debunks the silly propaganda myth that even though the war clearly wasn't an anti-slavery war at first it evolved (particularly with the emancipation proclamation) into an anti-slavery war. The Greeley letter makes overwhelmingly clear that the emancipation proclamation was not about freeing slaves but rather about enslaving the southern states (and the rest of the states along with them), that the war was never, neither before nor after the emancipation proclamation, an anti-slavery war.
As Lysander Spooner said: "This programme having been fully arranged and systematized, they [the North's robber barons] put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war, and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says, 'Let us have peace.'
"The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have 'peace.' But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you. "
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@TheBullyMomma The properties administered by the federal government belonged to the people of the southern states as much as the people of any other states, and it's more ridiculous to suggest they had no right to forts that served no purpose other than their own self-defense (and preventing peaceful trade) than it would be to suggest that when a boyfriend and girlfriend split up that the boyfriend should have the right to 100% of the property they bought together while they were together and not only 100% of the property, but that the boyfriend ought to have the right to continue to maintain and control armed guards at the entrance to his ex-girlfriends house and prevent other people from coming and going to her house that she wants to see.
Even abolitionists at the time recognized the absurdity of your claim: George Bassett: "As to the proper possession of the military forts within the boundaries of a seceding State or territory... The whole object of those forts is... protection. While the peoples of those States or territories are protected by the United States, the United States authorities occupy and garrison those forts at an expense which is defrayed by a revenue voluntarily paid by the people. Here is a fair, legitimate transaction, a quid pro quo. A sovereign people paying the United States, by a revenue, for protecting and guarding her national interests. But when any State ceases to require the protection of the general government and proposes to protect herself, and the United States authority ceases, for the want of the requisite consent of the people interested, there is no reason why the general government should retain possession of those forts, but every reason why they should go into the hand of the people of that territory... Keep ever in view the only legitimate object of government—the protection of the people—and you cannot but recognize the absurdity of forcing protection upon an unwilling people at the point of the bayonet."
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@SalimSivaad First of all, the articles of secession say nothing about the war or the reason for the war. The war hadn't even started yet.
What you're saying would be like if your girlfriend said she was splitting up with you because you weren't helping her with her bad but legal habit any more and she only got into a relationship with you because helping her with her bad but legal habit was part of the relationship... and then you denied her right to leave you, she left anyway, you violently subjugated her, she resisted... and you claimed that when she resisted you she was fighting for her habit, even though she was just trying to split up with you and wasn't trying to get any more help with her habit from you.
> That’s a lot of words just to say: the right to enslave human beings.
As if the North had been denying the southern states' right to enslave human beings??? That's pure revisionist myth.
Tell me which of the following things happened:
1. The South wanted to enslave human beings and wanted independence and self-government. The North said we recognize your right to independence and self-government but not your right to enslave human beings. And then the North and South fought over the disputed right, the right of the South to enslave human beings. And no precedent was set for denying the right of states to declare independence and self-government regardless of anything to do with slavery.
2. The South wanted to enslave human beings and wanted independence and self-government. The North said we recognize your right to enslave human beings but not your right to independence and self-government. And then the North and South fought over the disputed right, the right of the South to independence and self-government. And the precedent was set for denying the right of states to declare independence and self-government regardless of anything to do with slavery.
"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." -London Times, 1861
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@calicoheart4750 It's nothing but a propaganda myth and a lie that Republicans were challenging (directly or indirectly) the right of the southern states to own slaves. The US Congress declared by a practically unanimous vote after the first major battle of the war that, "this war is not waged... for any purpose... of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery]..." And there's an abundance of other similar evidence from Lincoln, from the Republican platform, etc.
As to states rights, here's wikipedia's introductory summary of what states rights are: "...states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess."
So it's nonsense to allege that granting freedom to escaped slaves was a state right when the constitution explicitly made the right to have fugitive slaves delivered up a state right. As Lincoln said in his first inaugural address:
"The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
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. ...
I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed than to violate any of them trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional."
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@Fr99763 Yes, but that's what I mean to ask. Where/how does the US constitution disallow a state leaving the union? The 10th amendment makes explicit that any rights not explicitly disallowed were retained by the states.
And then there's also the question of what right the southern states had when northern states decided to simply disregard obligations they had under the constitution like the obligation to deliver up fugitive slaves. As US President Franklin Pierce said before the war: "If there are provisions in the Constitution of your country not consistent with your views of principle or expediency, remember that in the nature of things that instrument could only have had its origin in compromise... and remember, too, that you will be faithless to honor and common honesty if you consent to enjoy the principles it confers, and seek to avoid, if any, the burdens it imposes. It cannot be accepted in parts; it is a whole or nothing, and as a whole, with all the right it secures, and the duties it requires, it is to be sacredly maintained... It is no matter what our peculiar views may be, or what prejudices may take possession of our minds or hearts. If, as American citizens, we find ourselves constrained by a law higher or more imperative than this law, we then deny the obligations which the Constitution imposes, and can have no just claim to the protection and blessings which it confers."
Along very similar lines but going in a different direction, Wendell Phillips, the famous abolitionist, said, "...the 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."
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The states right argument went back to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which is to say basically to free speech issues. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798: "...the several states composing the US. of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style & title of a Constitution for the US. and of Amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, it’s acts are unauthoritative, void, & of no force. that to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress."
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@feedyourmind6713 "The Articles of Confederation were an abysmal failure..."
How exactly? Had the 13 states been conquered by an invading army? Was there mass famine across the states? Were the states at war with each other? Were cities getting burned down? What are you talking about?
And what would it matter if the Articles had been an abysmal failure? If the Articles had been such a failure that the states had actually gone to war with each other, if armies were burning cities and homesteads down, if hundreds of thousands had died as part of an abysmal failure... is that the standard for disregarding the rule of law? Or do people always simply have a right to choose a new government for themselves when to them it shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness? Do you think short of an abysmal failure people should be irremediably bound to the political structures (including protections of African slavery) of their great-grandfathers?
"the necessary number ratified [the constitution]"
The "necessary number," 9/13 was a number just invented at the convention. They didn't meet or even try to meet the pre-existing "necessary number" but simply acted on their right to discard the previous "necessary number."
"The Dems stayed in the Union until their side started to lose, then they guit, and started a very deadly war."
The Democratic party vote split in 1860, but Stephen Douglas alone won more votes in the North (not even counting the border states) than the Northern and Southern Democratic candidates combined won in all 11 of the future Confederate states. In other words, there were more Democrats in the North than in the states that formed the Confederacy. It was the southern states (initially just 7 until Lincoln called for war, but then 4 more after) that seceded, not the Democratic party. (Of course, that's an elementary historical fact to anyone that isn't trying to twist the historical facts to create a false narrative.)
Yes, they quit the union (like the UK quit the EU, like the Baltic states quit the USSR, like the Czech Republic and Slovakia quit Czechoslovakia, like the former Yugoslav republics quit Yugoslavia, like South Sudan quit Sudan, like the US quit the English Empire...) And Lincoln and the Republicans absolutely refused any peaceful pathway but told the southern states their only options were to forfeit the rights that their great-grandfathers had fought for in 1776 or go to war... and so it did came to war, but you can't blame the South for the war given that the North wasn't willing to recognize the southern states right to secede under any peaceful terms whatsoever.
"Just what kind of economy would the South have had, without slavery?"
There it is again, the central myth that the nonsense of people like you is always built on, the historically baseless myth that apart from secession the South would have been "without slavery." Nonsense!
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@feedyourmind6713 Obviously the Declaration of Independence isn't any kind of law that carries any legal requirements, but following the principles laid out in the DoI would nonetheless have been a way -- the best way -- to end the war (or to have avoided it starting in the first place), so it's obscene to suggest that total war (against civilians, civilians that the government attacking them, their homes, cities, etc. claimed were their own citizens) was the only way to end the war. Throwing out all the codes we expect countries to respect in warfare today (and which were also norms of warfare prior to Lincoln's war against goverment by the consent of the governed) might have been the only way for the North to win the war, but it certainly wasn't the only way to end it.
As for the Bill of Rights, it proves the worthlessness of your remark that the constitutional compact had no allowance for dissolving the compact (again, not that the compact would have been "dissolved" if some of the member states had left the union, but even if full dissolution had been the issue in 1861, the Bill of Rights would prove the worthlessness of your remark even then.)
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@azulsimmons1040 1. In any case, Lord Acton was the furthest thing from "uneducated."
2. Maybe the main reason he and other Englishmen said what they said was because they actually believed it, because they sympathized with America's founding principles in the 2nd American Independence War for much the same reasons some Englishmen sympathized with America's founding principles in the 1st American Independence War. Englishmen and Americans share the same Lockean political heritage after all.
"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." -London Times, 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
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@sbnwnc > It belongs the the citizens of the United States.
If the Joneses, Johnsons, Smiths, Browns, and Davises all live in the same neighborhood, you could say the neighborhood belonged to those families, and that would be accurate enough, but you're trying to conflate the sum of individual property rights with collective property rights. Just because the neighborhood belongs to the Smiths and Joneses, etc., doesn't mean that the Smiths own anything other than their own house or that they have any claim on the Joneses' house. The South didn't belong to any of the citizens of the North in any sense at all. If you don't know this, then you're even dumber than I imagined. :(
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@sbnwnc "then any state could leave at any time"
Like the EU, yes.
"In many states the party seeking divorce has to show cause"
And to whom would you have states "show cause"?
Thomas Jefferson: "the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress."
"But in no state can you divorce someone simply by moving out and taking the family property with you."
In no state can you physically beat your partner into submission under any circumstances whatsoever. In no state can you garnish your spouse's wages if your spouse has separated from you, even if divorce papers haven't been filed or finalized.
But I wasn't trying to particularly make an analogy to marriage, although someone that believes in physically beating his non-marital partners into submission should his partners try to leave him might very well try to justify the same should his wife try to leave him.
As for the "family property," a separation of states is made much simpler by the fact that the states have always maintained their separate "houses." South Carolinians never moved in with Massachusettsans (or if they did they became Massachusettsans and vice versa), so if they want to separate, no one has to move out, and "family property" is divided between the separate homes already. And the South was very willing to negotiate an equitable distribution of the "family" assets and liabilities, but those details had nothing to do with why the North beat the South into submission. The North fought on the very simple principle that states had no right to leave and that the North had the right to judge all by itself (or simply ignore) any breach of contract and beat any state that tried to leave into submission.
One northern abolitionist said shortly before the start of the war:
"It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
Yes, it is.
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@sbnwnc "But in the real world, the United States is one country."
In the real world today, post-War of Northern Aggression, yes, the states have been subjugated and there are no constitutional limits on the federal government.
As one northern abolitionist said as the North was considering going to war, "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."
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@sbnwnc That came later, but yes, they formed a union, but as Thomas Jefferson said, they were "not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style & title of a Constitution for the US. and of Amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, it’s acts are unauthoritative, void, & of no force. that to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress."
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But you can keep your slaves if you don't try to leave, so tell me again what the war was really about.
“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
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@ricj101 "This is like arguing: "Hey the bank robber wasnt actually ROBBING the bank... If the people who deposited their money at the bank simply let him walk away with their money, there would be no crime! How DARE those depositors demand their money not be stolen! They're the REAL criminals.""
Except that the "bank robbers" weren't robber at all but rather just depositors seeking to withdraw their own money from the bank.
As one abolitionist, Josiah Warren, said at the time, "...the advocates of "unbroken Union" abruptly refuse to negotiate with the receding party (who offer compensation for what they must take with them), thereby finally denying their right to become a separate party, and pronouncing the final word that the Union recognizes no two parties who can negotiate with each other; which is equivalent to saying that the political Union (or clanship) is more sacred than persons, or property, or freedom, or any other inalienable human right. Thus completely destroying the last vestige of union between the parties, and forcing both into hostile attitudes, and both prepare to destroy each other."
Or as another northern abolitionist, George Bassett, said, "It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
""The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
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@sbnwnc Yes, he said he hated slavery. I never said anything to the contrary.
But you said, "that he personally wishes he could end slavery" That is a complete lie, and that's what I said is a complete lie. He said no such thing. He didn't express any wish to personally do anything about slavery. He simply wished that "all men every where" (which is to say slaves in South Carolina, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Siam...) could be free. But he expressed no more wish to "personally... end slavery" in South Carolina than he did in Saudi Arabia, which is to say he expressed no such wish at all.
And he explicitly described it as "no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish," so it was the complete opposite of a change in position. He wasn't expressing any position that he hadn't expressed repeatedly over multiple years. There's absolutely no reason to interpret that statement as in any way inconsistent with his statement from March of 1861 (that was also a repetition of what he had said before) that he had "no purpose," not even an "inclination," "to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists," not directly and not even "indirectly."
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Because the federal government had the power to declare war and make treaties the states didn't have the right to secede??? What???
James Madison: "The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."
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@wcg19891 1. I think Madison was being intentionally ambiguous as to how states should act so as not to be provocative or escalatory, but (1) if Madison had been talking about a convention of states, why wouldn't he have said so? He would have. And (2) it would be completely absurd to suggest that the way to check the federal representatives of a majority of the states from abusing their constitutional authority is for a super majority of state legislatures to take action, especially when prior to the 17th amendment the state legislatures were directly selecting the representatives in the chamber where each state had equal representation (as with calling a convention of states and ratifying amendments.) In other words, it's ridiculous to suggest that a super-majority is the appropriate check on constitutional abuses by the majority.
And perhaps Thomas Jefferson was more clear on more or less the same point: "That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that 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."
But in any case, you won't find any of the framers in the recordings of the Philadelphia convention or any of the proponents of the constitution in the ratification debates, neither in the recorded speeches at the ratification conventions nor in the public debates (including the Federalist Papers, etc.) saying that secession was being prohibited by the constitution.
If the constitution had really been meant to forbid the process by which the constitution itself was being established -- an arbitrary number of states on their own sovereign authority discarding the existing central government and establishing a new government for themselves, not necessarily (and not in actual practice) including all the other states -- then it would have been explicitly noted. It's absurd to suggest that was merely implied (not that it would have superseded the inalienable rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence even that legal principle had been explicitly asserted and legally ratified, but my point here is that you don't so much as have a valid legal argument against secession.)
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@wcg19891 > he understood that such wasn’t to be done lightly or for transient causes but only when a long train of abuses and usurpations had forced such
Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence made it clear that people had every right to declare independence "whenever... [it] to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." And rights are no less rights, no less inalienable, whether they're exercised prudently or imprudently.
> when you have a precedent of doing it by a higher moral standard as laid out by Jefferson who knew he was committing treason against Great Britain
The North waged war both against the constitution and against that higher standard. As the abolitionist George Bassett said in early 1861, "In this unnatural attempt to subdue the seceding States and literally put them under tribute, your most formidable enemy will be... the great principles of popular liberty which you challenge to mortal combat. You will war against the principle of your own immortal Revolution, viz.: the right of any people to choose their own government."
And as James Madison said in 1793, "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation."
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@jaranarm The EU (like the US until the Republicans upended our whole system of government in the mid-19th century) exists because the member states choose to be a part of the EU, and if and when they want to leave (like the UK) they can. The fact that participation in the EU requires certain things so long as they choose to be part of the EU doesn't mean the member states haven't retained their sovereignty. That's the same as the US under the Articles of Confederation which said, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." And it's the same as the Confederate constitution which clarified in its preamble, "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."
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@sbnwnc What they said in their own words? From Jefferson Davis' inaugural address, emphasis added: "...I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the SEPARATE EXISTENCE AND INDEPENDENCE which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established."
Which, of course, is the exact opposite of what the North said it was fighting for, namely subjugating the southern states in order to deny them their independence, which the North's leaders absurdly called "preserving the union," as if you could "preserve the union" with your girlfriend by beating her into submission, but in any case, it was the opposite of the independence for which the South was fighting.
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> Everyone, including a conservative like me, knows the states don’t have rights to restrict our human rights: including speech, tyranny defense, search and seizure, voting, etc. and certainly not being treated like cattle.
Legally speaking, under the constitution, prior to the incorporation doctrine, which wasn't invented until the 20th century and which was supposedly based on the 14th amendment which wasn't even a part of the constitution until after the war, states most certainly had the right to restrict speech, search and seizure, voting, etc.
What kind of conservative believes the 10th amendment should mean absolutely nothing?
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@Jukebot22 Lincoln, 1861, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Also Lincoln, 1861, "a proposed amendment to the Constitution... has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service... holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."
Official Union declaration passed by a nearly unanimous vote through both chambers of Congress, July 1861, "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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@jaranarm What do you think slavery in the territories had to do with the war? The only way you're going to win your battle is to hide behind misleading phrases that you never explain. The fact remains that the war was in no way over the territories. You're not denying that fact are you? You're just trying to hide from that fact, right? (If you were actually denying it, then your argument would depend on explaining how anything about the territories, let alone anything about slavery in the territories, was at stake in refusing the southern states the right to secede.)
If you had a real argument, you'd respond to what I actually said and dispute the truth of what I said in my last comment to you, but of course, there's no disputing the truth of anything I said.
And, no, the 1860 presidential election wasn't "about slavery in the territories," not in any other sense than what I said in my last comment to you (and none of the preceding events contradict anything I've said either.)
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@sbnwnc Indeed they do. But all you can do is take things they said that weren't about the war and distort them into an inexplicable myth of what was at stake in the war.
1864 Richmond Examiner editorial:
"Mr. [Jefferson] Davis... is reported... to have said, 'We are not fighting for slavery; we are fighting for independence.' This is true; and is a truth that has not sufficiently been dwelt upon. ...our enemies have diligently labored to make all mankind believe that the people of these States have set up a pretended State sovereignty, and based themselves upon that ostensibly, while their real object has been only to preserve to themselves the property in so many negroes, worth so many millions of dollars. The direct reverse is the truth. The question of slavery is only one of the minor issues; and the cause of the war, the whole cause, on our part, is the maintenance of the sovereign independence of these States.…
The whole cause of our resistance was and is, the pretension and full determination of the Northern States to use their preponderance in the Federal representation, in order to govern the Southern States for their profit. . Slavery was the immediate occasion–carefully made so by them–it was not the cause. The tariff… would have much more accurately represented, though it did not cover, or exhaust, the real cause of the quarrel. Yet neither tariffs nor slavery, nor both together, could ever have been truly called the cause of the secession and the war. We refuse to accept for a cause any thing… than that truly announced, namely, the sovereign independence of our States. This, indeed, includes both those minor questions, as well as many others yet graver and higher. It includes full power to regulate our trade for our own profit, and also complete jurisdiction over our own social and domestic institutions; but it further involves all the nobler attributes of national, and even of individual life and character.
...
It is right to let foreign nations, and 'those whom it may concern,' understand this theory of our independence. Let them understand that, though we are 'not fighting for slavery,' we will not allow ourselves to be dictated to in regard to slavery or any other of our internal affairs, not because thatwould diminish our interest in any property, but because it touches our independence."
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@sbnwnc "When you are talking about causes of events you believe..."
Did I say anything about "causes"? Quote me, if I did. I did speak about what the war was about, what was at stake in the war, a subject your propaganda distortions obviously depend on avoiding.
As for the declaration you've quoted, that obviously wasn't the cause of the war, because AFTER that declaration was published, Lincoln said, "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere." The war hadn't started at that point, and whatever irreconcilable differences remained at that point had nothing to do with slavery. If they did, you could explain how, but as always, your position consists of inexplicable propaganda myths but never an intelligible understanding of history.
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@sbnwnc I'm not quoting other things Lincoln said that aren't relevant precisely because they're not relevant to what the war was about, and that includes his comments about disputes within the union. When Lincoln said, "beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no [war]" was he referring to anything at all having to do with the territories or slavery? No, he wasn't. The territories had been a subject of dispute between the states while they were part of the same union. They were not the central dispute between the Union and the Confederacy, not even close. What the Union disputed -- and you do the same -- was the mere right of the Confederacy to exist as a sovereign entity. Sovereignty, not anything related to slavery, is challenged by another government claiming the right to collect duties and imposts and to hold, occupy, and possess military forts in those places. You know it, but you feel the need to deflect, because you hate truth and love lies.
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@jaranarm The Confederacy was indeed formed from the consent of the governed in every sense that Thomas Jefferson understood those words when he wrote them. And the assertion that all men are created equal was never any claim about how the 13 newly independent states were going to govern themselves, and most certainly not any condition by which anyone else had a right to judge any other people's choice (or method of choosing) their own government. On the contrary, the principle that all men are created equal meant that the English had no right to impose their government on any of the states without their consent. It meant no one was judge, but everyone was on equal footing. It meant, as Jefferson said in 1798, that there was no judge but "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress." And the same principle is in the Declaration of Independence: "as TO THEM shall seem most likely to effect THEIR Safety and Happiness." No one else had any right to question the judgments the states had made for themselves. Do you have some other explanation as to why the words "all men are created equal" were said to King George?
> it certainly wasn't for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the whole of the Southern population.
Nor was the independence of the 13 states that asserted their right to choose their own government in 1776 chosen for the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the whole of the population of the 13 states (all of which states were practicing slavery at the time.) So what's your point?
You asked how the union had become destructive of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the southern people. The northern states that had figured out a way to control the federal government without even trying to appeal to any southern voters were so unconcerned with the well-being, even the lives of Southerners, that they had even supported murderous terrorist attacks against random Southerners, directly violating the constitution in order to do so. Is that not extreme enough for you? But what's extreme enough for you is ultimately irrelevant. The relevant question was what to the people of each individual state, "TO THEM shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
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Here's what some Englishmen had to say around the time of the war:
"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." -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
“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.”
London Spectator in reference to the Emancipation Proclamation
“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.” Charles Dickens, 1862
Lord Acton, letter to Robert E. Lee after the war: "I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."
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@sbnwnc I don't agree with everything the original commenter said, but...
...what was the first thing Alexander Stephens said after saying in the speech from which Righteous Cause Myth apologists most often quote, "...taking the whole new [Confederate] constitution, I have no hesitancy in giving it as my judgment that it is decidedly better than the old [US constitution]"? It was to talk about tariffs and other forms of crony capitalism: "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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@nathanbrady8529 Whether Poland or Scotland or Quebec have any right to secede/withdraw from a union/alliance in the first place is another question, but to the extent they do, it's ridiculous to blame a people for not tolerating foreign troops on their soil.
As one northern abolitionist wrote in early 1861, “As to the proper possession of the military forts within the boundaries of a seceding State or territory... The whole object of those forts is... protection. While the peoples of those States or territories are protected by the United States, the United States authorities occupy and garrison those forts at an expense which is defrayed by a revenue voluntarily paid by the people. Here is a fair, legitimate transaction, a quid pro quo. A sovereign people paying the United States, by a revenue, for protecting and guarding her national interests. But when any State ceases to require the protection of the general government and proposes to protect herself, and the United States authority ceases, for the want of the requisite consent of the people interested, there is no reason why the general government should retain possession of those forts, but every reason why they should go into the hand of the people of that territory... Keep ever in view the only legitimate object of government—the protection of the people—and you cannot but recognize the absurdity of forcing protection upon an unwilling people at the point of the bayonet.”
And also from the same person, "It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
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@ricardoconqueso "The union didn’t have one single initiative. It was abolition."
The Union officially and categorically denied any abolitionist purposes: "this war is not waged... for any... purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States..."
Lincoln, 1861: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Lincoln, 1862: "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."
And, of course, Lincoln meant "save the union" in the sense that a man can "save the union" with his girlfriend by physically beating her into submission when she tries to leave him, as if one could save unions by physically attacking one's partners and killing their children.
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@jfedermesser There were plenty of Democrats in the North that were just as opposed to slavery as the Republicans. The real difference between Democrats and Republicans was that Democrats respected the rule of law (and the interests of farmers and other independent Americans) and Republicans were trashing the rule of law (for the interests of robber barons and others that wanted to directly and indirectly profit off of crony capitalism.)
President Franklin Pierce: “If there are provisions in the Constitution of your country not consistent with your views of principle or expediency, remember that in the nature of things that instrument could only have had its origin in compromise, and remember, too, that you will be faithless to honor and common honesty if you consent to enjoy the principles it confers, and seek to avoid, if any, the burdens it imposes. It cannot be accepted in parts; it is a whole or nothing, and as a whole, with all the right it secures, and the duties it requires, it is to be sacredly maintained... It is no matter what our peculiar views may be, or what prejudices may take possession of our minds or hearts. If, as American citizens, we find ourselves constrained by a law higher or more imperative than this law, we then deny the obligations which the Constitution imposes, and can have no just claim to the protection and blessings which it confers.”
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@jaranarm “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 [federal] government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact [the states], 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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@jaranarm “It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority, of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.” Madison
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@sbnwnc > Nothing in the Constitution allows secession.
Nothing in the constitution forbids secession, and the constitution explicitly reserves all rights to the states not forbidden.
And not only that, but the constitution itself was established on the basis of the right of the states to abandon the existing government and establish a new government for themselves on their own sovereign authority (Article 7). If the states don't have the "voluntary" right to do that, then the constitution itself is invalid.
And further, the constitution clearly established a limited central government, and in the words of Thomas Jefferson, " 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."
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@pokepals2780 > since most of the debates surrounding it when the founding fathers were making the constitution were against the idea of it
Most? BS! There's not a single shred of evidence for any, let alone most.
> very likely for the above mentioned reasons.
For the non-existent ones, you mean.
"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 southern states seceded on their own sovereign authority without appealing to any higher authority because there was no high authority.
Madison: "It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority, of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."
> no matter how you view the land part of it being legal or not the stealing federal weapons paid for by national taxes was illegal in every way
As if they didn't have a right to a fair share of the assets that had been purchased with their own tax dollars (dollars which, incidentally, had been generated overwhelmingly disproportionately on the back of southern agriculture)! BS! Even abolitionists called out that BS at the time.
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@Dan Beech Whatever you think you know, one thing is clear, and that's that you can't explain or make any sense of your revisionist myth.
As I already said to the person that started this thread and repeated already once before, sure, slavery was threatened (as it was threatened everywhere inside and outside the union, in Cuba, Brazil, etc.), but you seem to be saying that slavery in the southern states was threatened particularly by remaining in the union. Is that indeed what you're suggesting? And if so, how do you think the union threatened slavery? And how do you think seceding offered any hope of protecting against those threats?
Righteous Causers never have any real answers to those questions, which is to say they can't explain their own Righteous Cause Myth. It's inexplicable nonsense, BS propaganda, historically baseless myth.
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@olp3850 One northern abolitionist spoke to your question in early 1861, shortly before the start of the war:
"...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.
...
"In this unnatural attempt to subdue the seceding States and literally put them under tribute, your most formidable enemy... will be the great principles of popular liberty which you challenge to mortal combat. You will war against the principle of your own immortal Revolution, viz.: the right of any people to choose their own government."
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@jaranarm What diplomacy are you imaging the Confederate government refused?
As one Massachusetts abolitionist wrote: "It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
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@jaranarm No, not Spooner, another Massachusetts abolitionist, George Bassett, but why does it matter? Why do you need an excuse for ignoring the actual content of the quote? I repeat, particularly in light of the argument I quoted, what diplomacy are you imagining the Confederacy refused?
As for becoming the world's mightiest economy, enriching robber barons was ultimately what the war was about, that and putting an end to the principles on which the union had previously been founded. As Patrick Henry said, "You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government."
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@sbnwnc You ask what issues did they discuss beyond slavery. If by slavery you mean the abolition of slavery according to the rule of law, they didn't discuss that at all. If that's not what you mean by slavery, you'll have to say what you mean.
In any case, you said, "I never said that the North was threatening to abolish slavery in the South." They weren't, certainly not in any kind of constitutionally legitimate way, nor in any other kind of way. So the question then is what you mean when you speak of issues "beyond slavery." When, for example, Republican governors refused to honor their constitutional obligation to extradite terrorist murderers, are you defending the unconstitutional protection of murderous terrorists by calling it the issue of slavery? If your definition of the issue of slavery has nothing to do with abolishing slavery according to the rule of law but does have to do with protecting murderous terrorists that were acting under shallow abolitionist pretenses, then the problem is your vague and misleading definition of your terms.
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@Klako-ls6yt Three points there to respond to: (1) What does it matter if later on in the war the North had challenged something they hadn't challenged at first, (2) the emancipation proclamation, and (3) the 13th amendment. I'll save the last two for separate comments.
Suppose England after initially going to war with no slavery-related aims and denying any purpose in the First American Independence War of interfering with slavery, but waging war only to deny the 13 colonies their independence and maintain them as colonies, i.e. for all the actual historical reasons, had then halfway through the war taken whatever anti-slavery position you'd like England to have taken. Are you saying the States would have then lost the right to independence which they had had at the start of the war, that the States, if they had not been willing to make any changes to slavery at that point, should by right have then laid down their arm and given up their claim to independence, and that England then would have been justified in subjugating the States to its rule because of the anti-slavery position it hypothetically then took? Is that the same principle as you're asserting? If not, what's the difference between that and the principle you are asserting when you assert that what the North did later on in the war with regards to slavery mattered?
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@WeaslyTwin Even northern abolitionists were calling BS on your claims before the bloodless Battle of Fort Sumter even happened.
Abolitionist George Bassett wrote in early 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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@WeaslyTwin It's not "changing history to make a point" if you fault the southern states for "starting the war" and I ask you what they should have done differently. If you'd fault them just as much regardless of whether or not they "started the war," then it's a meaningless criticism. So unless there's a better alternative you think they should have followed, you don't have a point, and if there is a better alternative you think they should have followed, then it's fair to ask what that is.
As for the South "starting the war," if an anti-aircraft gunner had fired on the Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor before they dropped any bombs or fired any shots, would you therefore say (if that were what had happened) that the US started the war with Japan? And if Americans firing on Japanese combat forces that were in Hawaiian airspace for no good reason (even if Americans had fired first) wouldn't make Americans guilty of starting the war with Japan, why does Confederate forces firing on Union combat forces in South Carolina (after giving them months to leave, repeated warnings, etc.) make the South guilty of starting the war with the Union? If you were in charge of anti-aircraft forces in Pearl Harbor in 1941, would you have ordered your forces to hold their fire until the Japanese bombers started dropping bombs first? It really doesn't matter who fired first. What really matters is simply that the Japanese planes were where they didn't have a right to be.
As for slavery in the territories, which of my questions do you mean to answer with those comments? I'll hold off on responding to give you a chance to put that into context for me.
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@sbnwnc I'm referring to the inalienable right that applies to every state and every territory everywhere, the right explicitly described in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, not a legal right limited to the US, although of course, that inalienable right was the basis on which the 13 states established their independence and also the same basis on which the US constitution itself was established (Article 7), and the constitution never tried to take that right away (not that inalienable rights can be taken away), so therefore a 10th amendment right.
"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." -James Madison
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@sbnwnc I think some, maybe a lot, of the founding fathers would have only applied that principle at the state level, but I don't see any reason to stop at states. There are some tiny island countries and city-states in the world, but a city-state would have to be willing to accept an international border with its neighbors that its neighbors could regulate (or completely close) however they pleased. That would be one major disincentive to people choosing to secede into very small territories. But the founding fathers in the first decades after independence undisputedly recognized the sovereignty of states.
Madison, for example: "Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority... [but] Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."
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@sbnwnc "2. What are you talking about specifically?"
You seem to be arguing that states need to have sufficient cause in order to ditch the existing government. Apparently you believe the 13 colonies had sufficient cause in 1776. And apparently you believe the states had sufficient cause to ditch the Articles of Confederation. So my question is who do you think had the right to be the judge of whether the states wanting to ditch the Articles of Confederation had sufficient cause? The Congress of the Confederation?
That's very nearly the same question as my 3rd question.
"3. Of course states need a reason to secede. They also need the permission of the other states."
My third question was, "Who do you think should answer that question [your question of whether states need a reason to secede]?" So apparently your answer is "the other states." But who exactly do you mean by "the other states"? Does that mean the unanimous vote of all the other states? Or just a majority of the states? Or some other arbitrary proportion (like 9 out of 13)? Or does the central government (Congress) need to pass a bill approving of the reasons?
"4. Yes, democracy does require the consent of the governed, but that doesn't imply that people can simply opt out of governance whenever they want to. If that were the case, government would be impossible."
How is "simply opt[ing] out of [the] governance [of England]" not what the 13 colonies did in 1776? They didn't submit their reasons for wanting to opt out to King George or any other Englishmen to judge and then abide by the ruling of those judges on whether they had sufficient reasons or not. They stated their reasons but they simply seceded (declared independence) on their own authority. Likewise, the states did essentially the exact same thing again in 1787 when they ditched the Articles of Confederation on their own authority. That didn't make government impossible, did it?
And the EU clearly allows the member states of the EU to "simply out out of [EU] governance whenever they want to" (as with Brexit.) That doesn't make the EU an impossible form of government.
You could just as well argue that allowing workers to leave their workplaces, to "simply out of" their employment "whenever they want to" would mean that employment would be impossible, that workers must be kept at their workplaces by force (as slaves), couldn't you? And you'd be just as wrong, wouldn't you?
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@jaranarm What do you think it shows that the Czar didn't recognize the right of secession? And England near the peak of its colonial empire didn't recognize the right of secession either. Nor did it in 1776. That only shows that secession was at odds with Old World imperialism, which I readily admit.
“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
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"we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone"
Jefferson Davis, April 29, 1861
Official Union declaration, July, 1861,: "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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@RayB50 Most of the time when people make claims like in your opening comment they're not actually thinking about things people at the time said about the war, and consistent with that norm, the quote you shared in your first reply wasn't about the war either. But if you are talking specifically about the war, as your original claim certainly suggested, then let's see evidence of your claim, which is to say quotes specifically about the war, not about disputes that preceded the war, but specifically and explicitly about the war itself, which, of course would mean quotes from during the time of the war, especially not from before the start of the war.
And then that takes us to my second question: when you say "slavery" what about slavery do you think was being disputed? Telling me why the North didn't go to war isn't an answer to that question. If you recognize that the North wasn't trying to abolish slavery in the South, then what did seceding "protect the institution of slavery" from?
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@sbnwnc I responded to your moral high ground argument, and then you ran away, which, of course, there was good reason for you to do.
I'm impressed, though, that you actually went and read the Declaration of Independence and corrected the ignorance with which you made you first comment about it. Congratulations!
I'll repeat the counterargument to your moral high ground foolishness:
The fact that in 1861 one side was for slavery is really irrelevant when the other side is (1) also practicing slavery, and (2) goes to war declaring no intention of interfering with the other side's slavery, and (3) goes to war stating that he has no objections to ratifying a constitutional amendment that his party has already helped pass through Congress (even without the representatives of the states that had already seceded and withdrawn their representatives) to make the constitution's protections of slavery "express and irrevocable." No matter how much higher ground there was for the North to take, how could the North have stayed off that high ground any more thoroughly?
But taking the high ground would have meant doing the exact opposite of what the North actually did, namely opposing slavery while supporting the southern states' right to independence and self-government rather than declaring no purpose or intention of interfering with the southern states' right to practice slavery while waging war against voluntary union (not that there's any other kind of union that can even be called a union), against government by the consent of the governed, against the same kind of government that you're so opposed to today apart from any and all issues relating to slavery, that you're distorting 150+ year old history to try to undermine voluntary union.
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@jaranarm It's ridiculous to say "Americans voted for this fair and square in the 1860 election" when only thirty-some percent of Americans voted Republican in the 1860 election. It just happened that due to the quirks of the constitution and the system for electing presidents that it's possible to win elections without winning the popular vote (as has happened in recent years, too, but not with anywhere near such a small percentage of the popular vote as in 1860.) And it's further ridiculous to say "American voted for this fair and square" when the Supreme Court had already ruled that they had no constitutional authority to decide the question through federal elections at all. What they voted for was to defy the Supreme Court's interpretation of the constitution (not that the Supreme Court's authority stood above the states anyway. As Thomas Jefferson said, "to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, it’s co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress.")
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@sbnwnc "Neither would the majority of the rest of the states. That is democracy. Too bad if you don't like it."
That's certainly not how the constitution was sold by its proponents. Nor is that how the constitution itself operates nor how the union re-established by the constitution came together.
“That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution.” Madison, Federalist #39
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@sbnwnc You said having a right to negotiate a secession isn't unilateral secession, that the rest of whatever country or union in question would have to agree to let the seceding section secede. But that, of course, is nonsense. The right to a negotiated secession no more gives the other parties to a government the right to deny the right of secession altogether than the right to a negotiated divorce gives the other party to a marriage the right to deny the right of one spouse to leave.
As the Northerner George Bassett aptly said in early 1861:
"It is said that the United States built and furnished the forts, dockyards, and custom houses in the seceding States, and, therefore, they are the common property of all the States. But, it will be remembered that, while the remaining States contributed to the public property of the seceding States, so did these in turn contribute to that of the remaining States. If it is found, in fact, that there is within the domain of the seceding States a disproportionate amount of public property, let the matter be adjusted by a rational negotiation.
"In reference to this, as well as a proper division of the common public debt, and all other similar questions, the seceding States express the most becoming spirit and honorable intentions, as appears from the following article in the Constitution recently established. It is as follows:
"'The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them, these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of right, justice, equality, and good faith.'
"This certainly looks like the olive branch of peace; and if we decline it, and attempt the fatal policy of coercion, will not the civilized world and the impartial record of history be against us?"
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