# The War of Southern Aggression



## Rogue 9

The War of Northern Aggression is a popular phrase among Confederate apologists, referring to the supposed outrageous aggression shown by the Union to bring the otherwise peaceful Confederate States back under its rule.  But how true is it?  

I have dealt at length in previous essays about the motivations of the Slave Power and with the constitutional issues of secession itself.  Here, I will concentrate on what the states of the Deep South did in the decades leading up to the Civil War and their part in bringing war upon the United States.  

*The Nullification Crisis and John C. Calhoun*

On November 24, 1832 a so-called Nullification Convention of South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification, unilaterally declaring the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and void within the boundaries of the state.  Concurrently, Governor Robert Hayne began military preparations to resist federal enforcement, raising a volunteer minuteman army of 2,000 cavalry and 25,000 infantry.  The famous Force Bill authorizing military action against South Carolina was passed by Congress in February 1833, but a compromise tariff acceptable to South Carolina was also passed at the same time, prompting the withdrawal of the Ordinance and defusing the military crisis.  Although violence did not result, South Carolina's willingness to use force to resolve internal political disputes was well established.  

One of Nullification's chief architects was John C. Calhoun, a leading South Carolina politician and Andrew Jackson's vice president.  The split with Jackson over nullification prompted Calhoun's resignation and run for the Senate in 1832, but his long career of political blackmail against Northern interests and particularly abolitionists extended back even into his days as a loyal vice president.  In 1826, when confronted with the prospect of recognition of the independence of Haiti (which had recently undergone a revolution against French colonialism led by free blacks and the island's slaves), Calhoun had dire warnings for his government. To Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard, he wrote: 



> It is a delicate subject, and would in the present tone of feelings to the South lead to great mischief.  It is not so much recognition simply as what must follow it.  We must send and receive ministers, and what would be our social relations to a Black minister in Washington?  Must he be received or excluded from our dinners, our dances and our parties, and must his daughters and sons participate in the society of our daughters and sons?  Small as these considerations appear to be they involve the peace and perhaps the union of our nation.



The implicit threat achieved the hoped-for result:  The United States did not recognize Haiti until 1862, with the Civil War in full swing and its agitation of the Deep South long past relevant.  Nor was this the last time Calhoun would use the tactic of predicting the destruction of the Union as a result of a proposed policy to thwart its implementation.  On March 4, 1850, less than a month before his death, Calhoun prepared a speech for the Senate floor which was read by Senator James Mason of Alabama, due to Calhoun's failing health leaving him unable to speak.  In it, he extensively laid the blame for Southern discontent directly at the feet of the North, speaking in broad terms of the sections as wholes and warning of disunion should the North not agree to Southern demands.  In his conclusion, he stated:  



> The North has only to will [the preservation of the Union] to accomplish itto do justice by conceding to the South an equal right in the acquired Territory [California], and to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilledto cease the agitation of the slave question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the Constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the South in substance the power which she possessed in protecting herself.  ... But will the North agree to do this?  It is for her to answer this question.  But, I will say, she cannot refuse, if she has half the love of the Union which she professes to have... At all events, the responsibility of saving the Union rests on the North, and not the South.



The speech was a rhetorical masterpiece, methodically (and intentionally) laying the North and South at odds with each other, alleging a crisis, and then laying all responsibility for solving it upon the North.  Calhoun sent a copy of the speech to Henry W. Conner, accompanied by this letter: 



> My speech, of which a copy will be enclosed to you by the mail, which takes this, was read today in the Senate.  My friends think it among my most successful efforts, & that it made a profound impression.  I, trust, that our friends in Charleston will give it a wide circulation.  You will see, that I have made up the issue between North & South.  If we flinch we are gone; but, if we stand fast on it, we shall triumph, either by compelling the North to yield to our terms or declaring our Indepen[den]ce of them.  Truly, J.C.C.



By this, if by nothing else he wrote, it is clear that Calhoun was intentionally engaging in political brinksmanship, aggressively gambling with the Union itself to achieve his political goal of spreading what he saw as the positive good of slavery.  The equal right in California he referred to in his speech was the right to hold slaves, which he conflated with the rights of the Southern section in general as a rhetorical device; the point of contention was whether or not California should be admitted to the Union as a free state without a counterpart slave state to keep representation in the Senate equal.  Far from the typical picture of a reluctant South seceding as a last resort to escape Northern oppression, Calhoun was quite willing and even eager to destroy the Union for political gain.  

*Threats and Violence: California, Preston Brooks, and the House (Divided) *

Such tactics and sentiments were hardly unique to Calhoun, and not all those who agreed with him were so subtle.  On the issue of California, Congressman Albert Brown of Mississippi said on the House floor: 



> The southern States ... will devise means for vindicating their rights.  I do not know what these means will be, but I know what they may be ... They may be to carry slaves into all of southern California, as the property of sovereign States, and there hold them, as we have a right to do; and if molested, defend them ... We ask you to give us our rights by non-intervention; if you refuse, I am for taking them by armed occupation.



In response to Calhoun's speech, James Hammond, a fellow South Carolinian planter and slaveholder, wrote to the Senator two days later, saying: 



> Our only safety is in _equality of power_.  We must divide the territories so as forever to retain that equality in the Senate at least  I would infinitely prefer disunion to any thing the least short of this  If the North will not consent to this I think we should not have another word to say, but kick them out of the Capitol & set it on fire.



Of course, California was admitted and none of these things came to pass, but not for lack of concessions to the Slave Power.  As part of the compromise for the admission of California (the aptly named Compromise of 1850) the remaining former Mexican territories (Utah and New Mexico) enacted slave codes, the infamous Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened (barring free states from requiring trials for alleged escaped slaves and requiring the assistance of their law enforcement in capturing fugitives, removing much of the nothern states' right to self-government), and California even sent one pro-slavery Senator to Washington to maintain balance in the Senate despite such views not representing the state's population.  

These tactics of threatening disunion and war if this or that policy was not acceded to by the free states continued throughout the 1850s.  During the presidential race of 1856, the candidacy of Republican John C. Frémont was vehemently opposed in the South for his party's anti-slavery views, leading Senator James Mason of Virginia to write to Jefferson Davis, who would later become the president of the Confederate States and was then the Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce:  



> I have a letter from [Virginia Governor Henry] WISE, of the 27th, full of spirit. He says the Governments of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana, have already agreed to rendezvous at Raleigh, and others willthis in your most private ear. He says, further, that he had officially requested you to exchange with Virginia, on fair terms of difference, percussion for flint muskets. I don't know the usage or power of the Department in such cases, but if it can be done, even by liberal construction, I hope you will accede.  Virginia probably has more arms than the other Southern States, and would divide in case of need. In a letter yesterday to a Committee in South Carolina. I gave it as my judgment, in the event of FREMONT's election, the South should not pause, but proceed at once to "immediate, absolute, and eternal separation."



Senator Mason _directly requested the Secretary of War to arm the southern states for war against the United States_, a full _four years_ before any actual secession, based on the possibility of a Republican president.  This did not come to pass, of course, because  Frémont lost the election (in no small part due to the specter of the threat of war), but even the asking is telling.  

But that's child's play compared to the election of the Speaker of the House in 1859.  In that year, a Republican representative from Ohio by the name of John Sherman was a candidate for the Speaker's gavel.  That he was a Republican was bad enough for the delegations of the slave states, but the real rub was that Sherman had endorsed Hinton Helper's controversial (in the South) book, _The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It_, in which Helper, a virulently racist North Carolinian, argued against slavery on the basis that it destroyed property values and otherwise retarded the economy of the South, to the detriment of non-slaveholding whites.  Nevermind that Sherman had withdrawn his endorsement after learning the full extent of Helper's views, or that Helper was not a morally-motivated abolitionist; he was an abolitionist nonetheless, and no one who had ever endorsed his book would be Speaker if the Congressional delegation of South Carolina had anything to say about it.  

As it happens, they had quite a bit to say, and every word scathingly treasonous, even by secessionist standards.  Because they did not propose secession, peaceful or otherwise, should Sherman win the seat; rather they were prepared to initiate a bloody coup on the House floor.  Representative William Porcher Miles of South Carolina was prepared to do anything to prevent Sherman's taking of the Speakership, and asked Governor William Gist of South Carolina whether the legislature there would support the Congressional delegation's plotting.  In response, on December 20, 1859 (one year to the day before South Carolina's secession) Gist posted a letter to Miles.  While he cautioned against rashly provoking the free states, advising that a bloodless revolution would be preferable, he placed the matter in Miles' judgment, saying:  



> While I advise against the ejection of Sherman if elected, I do not wish to be understood as not desiring the war to begin at Washington; but as I would prefer it should begin in sudden heat & with good provocation rather than a deliberate determination to perform an act of violence which might prejudice us in the eyes of the world.  If however, you upon consideration decide to make the issue of fire in Washington, write or telegraph me, & I will have a Regiment in or near Washington in the shortest possible time.



To be clear, this wasn't a matter of national slavery policy, or even of lasting legislation at all; the government of South Carolina was prepared to use military force to influence the internal political workings of the federal Congress over what amounted to personal dislike of the candidate for an action the candidate had since disavowed.  Once again, this crisis was defused by the free state delegations acceding to Southern demands; Sherman was withdrawn from consideration as a candidate for Speaker.

Even when not threatening violence and rebellion, Calhoun's mode of threatening secession and disunion continued to be popular with slave state politicians throughout the 1850s.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, nullifying the Missouri Compromise by permitting the slavery question to be determined by popular sovereignty (and setting the stage for Bleeding Kansas, in which opposing sides attempting to gain a majority of the electorate simply by killing the other side's voters), was passed under such threats, and when popular sovereignty failed to deliver a slave state in Kansas, threats of secession were again made if the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was not accepted as the governing document of a new state of Kansas.  If Kansas is _driven out of the Union for being a slave state_, can any slave state remain in it with honor? asked Senator Hammond of South Carolina (who, readers will no doubt recall, advocated burning down the Capitol if California was not made a slave state).  These threats prompted President Buchanan to urge acceptance of the Lecompton document, saying that if he did not, the slave states would secede from the Union or take up arms against us.  In the end, the Lecompton document was rejected and sent back for a new referendum, which failed; Kansas would not become a state, slave or free, for quite some time yet, removing the immediate crisis.  

But no account of 1850s slave state aggression would be complete without mentioning Preston Brooks, representative of South Carolina, and his armed assault against Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor on May 22, 1856.  Senator Sumner had in the preceding days given a speech denouncing the slaughter in the Kansas territory over the slavery issue, and had scathing words for Senator Andrew Butler, a relative of Brooks.  In response, Brooks, along with two companions, walked into the Senate chamber, briefly addressed Sumner, and then commenced beating him with a heavy cane, cudgeling the Senator until he broke his bolted down Senate desk from the floor, rendered Sumner unconscious, and continued beating the unfortunate Senator until he broke his cane.  

The incident was instantly infamous.  Brooks was roundly censured by the House, but nearly unanimously reelected by his constituents.  He received new canes from all over the South, including one bearing the inscription Use Knock-Down Arguments and another saying Hit Him Again.  

*The Crisis Comes: 1860-61*

By the close of the 1850s, the long string of Southern aggressions had long since begun to wear thin on the patience of the free states, and especially the Republican Party.  Abraham Lincoln, by now a candidate for President, said in an address to the Cooper Institute in New York, intended to be read by Southerners:  



> But you will not abide the election of a Republican president!  In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!  That is cool.  A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"



Of course, Lincoln's candidacy was successful.  This was the first time anyone since Andrew Jackson who had shown any backbone in standing up to their threats had taken high office.  The Deep South's secessions were swift.  South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas all seceded before Lincoln even took office.  I have extensively covered their stated reasons for doing so elsewhere, but preemptive secession (and accompanying seizure of federal property, notably forts and armories) is not a passive act, to put it mildly.  On January 11, 1861, the day of Alabama's secession, Lincoln wrote to a Republican congressman who proposed an emergency compromise to forestall and reverse the secessions:  



> We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices.  In this they are either attempting to play upon us or they are in dead earnest.  Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us and of the government.  They will repeat the experiment upon us _ad libitum_.  A year will not pass till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.



Compromise at this stage was impossible.  Lincoln saw, with more clarity than his predecessor, that the South would never cease holding threats over the heads of the free states until the question was solved.  The tug has to come, and better now than later, he wrote in December, 1860.  All that remained now was the tug itself.  

That came at Fort Sumter.  The fort was a federal installation, manned by federal troops, which the state of South Carolina had by statute voluntarily surrendered all claim to in 1836.  In short, it was thoroughly the property of the United States, even if one is so generous as to presume the legitimacy of secession through the means used by South Carolina.  As every high school student in the United States knows, South Carolinian forces fired on Fort Sumter from the batteries of Fort Johnson, Fort Moultrie, and Cummings Point starting at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861.  

This was, of course, the ultimate aggression of the South:  Southern partisans bombarded and captured a manned United States military fortification, touching off a war that killed more Americans than any other war in history, almost as many as all other American wars combined.   

*Conclusion*

The American Civil War was thoroughly of Southern construction.  Between the administrations of Jackson and Lincoln, the federal government and free states had bent over backwards at every threat of the slaveholding South to prevent disunion; every single threat of secession and war was met with compromise and backing down.  The so-called War of Northern Aggression is a fictional construct by the defenders of the fictional country known as the Confederate States of America, a thorough distortion of well-documented historical fact.  

_Author's Note:  This essay's title, The War of Southern Aggression, is shared by an essay by James M. McPherson, a fact I discovered while conducting research for this article.  Dr. McPherson's work is extremely well-written, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in this subject.  His book of essays containing his work by this title may be found on Google Books here, but I recommend purchasing the book, as I did after discovering it.  No infringement is intended._


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## Rogue 9

Well, since the Civil War seems to be a more popular topic of conversation lately, maybe this needs to be back up top.    So I'm not simply bumping without adding content, here's one of the previous essays I referenced at the beginning of the OP, which I include because of the multiple disingenuous attempts lately to say I claim the Union went to war against slavery, rather than the Confederacy going to war _for_ it.  This was from another board some time ago.  Note:  I refer to the Confederate States as the "Slave Power" because that was the name given to it, and before it the political power of Southern slaveholders, by the abolitionist movement, and I will continue to refer to it as such until I no longer hear the American Civil War referred to as the "War of Northern Aggression."  

Names and identifying links have been removed to protect the guilty.  All content following this paragraph is copied from the post I made.  

This post stems from [subject]'s recent blog entry, [redacted].  I am not here to argue about Abraham Lincoln's behavior in office; my objection stems from the implicit and explicit positions taken in some of the comments following the original post, to wit, that not only was Lincoln imperfect, but the Confederate States, hereinafter referred to as the Slave Power, its far more accurate _nom de guerre_ of the period, were in the right to behave as they did.  

Nothing could be further from the historical truth.  Having had this discussion before, I know that this is the point where Confederate apologists will start accusing me of being brainwashed by the history of the victors, so let me squelch that now:  My argument is based solely on primary-source documents of the Civil War, not historical accounts written after the fact.  

To specify, my argument is this:  That the Slave Power had absolutely no interest in states' rights as a principle, but rather used it as a fig leaf to cover their true interest, the perpetuation of chattel slavery.  That the Union was not at war to end slavery affects this not at all; the political tides of the Union were moving in such a way that the end of slavery was inevitable, and this is primarily why the states of the Slave Power seceded.  

To prove this assertion, I shall quote from certain documents produced by some of the Confederate states, the appropriately named Declarations of the Causes of Secession.  I will start with Mississippi.  The remainder of the documents may be found at the links I provide, so that all necessary context is available.  





			
				[url=http://www.civilwar.com/confederate-government/declaration-of-secession-mississippi.html]Mississippi: Declaration of the Causes of Secession[/url] said:
			
		

> A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
> 
> In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
> 
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.


The remainder of the document lists specific grievances, most of which are directly related to slavery.  None of them have anything to do with state sovereignty except insofar as the issue affects slavery, and in fact, rails against states' rights in one case where it is inconvenient to slavery, to wit:  





			
				Same source said:
			
		

> It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.


Yet according to popular Confederate doctrine, nullification is a right of the states.  I suppose it only counts when it's used in furtherance of slavery.  

The rest of the whole damning document may be read at the reference link at the top of the first quote box.  Now on to the Declaration of Causes for the state of Georgia, where we get our first glimpse of Lincoln's role in the secessionists' motives.  The Georgia legislature was apparently fond of giant walls-o'-text with no paragraphs, making it harder to extract discrete quotes since the document is poorly organized, but the link is provided and I will extract the relevant parts as best I can.  





			
				[url=http://www.civilwar.com/confederate-government/declaration-of-secession-Georgia.html]Georgia: Declaration of the Causes of Secession[/url] said:
			
		

> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.


Well, they certainly got right to the point.  You'll find that that's a theme in these documents.  Now, I promised Lincoln's role, and now I give it to you.  Keep in mind that this was published before Lincoln's inauguration, during the end of the Buchanan administration.  





> A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.


You'll have to forgive me if I don't take their rantings about waste and corruption completely at face value, since it serves their purposes to trash the Republican Party at this juncture, but note that even with all that, their primary complaint is that Lincoln and the Republicans oppose slavery.  The rest of the document is, as I said, a one-paragraph wall of text, so I will not quote the remainder, but anyone who cares to read it will find that the complaints continue in the vain of railing about restrictions against slavery.  

Now for Texas.  There are several interesting things to be found in this one.  Unique among the states that declared their causes, they do not jump straight into slavery and list some other complaints, but it is clear that slavery is the driving force.  





			
				[url=http://www.civilwar.com/confederate-government/declaration-of-secession-Texas.html]Texas: Declaration of the Causes of Secession[/url] said:
			
		

> Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.


The section in blue highlights a direct admission by Texas that it surrendered its separate national character, something commonly disputed by neo-Confederates.  This issue did not specifically come up in the LiveJournal comments that sparked this thread, but I thought I might as well head it off at the pass as long as I was already quoting this document.  As before, the red highlights references to slavery as a complaint.  Moving on.  





> The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.


I quote this paragraph mainly to point out that it is a bald-faced lie, as the territories were under Federal administration, not any sort of joint administration by the state governments.  Here's an interesting tidbit, which has little to do with slavery, but does highlight just how little the Confederates respected the republican form of government, despite taking on it's trappings:  





> By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress,


This is a complaint?  That's kind of what the majority does in a republic; if you want to get your way all the time, form a dictatorship.  Moving on, at the end of the document the Texan legislature was kind enough to explicitly outline their views for posterity, to wit:  





> In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
> 
> We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
> 
> That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.


Ouch.  That one's got to sting.  Particularly as a number of the "African race," as they so delicately put it, _did in fact_ fight and die in the American Revolution to establish this country, which in my book would give them _considerable_ agency in its establishment, if generational ties to the Revolutionaries actually mattered, which they don't.  And I daresay they went straight through slavery and into heresy at the end there.  

And now, last but hardly least, we come to South Carolina, the state that, as usual, started all the trouble.  They didn't get straight to the point at all, engaging in a long and largely inaccurate history lesson before getting down to business in their Declaration.  But when they did get to the point, oh boy did they get to it.  





			
				[url=http://www.civilwar.com/confederate-government/declaration-of-secession-south-carolina.html]South Carolina: Declaration of the Causes of Secession[/url] said:
			
		

> The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "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."
> 
> *This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made.* The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.


All.  About.  Slavery.  

I think we've heard enough, but there's one last thing on the founding subject, and unlike the Declarations, I shall quote it in full.  That is a speech by Alexander Stephens, member of Georgia's secession convention (where he opposed secession) and Vice President of the Slave Power.  The speech is commonly known as the Cornerstone Address.  





			
				[url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1861stephens.html]Alexander H. Stephens: Cornerstone Address[/url] said:
			
		

> March 21, 1861
> We are in the midst of one of the greatest epochs in our history. The last ninety days will mark one of the most memorable eras in the history of modern civilization.
> 
> ... we are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world-seven States have, within the last three months, thrown off an old Government and formed a new. This revolution has been signally marked, up to this time, by the fact of its having been accomplished without the loss of a single drop of blood. This new Constitution, or form of government, constitutes the subject to which your attention will be partly invited.
> 
> In reference to it, I make this first general remark: It amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and privileges. All the great principles of Magna Chartal are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, under the laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old Constitution, is still maintained and secured. All the essentials of the old Constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people, have been preserved and perpetuated.... So, taking the whole new Constitution, I have no hesitancy in giving it as my judgment, that it is decidedly better than the old. [Applause.] 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 in ....
> 
> But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other-though last, not least: the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. *This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.* Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
> 
> Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; *its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.* This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, *based upon* this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man.... I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
> 
> In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.
> 
> As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, [note: A reference to Genesis, 9:20-27, which was used as a justification for slavery] is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another in glory."
> 
> The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees, in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief stone of the corner" in our new edifice.


So, we continue to establish that the foundation of the Slave Power was in fact slavery; the name attached to it by the abolitionists was not idle political trash talk.  Not only that, but apparently I'm insane to believe that the color of a person's skin does not make him inherently superior or inferior.     Also, note: More heresy.  

And just to put the final nail in the coffin, we go to the Confederate Constitution, of which Stephens was speaking in the above address.  


			
				[url=http://civilwar.com/confederate-government/constitution-of-the-confederacy.html]Constitution of the Confederate States said:
			
		

> No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.


Oh, and just for fun, from the constitution's preamble:  





> We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a *permanent federal government,* establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity -- invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God-- do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.


"Permanent federal government."  So they weren't any happier about secession from the Slave Power than the Union was about secession from itself.     Which was amply demonstrated by Confederate treatment of the Unionists of eastern Tennessee, who wished to rejoin the Union; namely, eastern Tennessee was put down and occupied by military force, and pro-Union inhabitants conscripted into the Confederate armies, but that's peripheral to the point.  

Which brings me around to the other part of my assertion; not only did I claim that slavery was a primary motivator, but that the Slave Power did not value states' rights.  I touched on this slightly above in some of the other quotes, but the one thing that most lays this to rest is the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  This law effectively removed the northern states' rights to regulate the enforcement of the law within their own borders, superseding and repealing at the federal level the personal liberty laws of the free states, which did such terrible things as requiring that those seeking fugitive slaves produce evidence that their captives were fugitives, and affording those accused of being fugitives from slavery the right to a jury trial.  The Fugitive Slave Act, pushed by slave state delegations to Congress, ran roughshod over the rights of the free states because those rights were inconvenient to slavery.  If states' rights were such a near and dear principle as is often claimed in the modern day, this would never have happened.  The full text for the Act. 

I believe I have thoroughly established evidence for my assertion.  Since there are apparently some here inclined to dispute it, I await their replies.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.


----------



## RetiredGySgt

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.



The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

RetiredGySgt said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.
Click to expand...


Right, the south saw to it that no peaceful resolution would occur.  Because they didn't try to settle the issue peacefully by sending delegates to meet with Lincoln that Lincoln refused to meet with, right?


----------



## RetiredGySgt

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Right, the south saw to it that no peaceful resolution would occur.  Because they didn't try to settle the issue peacefully by sending delegates to meet with Lincoln that Lincoln refused to meet with, right?
Click to expand...


Who fired the first shot? Who forced the issue? Who was screaming for blood? Who raised armies while the other side did not?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

RetiredGySgt said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Right, the south saw to it that no peaceful resolution would occur.  Because they didn't try to settle the issue peacefully by sending delegates to meet with Lincoln that Lincoln refused to meet with, right?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Who fired the first shot? Who forced the issue? Who was screaming for blood? Who raised armies while the other side did not?
Click to expand...


Who ignored the peaceful delegates and belligerently forced the other side to fire because they fully intended to wage a war that was up to that point not politically popular?


----------



## paperview

We've been here before Kevin.

The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> We've been here before Kevin.
> 
> The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.



Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.


----------



## paperview

Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.

South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox


----------



## editec

The debate about history that will not die.

Why not?

Because some people revise history to make it a debate.

Waste of time trying to convice those who believe lies, folks.

Read your history.


----------



## Big Black Dog

I was just wondering...  If the South had of won the Civil War, would there be a requirement for all eating establishments to have grits on the menu?  Might not be such a bad thing - just saying.


----------



## editec

Count Dracula said:


> I was just wondering... If the South had of won the Civil War, would there be a requirement for all eating establishments to have grits on the menu? Might not be such a bad thing - just saying.


 
The North won.

Is scapple and baked  beans for breakfast on every menu?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox



And the Colonies had no more right to anything than South Carolina did to Fort Sumter.


----------



## rikules

RetiredGySgt said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Right, the south saw to it that no peaceful resolution would occur.  Because they didn't try to settle the issue peacefully by sending delegates to meet with Lincoln that Lincoln refused to meet with, right?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Who fired the first shot? Who forced the issue? Who was screaming for blood? Who raised armies while the other side did not?
Click to expand...



you?
tea baggers?
conservative right wingers?
conservative militia?


----------



## Rogue 9

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> We've been here before Kevin.
> 
> The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
Click to expand...

Buchanan had the _cowardice_ to refuse to execute the duties of his office.  South Carolina had *no* claim to Fort Sumter.  Want proof?  Here you go:  





> Committee on Federal Relations
> In the House of Representatives, December 31st, 1836
> 
> "The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
> 
> "*Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory*, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
> 
> "Also resolved: *That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.*
> 
> "Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
> 
> "Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
> 
> "T. W. Glover, C. H. R."
> "In Senate, December 21st, 1836
> 
> "Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order:
> 
> Jacob Warly, C. S.


As the above bill passed by the South Carolina legislature twenty-five years before clearly states, all claim of the state to the site of the fort was extinguished, and it was wholly the property of the United States federal government.  South Carolinian insurgents attacked the fort without first being fired upon (from batteries that had _also_ been given over to the federal government in like manner, I might add), which is an act of war, and since they were citizens of the United States, an act of treason as well.


----------



## hortysir

Shit.

You could have just given us the link to the audio book....


----------



## Rogue 9

hortysir said:


> Shit.
> 
> You could have just given us the link to the audio book....


  Really?  You'd rather I just said "ZOMG, t3h South suxxors!!1!" rather than supporting my position?  Discussing history in a meaningful way requires documentation, and I'm not here to engage in meaningless drivel.


----------



## rdean

*Conclusion*

The American Civil War was thoroughly of Southern construction. Between the administrations of Jackson and Lincoln, the federal government and free states had bent over backwards at every threat of the slaveholding South to prevent disunion; every single threat of secession and war was met with compromise and backing down. The so-called War of Northern Aggression is a fictional construct by the defenders of the fictional country known as the Confederate States of America, a thorough distortion of well-documented historical fact. 

Well, you know what they say, "History repeats itself".

Right wing Confederate Republicans have refused to negotiate with this president on anything.  They have publicly announced they want him to fail and time after time have hoped for an Obama "Waterloo".  

You have right wing conservatives screaming "socialism" and "government medicine" while collecting Social Security and Medicare.

Obama expands "gun rights" and right wingers say he will only take their guns, "barrel first".

We are paying the lowest tax rate in 50 years and right wingers are screaming, "Stop Taxes", giving the impression they have no idea where Medicaid and Medicare come from.

Even while they shout "boy" and "thug", they insist there is "nothing racist" in their rhetoric.  

The amazing thing is the "restraint" Obama has shown with these White Wing Morons.  

Check out the new GOP Platform of "Maine" which was replaced by the Tea bag Platform.  It's a "hoot".

And after all the damage Republicans did for 8 years, they insist, this time, they will get it "right".  

Get what right?  The total destruction of the United States of America?  Maybe it's their way of finally "winning" the Civil War?  You think that's what it could be?  The Destruction of the United States is the Confederate South finally "winning".


----------



## paperview

Rogue 9 said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> We've been here before Kevin.
> 
> The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Buchanan had the _cowardice_ to refuse to execute the duties of his office.  South Carolina had *no* claim to Fort Sumter.  Want proof?  Here you go:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Committee on Federal Relations
> In the House of Representatives, December 31st, 1836
> 
> "The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
> 
> "*Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory*, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
> 
> "Also resolved: *That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.*
> 
> "Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
> 
> "Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
> 
> "T. W. Glover, C. H. R."
> "In Senate, December 21st, 1836
> 
> "Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order:
> 
> Jacob Warly, C. S.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> As the above bill passed by the South Carolina legislature twenty-five years before clearly states, all claim of the state to the site of the fort was extinguished, and it was wholly the property of the United States federal government.  South Carolinian insurgents attacked the fort without first being fired upon (from batteries that had _also_ been given over to the federal government in like manner, I might add), which is an act of war, and since they were citizens of the United States, an act of treason as well.
Click to expand...

Excellent citation.



The earlier Act of War from the South not many seem to know about, 
before Lincoln was president:






They took a ship  and seized it: "The Marion."

Then converted her to a Man of War ship.  





*THE STEAMSHIP "MARION." ; SEIZED  BY THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA TO BE CONVERTED INTO A MAN-OF-WAR. *


Star of the West

Note the date on the Harpers Weekly newspaper:  January, 1861, linked above.

* THE FIRST OF THE WAR.  *

WE publish herewith  pictures of  the United States  steam-sloop Brooklyn, and of the  steamship Star of the West,  and of the steamship Marion,  which three vessels figured so prominently in the movements of last  week; and on  page 37 we give a large plan of   Charleston harbor, showing the forts,  etc.,  together with a view of   Fort Johnson. These pictures w ill  enable  our readers to realize what is going on in this most memorable contest  of the  present age. 
On Wednesday morning,  January 9,  1861, the 

first shots were fired At   daybreak on that morning at the steamship Star of the West, with 250  United  States troops on board, attempted to enter the harbor of Charleston for the  purpose of communicating with  Fort Sumter. The people of  Charleston had  been warned of her coming and of her errand by telegraph. They  determined to  prevent her reaching  Fort Sumter. Accordingly, as soon as  she  came within range, batteries on Morris Island and at  Fort  Moultrie opened on her. The first shot was fired across her  bows  ; whereupon she increased her speed, and hoisted the   stars and stripes. Other  shots were then fired in rapid 

succession from Morris  Island,  two or more of which hulled the steamer, and compelled her to put about  and go  to sea. The accompanying picture shows the Star of the West as she  entered   Charleston harbor; the plan will  explain  the situation of the forts, and the position of the steamer when she was  fired  upon. The channel through which she passed runs close by Morris Island  for some  distance. 
 Fort Sumter  made no demonstration, except at the port-holes, where guns were run out  bearing  on Morris Island.

Seizing Federal ships I guess was something the South figured they could lay claim to as well.  Never mind the property of the United States Fort, which SC released all claim to in 1836, as you noted above. 

Do "States Rights" give States the Rights to break legally binding Contracts / Resolutions they formally agreed to?

SC: _"Hey! we didn't really mean it when we agreed to it."_


----------



## Oddball

How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?

Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?


----------



## paperview

Dude said:


> How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?
> 
> Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?


Poor analogy.

I think it might be more akin to a cheating husband who  decides he wants a divorce and declares:
too bad, I'm keeping the house.


----------



## xsited1

As soon as I finish reading War and Peace, I'll read the OP.


----------



## Oddball

paperview said:


> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?
> 
> Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?
> 
> 
> 
> Poor analogy.
> 
> I think it might be more akin to a cheating husband who  decides he wants a divorce and declares:
> too bad, I'm keeping the house.
Click to expand...

I think the cheating angle is a bad analogy...Unless you want to use it as the husband stalking you, harassing your guests, and spying on you from Ft. Sumter, after you've dumped him and moved out.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And the Colonies had no more right to anything than South Carolina did to Fort Sumter.
Click to expand...


The colonies had a better right for they had not confederated with their free will expressed by the ratification conferences, committees, and legislatures as had the states.  The principle of federalism sublimated state will in the larger will of the Union.  And, by fiat, Rogue 9's excellent research sweeps the table on whether SC had a right to Ft. Sumter.


----------



## paperview

Dude said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?
> 
> Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?
> 
> 
> 
> Poor analogy.
> 
> I think it might be more akin to a cheating husband who  decides he wants a divorce and declares:
> too bad, I'm keeping the house.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I think the cheating angle is a bad analogy...Unless you want to use it as the husband stalking you, harassing your guests, and spying on you from Ft. Sumter, after you've dumped him and moved out.
Click to expand...



I'm going to have to ponder this one for a bit.  lol.


Edit: If you could work a little slave action in there, I think I might be able to ride with it for a bit.


----------



## Rogue 9

Dude said:


> How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?
> 
> Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?


Your analogy presumes, _a priori,_ that secession through the means used by South Carolina is constitutionally legitimate.  It isn't.  





xsited1 said:


> As soon as I finish reading War and Peace, I'll read the OP.


I repeat my previous post.


----------



## Old Rocks

Count Dracula said:


> I was just wondering...  If the South had of won the Civil War, would there be a requirement for all eating establishments to have grits on the menu?  Might not be such a bad thing - just saying.



*Shut yo mouth, Boy!*


----------



## Old Rocks

Dude said:


> How can it be an act of treason when you've seceded?
> 
> Isn't that kinda like your parents trying to ground you after you've moved into your own house?



Well, the South got it's ass throughly and justly kicked. And your anology is as adolescent as the rest of your posts.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Rogue 9 said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> We've been here before Kevin.
> 
> The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Buchanan had the _cowardice_ to refuse to execute the duties of his office.  South Carolina had *no* claim to Fort Sumter.  Want proof?  Here you go:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Committee on Federal Relations
> In the House of Representatives, December 31st, 1836
> 
> "The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
> 
> "*Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory*, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
> 
> "Also resolved: *That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.*
> 
> "Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
> 
> "Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
> 
> "T. W. Glover, C. H. R."
> "In Senate, December 21st, 1836
> 
> "Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order:
> 
> Jacob Warly, C. S.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> As the above bill passed by the South Carolina legislature twenty-five years before clearly states, all claim of the state to the site of the fort was extinguished, and it was wholly the property of the United States federal government.  South Carolinian insurgents attacked the fort without first being fired upon (from batteries that had _also_ been given over to the federal government in like manner, I might add), which is an act of war, and since they were citizens of the United States, an act of treason as well.
Click to expand...


Yes, Fort Sumter was a federal fort, but it was also within the territory of South Carolina.  I wonder how many British forts were taken by the Colonies in the Revolutionary War.  Obviously they had no claim to those.


----------



## paperview

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
> 
> 
> 
> Buchanan had the _cowardice_ to refuse to execute the duties of his office.  South Carolina had *no* claim to Fort Sumter.  Want proof?  Here you go:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Committee on Federal Relations
> In the House of Representatives, December 31st, 1836
> 
> "The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
> 
> "*Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory*, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
> 
> "Also resolved: *That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.*
> 
> "Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
> 
> "Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
> 
> "T. W. Glover, C. H. R."
> "In Senate, December 21st, 1836
> 
> "Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order:
> 
> Jacob Warly, C. S.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> As the above bill passed by the South Carolina legislature twenty-five years before clearly states, all claim of the state to the site of the fort was extinguished, and it was wholly the property of the United States federal government.  South Carolinian insurgents attacked the fort without first being fired upon (from batteries that had _also_ been given over to the federal government in like manner, I might add), which is an act of war, and since they were citizens of the United States, an act of treason as well.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yes, Fort Sumter was a federal fort, but it was also within the territory of South Carolina.  I wonder how many British forts were taken by the Colonies in the Revolutionary War.  Obviously they had no claim to those.
Click to expand...

Did the British fight for their claim to them?  Why yes they did.

Was the newly formed United States victorious in the battle?  Why yes they were.

Winning.  It's what matters.


----------



## editec

> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at *least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.* This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter. He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.


 

So, if I amnd my hippie compatriots elected to take cut off a FEDERAL MILITARY BASE  here in Maine from receiving supplies, and if we DECLARE that _Maine is no longer part of the USA_, you would support me, right?

You would not be calling for the FED to send in troops to take back that military base because you believe in STATES rights?

Is that what you apologists for the Southern cause_ really_ believe?


----------



## Ravi

Excellent research! It is always amusing to see people pretend that the war was not about slavery.

I thought this was interesting and I actually recall being told about it in school.


> These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical  regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can  bear exposure to the tropical sun.



Sadly, there are those that still believe this idiocy.


----------



## paperview

Ravi said:


> Excellent research! It is always amusing to see people pretend that the war was not about slavery.
> 
> I thought this was interesting and I actually recall being told about it in school.
> 
> 
> 
> These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical  regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can  bear exposure to the tropical sun.
> 
> 
> 
> Sadly, there are those that still believe this idiocy.
Click to expand...

Yep.

That was from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession.  A Document as important to them as the Declaration of Independence. 

The words preceding those above are:  *&#8220;Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery &#8212;  the greatest material interest of the world."*

A few sentences later: *"a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."

*Owning human beings to the South:  The greatest material interest in the world*.


*


----------



## paperview

The South:  We believe in freedom and self-determination!

Just cause more than one third of our population is in bondage shouldn't  really matter.  

Should it?


----------



## Old Rocks

The South fought a war to protect their ability to continue the second worst crime against humanity, slavery, and dressed that crime is fancy rhetoric. They were served a deserved ration of justice by those that fought to preserve the United States of America, and to end this crime in our nation.

The continued resentment of those that regard this as an infringement on their rights only confirms the fact that there is something very sick in a culture that failed the see the immorality and criminality of their actions in that period.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Buchanan had the _cowardice_ to refuse to execute the duties of his office.  South Carolina had *no* claim to Fort Sumter.  Want proof?  Here you go:
> As the above bill passed by the South Carolina legislature twenty-five years before clearly states, all claim of the state to the site of the fort was extinguished, and it was wholly the property of the United States federal government.  South Carolinian insurgents attacked the fort without first being fired upon (from batteries that had _also_ been given over to the federal government in like manner, I might add), which is an act of war, and since they were citizens of the United States, an act of treason as well.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, Fort Sumter was a federal fort, but it was also within the territory of South Carolina.  I wonder how many British forts were taken by the Colonies in the Revolutionary War.  Obviously they had no claim to those.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Did the British fight for their claim to them?  Why yes they did.
> 
> Was the newly formed United States victorious in the battle?  Why yes they were.
> 
> Winning.  It's what matters.
Click to expand...


Might doesn't make right.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

editec said:


> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at *least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.* This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter. He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So, if I amnd my hippie compatriots elected to take cut off a FEDERAL MILITARY BASE  here in Maine from receiving supplies, and if we DECLARE that _Maine is no longer part of the USA_, you would support me, right?
> 
> You would not be calling for the FED to send in troops to take back that military base because you believe in STATES rights?
> 
> Is that what you apologists for the Southern cause_ really_ believe?
Click to expand...


Well since I believe in the right of secession it wouldn't make much sense for me to oppose the right of Maine to secede.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The belief in secession today is out of step with historical precedent: you know, secede and bleed!


----------



## paperview

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, Fort Sumter was a federal fort, but it was also within the territory of South Carolina.  I wonder how many British forts were taken by the Colonies in the Revolutionary War.  Obviously they had no claim to those.
> 
> 
> 
> Did the British fight for their claim to them?  Why yes they did.
> 
> Was the newly formed United States victorious in the battle?  Why yes they were.
> 
> Winning.  It's what matters.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
Click to expand...

But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The South was morally insane and paid the pain.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> Did the British fight for their claim to them?  Why yes they did.
> 
> Was the newly formed United States victorious in the battle?  Why yes they were.
> 
> Winning.  It's what matters.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
Click to expand...


I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.

The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
Click to expand...


The states voluntarily ceded sovereignity when they joined the union.  If they were to maintain it, the Constitution would have stated it.  But it did not.  Only did it regulate the entry of new states into the union.

Secessionists are the height of hypocrisy to suggest the same of the union.  For shame.


----------



## Rogue 9

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
Click to expand...

The Slave Power didn't fight for the right of self-government, because they already had it; they'd spent the previous eighty years dominating the federal government and had a mass temper tantrum at the very first setback.  They fought because the Republican platform called for exclusion of slavery from the territories.  They fought to _deny_ the right of self-government to their slaves and those slaves' descendants because they feared abolitionism.  

The fire-eaters of the South whipped up the southern body politic by rhetoric about the Republicans freeing the slaves and forcing white women to marry them, not by even creating the _belief_ that the North was going to implement an autocracy.  The Confederacy instituted the draft well before the Union and did so with much greater force.  The Confederacy used military force to crush pro-Union inhabitants, rigged secession referendums in Tennessee and Missouri (with more success in the former than the latter), and generally followed the same _modus operandi_ they'd used in Kansas for the preceding decade at home.  Self-determination had _nothing to do with it._


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Rogue 9 said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The Slave Power didn't fight for the right of self-government, because they already had it; they'd spent the previous eighty years dominating the federal government and had a mass temper tantrum at the very first setback.  They fought because the Republican platform called for exclusion of slavery from the territories.  They fought to _deny_ the right of self-government to their slaves and those slaves' descendants because they feared abolitionism.
> 
> The fire-eaters of the South whipped up the southern body politic by rhetoric about the Republicans freeing the slaves and forcing white women to marry them, not by even creating the _belief_ that the North was going to implement an autocracy.  The Confederacy instituted the draft well before the Union and did so with much greater force.  The Confederacy used military force to crush pro-Union inhabitants, rigged secession referendums in Tennessee and Missouri (with more success in the former than the latter), and generally followed the same _modus operandi_ they'd used in Kansas for the preceding decade at home.  Self-determination had _nothing to do with it._
Click to expand...


Yes, self-determination had much to do with it.  You're right they weren't happy about the Republican platform calling for no slavery in the new territories, but you fail to mention the tariff issue which had plagued the nation for decades prior to secession.  Why should the south be forced to pay ridiculous tariffs for the benefit of the north?  Lincoln simply wanted the south to stay in the Union because he wanted them to pay their tribute to the federal government, as he states in his Inaugural Address, and because he knew that a protectionist north wouldn't be able to compete with a free trade south.  The mayor of New York knew this as well, which is why he wanted the city to secede and become a free trade port in the north.


----------



## paperview

Rogue 9 said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The Slave Power didn't fight for the right of self-government, because they already had it; they'd spent the previous eighty years dominating the federal government and had a mass temper tantrum at the very first setback.  They fought because the Republican platform called for exclusion of slavery from the territories.  They fought to _deny_ the right of self-government to their slaves and those slaves' descendants because they feared abolitionism.
> 
> The fire-eaters of the South whipped up the southern body politic by rhetoric about the Republicans freeing the slaves and forcing white women to marry them, not by even creating the _belief_ that the North was going to implement an autocracy.  The Confederacy instituted the draft well before the Union and did so with much greater force.  The Confederacy used military force to crush pro-Union inhabitants, rigged secession referendums in Tennessee and Missouri (with more success in the former than the latter), and generally followed the same _modus operandi_ they'd used in Kansas for the preceding decade at home.  Self-determination had _nothing to do with it._
Click to expand...

damn you know your history.



What a refreshing new poster you are.  A hearty welcome!


----------



## paperview

Kevin:  How many 1850's era newspapers have you read?

They are available online.

I beg you to read them.

Wikipedia:List of online newspaper archives - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## JakeStarkey

The tariff was a minor issue, subsumed in the difference among factory industry, market agriculture in the north, and slave monocultures in the South.  Ignoring me, KK, does not mean the truth goes away.  You are simply and wrongheadedly incorrect.


----------



## Oddball

Tariffs, embargoes and other economic sanctions are first steps to shooting wars.

Although they don't always inevitably lead to hostilities, no hot war ever occurred without them being in place to begin with.


----------



## Oddball

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..."

~Abraham Lincoln


----------



## JakeStarkey

Dude, thank you.  Abraham Lincoln was about preserving the Union, which was the issue of the war.  The cause of the war was race and slavery.  The facts have never changed.


----------



## Oddball

Either the cause of the war was slavery or it wasn't...You don't get it both ways.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The cause was slavery, the issue was the union.  Look up the integrated concepts of 'primary' and 'necessary' causation (or 'requirements', if you wish).


----------



## Oddball

Nonsense.

Once the Confederacahh seceded, slavery was no longer the Union's business.

You're trying to get it both ways here and you're failing....Yet again.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> The tariff was a minor issue, subsumed in the difference among factory industry, market agriculture in the north, and slave monocultures in the South.  Ignoring me, KK, does not mean the truth goes away.  You are simply and wrongheadedly incorrect.



I'm not ignoring you, but when you merely state that I'm wrong there's really nothing for me to say in response other than "No I'm not."  And that's not really worth posting in my opinion.


----------



## paperview

Dude said:


> "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..."
> 
> ~Abraham Lincoln


----------



## Rogue 9

Dude said:


> "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..."
> 
> ~Abraham Lincoln


"...and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. 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. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

"I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and *I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.*" - Abraham Lincoln, continued.

Really, now?  You think no one knows the rest of the letter?    As you can see, Lincoln was doing no less than what every President should: Putting his duty ahead of his own personal wishes. Which was an excellent thing for the South, I might add, because of this little gem: 





			
				Abraham Lincoln said:
			
		

> Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.


----------



## Oddball

I know the full text of the letter to Greeley...There's nothing in it to indicate that Lincoln was concerned about the southern slaves anywhere near as much as his own ego and place in history, insofar as letting the Confederacaah go it's own way.

*"I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man."

~Abraham Lincoln*


----------



## AquaAthena

Dude said:


> Either the cause of the war was slavery or it wasn't...You don't get it both ways.



Don't forget...cotton!


----------



## Rogue 9

And in this he was no worse than the vast majority of his contemporaries, and far better than most.  [quote="Abraham Lincoln]Certainly the negro is not our equal in colorperhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black. [/quote]
Lincoln was a free-labor ideologist, and it was for this reason that he opposed slavery.  Was he a racist?  Hell yes, but try to find me a significant number of people who _weren't_ in 1860.  

In any case, this is totally irrelevant and works against you in any case; if you want this to turn into a relative comparison of the racial attitudes of the opposing leaders, it still comes out the worse for the Confederates, because while Lincoln wasn't up in arms to give freedmen full political rights, Davis _was_ up in arms to keep blacks in slavery, and to put ones who weren't in slavery to begin with in it on the bargain.  The Confederacy made no distinction between escaped slaves and free blacks whom they captured during the war; _all_ were either put in bondage or shot for the express crime of _servile insurrection_ whether they'd been slaves or not.


----------



## Oddball

"Everybody did it" is no case.

The man was a stone racist who cared next to nothing about the plight of the blacks, and was only concerned about his place in the history books.

Well, he got that place....The greatest mass murderer of the 19th century.


----------



## Old Rocks

Dude said:


> "Everybody did it" is no case.
> 
> The man was a stone racist who cared next to nothing about the plight of the blacks, and was only concerned about his place in the history books.
> 
> Well, he got that place....The greatest mass murderer of the 19th century.



Only in your fevered little mind, Dooodeee......  For the rest of the world, he stands as the man that preserved the Union and freed the slaves.

The South, through it's crimes against humanity, through it's aggresive military policies brought destruction upon itself for exactly the same reason that the Nazis did. The crime that they defended, slavery, is second only to genocide in the litany of man's crimes against his fellow man.


----------



## Oddball

He "preserved the union" at gunpoint and "freed" the slaves to become sharecroppers and victims of Jim Crow.

All the leftist wackaloon re-writing of history can't whitewash the rank ethnocentrism, mammoth ego and body count of Lincoln.

1/2 million young men dead, millions more wounded and cities burned to the ground are the _*real *_ "crimes against humanity".


----------



## Rogue 9

Dude said:


> "Everybody did it" is no case.
> 
> The man was a stone racist who cared next to nothing about the plight of the blacks, and was only concerned about his place in the history books.
> 
> Well, he got that place....The greatest mass murderer of the 19th century.


Bullshit, and you know it.  The man was a product of his time, and his efforts did drastically improve the world.  Emancipation came about through his actions, and the republican form of government was preserved on the bargain.  

I don't think you quite grasp the geopolitical realities of the mid-19th century; hereditary rulership and aristocracy were still major political forces at that time, forces far greater than republicanism and bent on seeing it destroyed as a threat to their power base.  European autocratic rulers wanted the Confederacy to succeed in order to break up the United States as a world power and clear the way for resumed colonization of the Western Hemisphere.  The only thing that prevented the British Empire from immediately intervening on the part of the Confederates was Britain's opposition to slavery; the Emancipation Proclamation made their interference politically impossible, but there were significant forces in the British government prior to it pushing for recognition of the Confederacy.  Napoleon III _desperately_ wanted the Confederacy to succeed, confidently predicting that such an event would precipitate further breakups because the illusion that he believed the ability of a free people to rule themselves was would be dispelled.  (He had every reason to believe it was an illusion; the French Republic, after all, was at that point no more and in fact France was ruled by Napoleon himself.)  There's no reason to believe he was wrong; after all, the precedent the Slave Power was attempting to set was that _losing an election_ is grounds for secession.  If that precedent had been set, and minorities became empowered to break up the government whenever they chose, the United States would have Balkanized and been powerless against the European colonial empires that were then sweeping Africa because the Americas were denied to them by the United States.  (In fact, Emperor Napoleon took advantage of the Civil War to back the Habsburg dynasty's conquest of Mexico while the U.S. was distracted; more would have come.)  The Union victory in the Civil War saved the free world as we know it; the Confederacy would have destroyed it, however unwittingly.  





Dude said:


> He "preserved the union" at gunpoint and "freed" the slaves to become sharecroppers and victims of Jim Crow.


You can lay the last part squarely at the feet of Andrew Johnson, not Lincoln.  Booth's assassination of Lincoln both made things harder on the South (Lincoln had the influence to reign in the punishing measures leveled by the Republican-dominated Congress, while Johnson, a Democrat despite being Lincoln's vice president, did not) and permitted Johnson to end much of the Reconstruction policies related to improving the condition of the freedmen, which he did with gusto, crippling the Freedmen's Bureau and vetoing the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (which was passed over his veto, though not for his lack of trying to prevent it).


----------



## Oddball

He was a victim of coicumstance!!






What....._*ever!!!*_


----------



## Rogue 9

Dude said:


> He was a victim of coicumstance!!
> 
> http://mikegothard.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/curly-thumb-300x374-21.jpg[img]
> 
> What.....[I][B]ever!!![/B][/I][/quote]
> Yes, ignore the entire point.  Way to win a debate, champ.  :razz:  At any rate, Lincoln's personal views [I]still[/I] don't affect the end result of the Union cause, which was emancipation and preservation of the free institutions that are now the dominant power in the world, something that [I]would not be[/I] if the United States were broken up before it became a world power, so I'm not sure why you're harping on it; it's really not the point.


----------



## Oddball

I ignore nothing.

The "Union cause" was total war, as Lincoln was the CiC.

His ethnocentrism and aggressive motivations for conquering the CS are  verifiable matters of recorded history, for those willing to doff the blinders of hero worship to see.


----------



## Rogue 9

Dude said:


> I ignore nothing.
> 
> The "Union cause" was total war, as Lincoln was the CiC.
> 
> His ethnocentrism and aggressive motivations for conquering the CS are  verifiable matters of recorded history, for those willing to doff the blinders of hero worship to see.


And the Confederate States' aggressive policies and blatant disregard of human rights and liberties are also verifiable matters of history.  They deserved destruction for their policies, and lo and behold they got it.  The entire motivation for the rebellion was the preservation of slavery.  Claiming it was the tariff is a joke; the tariff in 1860 was at its lowest level in decades.  If that was the reason, they'd have seceded long before.  No, as I have already thoroughly demonstrated through the declarations of the Confederate governments in this thread, their motivation was chattel slavery, for which they deserve nothing but scorn from posterity.

And "total war?"  That's a joke; total war is by definition indiscriminate, which even at its most harsh the Union war policy wasn't.  As for "ignoring nothing,"  you ignore the fact that Confederate victory would have meant the re-ascendance of monarchist and imperial governments and the end of self-rule by free citizenry before the century was out; it would have been proof positive that a republican government cannot sustain itself.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Rogue 9 said:


> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> I ignore nothing.
> 
> The "Union cause" was total war, as Lincoln was the CiC.
> 
> His ethnocentrism and aggressive motivations for conquering the CS are  verifiable matters of recorded history, for those willing to doff the blinders of hero worship to see.
> 
> 
> 
> And the Confederate States' aggressive policies and blatant disregard of human rights and liberties are also verifiable matters of history.  They deserved destruction for their policies, and lo and behold they got it.  The entire motivation for the rebellion was the preservation of slavery.  Claiming it was the tariff is a joke; the tariff in 1860 was at its lowest level in decades.  If that was the reason, they'd have seceded long before.  No, as I have already thoroughly demonstrated through the declarations of the Confederate governments in this thread, their motivation was chattel slavery, for which they deserve nothing but scorn from posterity.
Click to expand...


And Lincoln ran on a platform of raising the tariff, and while it was Buchanan that signed the actual Morrill Tariff Lincoln certainly supported it.

Morrill Tariff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for the Declarations of Secession, how about South Carolina's Address to the Slaveholding States:



> And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.



Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States by Convention of South Carolina


----------



## SpidermanTuba

Rogue 9 said:


> The War of Northern Aggression is a popular phrase among Confederate apologists, referring to the supposed outrageous aggression shown by the Union to bring the otherwise peaceful Confederate States back under its rule.  But how true is it?



Its very true. The Union burnt to the ground two major southern cities. Sherman stole food and valuables from civilians on his way to Savannah, leaving many a poor farmer with nothing to survive on.

The North invaded the South. That makes them the aggressor.


----------



## Ravi

paperview said:


> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..."
> 
> ~Abraham Lincoln
Click to expand...

Dud is a cherry picker.

*Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.*
*I have just read yours of the 19th.  addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous,  I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable  in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.*
*As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing"  as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.*
*I would save the Union. I would save it  the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. 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. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.*
*I have here stated my purpose according  to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.*
*Yours,
A. Lincoln.*


----------



## Ravi

Rogue 9 said:


> And in this he was no worse than the vast majority of his contemporaries, and far better than most.  [quote="Abraham Lincoln]Certainly the negro is not our equal in colorperhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black.


Lincoln was a free-labor ideologist, and it was for this reason that he opposed slavery.  Was he a racist?  Hell yes, but try to find me a significant number of people who _weren't_ in 1860.  

In any case, this is totally irrelevant and works against you in any case; if you want this to turn into a relative comparison of the racial attitudes of the opposing leaders, it still comes out the worse for the Confederates, because while Lincoln wasn't up in arms to give freedmen full political rights, Davis _was_ up in arms to keep blacks in slavery, and to put ones who weren't in slavery to begin with in it on the bargain.  The Confederacy made no distinction between escaped slaves and free blacks whom they captured during the war; _all_ were either put in bondage or shot for the express crime of _servile insurrection_ whether they'd been slaves or not.[/quote]Yes, this is all a red herring on Dud's part. It is admirable that even though Lincoln did not believe blacks were equal to whites he also believed they had a right not to be enslaved.


----------



## editec

Let us never forget that not every southerner supported the seccussion.

Whole states refused to succeed, and counties -- even counties in the deep South -- did not WANT their states to succeed.

This fact seems to be overlooked every time this issue comes up.

Just as there were copperheads in the North, there were supporters of the Republic in the South.

Another reason this civil war was so tragic, in my opinion.

Both sides drafted men whose POV was in opposition to fighting for their respective government's cause, ya know.

Plenty of these brave souls died for something that they not only didn't believe in, but actively opposed.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The libertarian secessionists once again have failed to revise history.

Keep it up, guys: keep twisting and keep getting corrected.


----------



## Oddball

paperview said:


> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..."
> 
> ~Abraham Lincoln
Click to expand...

Apparently, Abe never heard of a duplex.


----------



## paperview

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Rogue  9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dude said:
> 
> 
> 
> I ignore nothing.
> 
> The "Union cause" was total war, as Lincoln was the CiC.
> 
> His ethnocentrism and aggressive motivations for conquering the CS are   verifiable matters of recorded history, for those willing to doff the  blinders of hero worship to see.
> 
> 
> 
> And the Confederate States' aggressive policies and blatant disregard of  human rights and liberties are also verifiable matters of history.   They deserved destruction for their policies, and lo and behold they got  it.  The entire motivation for the rebellion was the preservation of  slavery.  Claiming it was the tariff is a joke; the tariff in 1860 was  at its lowest level in decades.  If that was the reason, they'd have  seceded long before.  No, as I have already thoroughly demonstrated  through the declarations of the Confederate governments in this thread,  their motivation was chattel slavery, for which they deserve nothing but  scorn from posterity.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> And Lincoln ran on a platform of raising the tariff, and while it was  Buchanan that signed the actual Morrill Tariff Lincoln certainly  supported it.
> 
> Morrill  Tariff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> As for the Declarations of Secession, how about South Carolina's Address  to the Slaveholding States:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in  the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their  representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust  taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their  benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in  the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the  taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a  view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South  have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object  inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern  interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States by  Convention of South Carolina
Click to expand...

 
 Kevin, the South had already seceded when the Morrill Tariff was passed.  
 The previous Tariff of 1857 was quite favorable to the South; no doubt  pre-secession, the Tariff talk played a role, but most of the reasons  given were slavery related.  As Rogue states correctly, the Tariffs had  been historically low in 1860.  

In the snippet you provide from the Dec. 1860 SC convention, yes, Taxation is addressed, but a better portion of it deals with how important their slaves were to them in the whole matter.  In fact, in their actual Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, pretty much most of it was about Slavery. 
But to draw on your citation...a few paragraphs later from your quote above:"[At the time the Constitution was written] *There was  then, no Tariff &#65533; no fanaticism concerning negroes*.

It was the  delegates from New England, who proposed in the Convention which framed  the Constitution, to the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia,    *that if they would agree to give Congress the power of regulating  commerce by a majority, that they would support the extension of  the African Slave Trade for twenty years.*

African Slavery, existed in  all the States, but one. The idea, that the Southern States would be  made to pay that tribute to their Northern confederates, which they had  refused to pay to Great Britain; or that the institution of African  slavery, would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of  the North to rule the South, _never crossed the imaginations of our  ancestors._ *The Union of the Constitution, was a union of slaveholding   States. It rests on slavery, by prescribing a Representation in Congress  for three&#65533;fifths of our slaves*."​The believed the Union _rested on Slavery_.  They believed the  Founders never could have _imagined _any proposed abolition of the system  of bondage and their way of life."But if African slavery in the Southern States, be the evil  their  political combination affirms it to be, the requisitions of an  inexorable logic, must lead them to emancipation. If it is right, to  preclude or abolish slavery in a territory&#65533;why should it be allowed to  remain in the States? The one is not at all more unconstitutional than  the other, according to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United  States. And when it is considered, that the Northern States will soon  have the power to make that Court what they please, and that the  Constitution has never been any barrier whatever to their exercise of  power&#65533;*what check can there be, in the unrestrained councils of the  North, to emancipation?
*​In Ironies of Ironies, above they cite the Dred Scott decision, *the one  that states even Free Blacks could never be and never were Citizens of  this country. ..*
More than of third of the populace of the South were Non-Citizens, yet they carry on about Freedom and Liberty, Contentment and Happiness:"Indeed, *no people ever expect to preserve its rights and liberties*,  unless these be in its own custody. To plunder and oppress, where plunder and oppression can be practiced  with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things. The fairest  portions of the world elsewhere, have been turned into wilderness; and  the most civilized and prosperous communities, have been impoverished  and ruined by anti&#65533;slavery fanaticism. ...
 The very object of all Constitutions, in free popular Government, is to  restrain the majority. *Constitutions, therefore, according to their  theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. 
....Contentment, is a great element of happiness, with nations as with  individuals. We, are satisfied with ours.*​What they were concerned about, more than anything, was losing their free labor and subjugating their Non-Citizens, their Africans :"We prefer, however, our system of industry, by which labor and capital  are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor&#65533;*by  which our population doubles every twenty years&#65533;by which starvation is  unknown, and abundance crowns the land&#65533;by which order is preserved by  unpaid police, and the most fertile regions of the world, where the  white man cannot labor, are brought into usefulness by the labor of the  African..."*​


----------



## paperview

SpidermanTuba said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> &#8220;The War of Northern Aggression&#8221; is a popular phrase among Confederate apologists, referring to the supposed outrageous aggression shown by the Union to bring the otherwise peaceful Confederate States back under its rule.  But how true is it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> The North invaded the South. That makes them the aggressor.
Click to expand...

Oh Really?

Timeline from the SC Convention forward:

December 20, 1860:      South Carolina convention passes ordinance of secession.
December 24, 1860:     *Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis introduces a "compromise" proposal which would effectively make slavery a national institution.*
December 26, 1860:     Major Anderson moves Federal garrison in Charleston, SC, from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter.
January 3, 1861:     G*eorgia seizes Fort Pulaski.  <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE FORT BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 4, 1861:     *Alabama seizes U.S. arsenal at Mount Vernon. ** <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE FORT BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 5, 1861:     *Alabama seizes Forts Morgan and Gaines*. * <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE FORT BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 6, 1861:     *Florida seizes Apalachicola arsenal. ** <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE ARSENAL BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 7, 1861:     *Florida seizes Fort Marion*.  * <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE FORT BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 8, 1861:     Floridians try to seize Fort Barrancas but are chased off.
January 9, 1861:     Mississippi secedes.

*Star of the West fired on in Charleston Harbor <-- FIRING ON A SHIP - A CLEAR ACT OF WAR
THE STEAMSHIP "MARION." SEIZED BY THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA TO BE CONVERTED INTO A MAN-OF-WAR.*
January 10, 1861:     Florida secedes.

*Louisiana seizes U.S. arsenal at Baton Rouge, as well as Forts Jackson and St. Philip.*
January 11, 1861:     Alabama secedes.
*
Louisiana seizes U.S. Marine Hospital.*
January 14, 1861:     *Louisiana seizes Fort Pike. * * <---NOTE: THEY  SEIZED THE FORT BEFORE THEY SECEDED.*
January 19, 1861:     Georgia secedes.
January 26, 1861:     Louisiana secedes.
January 28, 1861:     Tennessee Resolutions in favor of Crittenden Compromise offered in Congress.
February 1, 1861:     Texas secedes.
February 8, 1861:     Provisional Constitution of the Confederacy adopted in Montgomery, AL.

*Arkansas seizes U.S. Arsenal at Little Rock.*
February 12, 1861:     *Arkansas seizes U.S. ordnance stores at Napoleon.*
February 18, 1861:     Jefferson Davis inaugurated as President of the Confederacy.
March 4, 1861:     Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as 16th President of the United States.*
March 21, 1861:     "Cornerstone speech" delivered by Alexander Stephens. (This is where the Confederate V President lays it out clearly: Slavery is the Cornerstone of the Confederacy.)*

April 12, 1861: *    Fort Sumter fired upon by Confederates. 
THE WAR OFFICIALLY BEGINS.
*


----------



## Rogue 9

SpidermanTuba said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The War of Northern Aggression is a popular phrase among Confederate apologists, referring to the supposed outrageous aggression shown by the Union to bring the otherwise peaceful Confederate States back under its rule.  But how true is it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Its very true. The Union burnt to the ground two major southern cities. Sherman stole food and valuables from civilians on his way to Savannah, leaving many a poor farmer with nothing to survive on.
> 
> The North invaded the South. That makes them the aggressor.
Click to expand...

Wow.  Did you even read what I wrote?  First off, if Sherman's march in _1864-65_ is your example of aggression, I would just like to point out that this postdates a certain campaign of Lee's that ended at Gettysburg, *Pennsylvania* in 1863.    Second, since unlike some people around here I'm not a dishonest fucktard, the Union had been invading the Confederacy since 1861, but the Slave Power's partisans had been cutting off great swathes of United States territory since 1860 and if that's not enough for you had begun shooting at United States-flagged ships and U.S. federal forts before the federal government even called out the militia.  Third, it was Southern aggression that had driven the government-rending controversy in the first place for the previous three decades at least.  I conclusively proved this in no uncertain terms in the opening post of this thread, and you think you can dismiss it all with a one-liner about the late stages of the war?


----------



## JakeStarkey

One, no state had a right to secede

Two, no group of states had a right to secede and form a new nation.

Three, the war was predicated on southern aggression toward the rest of the country.

Fourth, the Union was the issue and slavery the cause of the war.

Fifth, the great moral outcome of the war was the crushing of the South.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

editec said:


> Let us never forget that not every southerner supported the seccussion.
> 
> Whole states refused to succeed, and counties -- even counties in the deep South -- did not WANT their states to succeed.
> 
> This fact seems to be overlooked every time this issue comes up.
> 
> Just as there were copperheads in the North, there were supporters of the Republic in the South.
> 
> Another reason this civil war was so tragic, in my opinion.
> 
> Both sides drafted men whose POV was in opposition to fighting for their respective government's cause, ya know.
> 
> Plenty of these brave souls died for something that they not only didn't believe in, but actively opposed.



Which is one reason why a military draft is immoral, and completely opposed to the ideas of a free nation.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> The libertarian secessionists once again have failed to revise history.
> 
> Keep it up, guys: keep twisting and keep getting corrected.



A secessionist would be somebody who wants to secede from the Union, and nobody in this thread has made any such claim.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rogue  9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> And the Confederate States' aggressive policies and blatant disregard of  human rights and liberties are also verifiable matters of history.   They deserved destruction for their policies, and lo and behold they got  it.  The entire motivation for the rebellion was the preservation of  slavery.  Claiming it was the tariff is a joke; the tariff in 1860 was  at its lowest level in decades.  If that was the reason, they'd have  seceded long before.  No, as I have already thoroughly demonstrated  through the declarations of the Confederate governments in this thread,  their motivation was chattel slavery, for which they deserve nothing but  scorn from posterity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And Lincoln ran on a platform of raising the tariff, and while it was  Buchanan that signed the actual Morrill Tariff Lincoln certainly  supported it.
> 
> Morrill  Tariff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> As for the Declarations of Secession, how about South Carolina's Address  to the Slaveholding States:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in  the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their  representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust  taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their  benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in  the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the  taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a  view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South  have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object  inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern  interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States by  Convention of South Carolina
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Kevin, the South had already seceded when the Morrill Tariff was passed.
> The previous Tariff of 1857 was quite favorable to the South; no doubt  pre-secession, the Tariff talk played a role, but most of the reasons  given were slavery related.  As Rogue states correctly, the Tariffs had  been historically low in 1860.
> 
> In the snippet you provide from the Dec. 1860 SC convention, yes, Taxation is addressed, but a better portion of it deals with how important their slaves were to them in the whole matter.  In fact, in their actual Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, pretty much most of it was about Slavery.
> But to draw on your citation...a few paragraphs later from your quote above:"[At the time the Constitution was written] *There was  then, no Tariff &#65533; no fanaticism concerning negroes*.
> 
> It was the  delegates from New England, who proposed in the Convention which framed  the Constitution, to the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia,    *that if they would agree to give Congress the power of regulating  commerce by a majority, that they would support the extension of  the African Slave Trade for twenty years.*
> 
> African Slavery, existed in  all the States, but one. The idea, that the Southern States would be  made to pay that tribute to their Northern confederates, which they had  refused to pay to Great Britain; or that the institution of African  slavery, would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of  the North to rule the South, _never crossed the imaginations of our  ancestors._ *The Union of the Constitution, was a union of slaveholding   States. It rests on slavery, by prescribing a Representation in Congress  for three&#65533;fifths of our slaves*."​The believed the Union _rested on Slavery_.  They believed the  Founders never could have _imagined _any proposed abolition of the system  of bondage and their way of life."But if African slavery in the Southern States, be the evil  their  political combination affirms it to be, the requisitions of an  inexorable logic, must lead them to emancipation. If it is right, to  preclude or abolish slavery in a territory&#65533;why should it be allowed to  remain in the States? The one is not at all more unconstitutional than  the other, according to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United  States. And when it is considered, that the Northern States will soon  have the power to make that Court what they please, and that the  Constitution has never been any barrier whatever to their exercise of  power&#65533;*what check can there be, in the unrestrained councils of the  North, to emancipation?
> *​In Ironies of Ironies, above they cite the Dred Scott decision, *the one  that states even Free Blacks could never be and never were Citizens of  this country. ..*
> More than of third of the populace of the South were Non-Citizens, yet they carry on about Freedom and Liberty, Contentment and Happiness:"Indeed, *no people ever expect to preserve its rights and liberties*,  unless these be in its own custody. To plunder and oppress, where plunder and oppression can be practiced  with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things. The fairest  portions of the world elsewhere, have been turned into wilderness; and  the most civilized and prosperous communities, have been impoverished  and ruined by anti&#65533;slavery fanaticism. ...
> The very object of all Constitutions, in free popular Government, is to  restrain the majority. *Constitutions, therefore, according to their  theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty.
> ....Contentment, is a great element of happiness, with nations as with  individuals. We, are satisfied with ours.*​What they were concerned about, more than anything, was losing their free labor and subjugating their Non-Citizens, their Africans :"We prefer, however, our system of industry, by which labor and capital  are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor&#65533;*by  which our population doubles every twenty years&#65533;by which starvation is  unknown, and abundance crowns the land&#65533;by which order is preserved by  unpaid police, and the most fertile regions of the world, where the  white man cannot labor, are brought into usefulness by the labor of the  African..."*​
Click to expand...


Yes, the Morrill Tariff passed after secession, but the southerners knew that Lincoln was running on a platform of raising tariffs as I said.

Nobody's denying that slavery played a part in the secession of the southern states, but to deny any role that tariffs played is to ignore facts.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> editec said:
> 
> 
> 
> Let us never forget that not every southerner supported the seccussion.
> 
> Whole states refused to succeed, and counties -- even counties in the deep South -- did not WANT their states to succeed.
> 
> This fact seems to be overlooked every time this issue comes up.
> 
> Just as there were copperheads in the North, there were supporters of the Republic in the South.
> 
> Another reason this civil war was so tragic, in my opinion.
> 
> Both sides drafted men whose POV was in opposition to fighting for their respective government's cause, ya know.
> 
> Plenty of these brave souls died for something that they not only didn't believe in, but actively opposed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which is one reason why a military draft is immoral, and completely opposed to the ideas of a free nation.
Click to expand...


Tell that to America's "greatest generation."  You are completely wrong on this.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> The libertarian secessionists once again have failed to revise history.
> 
> Keep it up, guys: keep twisting and keep getting corrected.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A secessionist would be somebody who wants to secede from the Union, and nobody in this thread has made any such claim.
Click to expand...


If you are defending the South and secession, then, yes, you have all made the claim.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> The libertarian secessionists once again have failed to revise history.
> 
> Keep it up, guys: keep twisting and keep getting corrected.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A secessionist would be somebody who wants to secede from the Union, and nobody in this thread has made any such claim.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> If you are defending the South and secession, then, yes, you have all made the claim.
Click to expand...


That's incorrect.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> A secessionist would be somebody who wants to secede from the Union, and nobody in this thread has made any such claim.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you are defending the South and secession, then, yes, you have all made the claim.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That's incorrect.
Click to expand...


You are incorrect and have been from the very first time you posted on secession.  You may be marble-headed on this subject, but for a message board, your manners are almost always impeccable.  That doesn't mean you are right; rather you are politely wrong.  But, still, I appreciate that.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> If you are defending the South and secession, then, yes, you have all made the claim.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's incorrect.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You are incorrect and have been from the very first time you posted on secession.  You may be marble-headed on this subject, but for a message board, your manners are almost always impeccable.  That doesn't mean you are right; rather you are politely wrong.  But, still, I appreciate that.
Click to expand...


No, you're twisting my position on secession.  You claim that I support secession, which is incorrect.  No where have I said that I want my own state of Ohio, or any other state, to secede.  Rather, I support the right of secession, which is not the same thing.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> That's incorrect.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You are incorrect and have been from the very first time you posted on secession.  You may be marble-headed on this subject, but for a message board, your manners are almost always impeccable.  That doesn't mean you are right; rather you are politely wrong.  But, still, I appreciate that.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> No, you're twisting my position on secession.  You claim that I support secession, which is incorrect.  No where have I said that I want my own state of Ohio, or any other state, to secede.  Rather, I support the right of secession, which is not the same thing.
Click to expand...


Yet you never hesitate to twist historical evidence, KevinKennedy, all the time.  Paper View has papered you and your position absolutely, yet you can't accept that you are out of step with what even the Confederates said during those times.  Why is that?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are incorrect and have been from the very first time you posted on secession.  You may be marble-headed on this subject, but for a message board, your manners are almost always impeccable.  That doesn't mean you are right; rather you are politely wrong.  But, still, I appreciate that.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No, you're twisting my position on secession.  You claim that I support secession, which is incorrect.  No where have I said that I want my own state of Ohio, or any other state, to secede.  Rather, I support the right of secession, which is not the same thing.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yet you never hesitate to twist historical evidence, KevinKennedy, all the time.  Paper View has papered you and your position absolutely, yet you can't accept that you are out of step with what even the Confederates said during those times.  Why is that?
Click to expand...


Paperview and I have different interpretations of the historical evidence, it's not me twisting anything.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Different interpretations is not the same as equal opinions, Kevin.

Paperview's intepretation is impeccably documented, absolutely clarifying, and 100% accurate.

Your's simply fails the tests of evidence and analysis.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Different interpretations is not the same as equal opinions, Kevin.
> 
> Paperview's intepretation is impeccably documented, absolutely clarifying, and 100% accurate.
> 
> Your's simply fails the tests of evidence and analysis.



No, it fails your test of analysis, but there's been plenty of evidence posted by myself and others who agree with me.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The "evidence" and "analysis" posted by you and your compatriots have failed every test.

That you refuse to accept that is meaningless.  You are still wrong.  Try that in a professional graduate history class and you would fail the assignment.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> The "evidence" and "analysis" posted by you and your compatriots have failed every test.
> 
> That you refuse to accept that is meaningless.  You are still wrong.  Try that in a professional graduate history class and you would fail the assignment.



Failed your tests, which is purely subjective, which you apparently can't comprehend.

Well I did receive an A in my American History class, granted it was not at the graduate level.


----------



## JakeStarkey

I bet that you did not try your argument on secession with your professor.  However, an A is history is never anything to sneeze at, for sure.  My opinion may be subjective but Paper View's evidence clearly is not and outweighs many times anything you and your compatriots have ever posted.  However, arguing settles nothing.  What part of American history did you enjoy the most?


----------



## paperview

I give Kevin *A *for effort.


----------



## JakeStarkey

paperview said:


> I give Kevin *A *for effort.



I give KevinKennedy an A for civic virtue.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> I bet that you did not try your argument on secession with your professor.  However, an A is history is never anything to sneeze at, for sure.  My opinion may be subjective but Paper View's evidence clearly is not and outweighs many times anything you and your compatriots have ever posted.  However, arguing settles nothing.  What part of American history did you enjoy the most?



We never discussed the legality of secession in class, but I did make quite a few comments.  We had to do a biography of anyone from history in that class, and I almost wish I had chosen to do mine on Abraham Lincoln.  The Civil War is obviously my favorite historical topic to discuss.


----------



## JakeStarkey

That you have a real passion for the subject clearly is obvious, no doubt about that.  What individual and what event do you find the most intriguing about the CW?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> That you have a real passion for the subject clearly is obvious, no doubt about that.  What individual and what event do you find the most intriguing about the CW?



Well I don't have any real interest in the battles themselves, but it should be fairly obvious that Lincoln is the person I'm the most interested in.  Though that's mostly because of his reputation which I feel is not deserved whatsoever.  And of course the politics behind the Civil War interest me.


----------



## nraforlife

paperview said:


> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox



and it was worth 500K dead, right?


----------



## paperview

nraforlife said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and it was worth 500K dead, right?
Click to expand...

Ask the people who started the War.

That would be the South.


----------



## Ravi

nraforlife said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and it was worth 500K dead, right?
Click to expand...

Yes. Ending slavery was worth it. We were finally forced to abide by the constitution.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Ravi said:


> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin - it was OUR Fort.  It belonged to the Federal Government.
> 
> South Carolina had no more right to its possession than Kentucky does to Fort Knox
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and it was worth 500K dead, right?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Yes. Ending slavery was worth it. We were finally forced to abide by the constitution.
Click to expand...


The Constitution supported slavery.


----------



## JakeStarkey

The CW and the 13th Amendment  fixed a flawed document.

The sad thing is that we had to fix some hammerheads here in town about 35 years ago.  I surely do not understand racists, black or white or red or William Joyce.  I simply don't.

And the school board is very careful of who is hired for the history positions: no unreconstructed dum dums allowed.  We can tolerate leftists and libertarians but not racist dum dums.

KevinKennedy, I disagree with you concerning Lincoln.  However, I am interested in him the most as well.


----------



## Ravi

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Ravi said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> and it was worth 500K dead, right?
> 
> 
> 
> Yes. Ending slavery was worth it. We were finally forced to abide by the constitution.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Constitution supported slavery.
Click to expand...

No, it didn't. It was interpreted to do so, but it didn't.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Ravi said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ravi said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yes. Ending slavery was worth it. We were finally forced to abide by the constitution.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Constitution supported slavery.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> No, it didn't. It was interpreted to do so, but it didn't.
Click to expand...


Mandating that they be returned to their masters and only counting them as 3/5's of a person is supporting slavery in my opinion.


----------



## nraforlife

Ravi said:


> .........
> Yes. Ending slavery was worth it. .............



Why? BTW the 1787 Constitution was perfectly OK with slavery.


----------



## paperview

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Ravi said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The Constitution supported slavery.
> 
> 
> 
> No, it didn't. It was interpreted to do so, but it didn't.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Mandating that they be returned to their masters and only counting them as 3/5's of a person is supporting slavery in my opinion.
Click to expand...

I agree with that.

That was most certainly was the  "fundamental flaw" represented in the Document to which Obama referred and has taken a fair amount of heat over by Right Wing.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

paperview said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ravi said:
> 
> 
> 
> No, it didn't. It was interpreted to do so, but it didn't.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mandating that they be returned to their masters and only counting them as 3/5's of a person is supporting slavery in my opinion.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I agree with that.
> 
> That was most certainly was the  "fundamental flaw" represented in the Document to which Obama referred and has taken a fair amount of heat over by Right Wing.
Click to expand...


I would agree that slavery was the biggest flaw of the Constitution, and the sanction of slavery began the downfall of classical liberalism in the U.S. all together.


----------



## paperview

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Mandating that they be returned to their masters and only counting them as 3/5's of a person is supporting slavery in my opinion.
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with that.
> 
> That was most certainly was the  "fundamental flaw" represented in the Document to which Obama referred and has taken a fair amount of heat over by Right Wing.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I would agree that slavery was the biggest flaw of the Constitution, and the sanction of slavery began the downfall of classical liberalism in the U.S. all together.
Click to expand...

No ideology is without confliction, and that certainly was a major one. 

Thank God we fixed that one.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Classical liberalism basically values greatly an individual's freedom, that freedom being based on rights naturally outside the realm of government to grant or withhold.  Thus the codification of slavery by the southern and border states required the destruction of a South antithetical to classical liberalism and to a union that had been expanding the franchise..


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Classical liberalism basically values greatly an individual's freedom, that freedom being based on rights naturally outside the realm of government to grant or withhold.  Thus the codification of slavery by the southern and border states required the destruction of a South antithetical to classical liberalism and to a union that had been expanding the franchise..



The problem being that the classical liberals were largely those who were either slaveowners in the south, or those who supported slavery in the south and north.  Slavery was antithetical to everything the classical liberals claimed to believe, but we can't deny that classical liberals were the biggest proponents of slavery.


----------



## JakeStarkey

You err in subscribing to the idea that the majority of classical liberals were slave owners or supporters of slavery.  That is an opinion that you will not be apply to quantify, I think.  But, if you can, do so.  Your thesis is interesting.


----------



## Rogue 9

Let's append to that classical liberals _in the United States._  Frederic Bastiat in his essay _The Law_ denounced slavery as an incalculable evil, and though he died in 1850 and thus could not voice his opinion on the Confederacy as such, John Stuart Mill very much was, and this is what he had to say in his Autobiography:  





> Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely critical, by the commencement of the American civil war.  My strongest feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs for an indefinite duration.  Having been a deeply interested observer of the Slavery quarrel in America, during the many years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, "The Slave Power." *Their success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world*, while it would create a formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time the prestige of the great democratic republic, *would give to all the privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be extinguished in blood.*


So no, support for slavery wasn't a classical liberal thing.  It wasn't even an American classical liberal thing in large part; the slaveholders among the leaders of the Revolution intended for slavery to end as soon as it was economically viable for it to do so.  George Washington freed his slaves in his will even though the laws of the state of Virginia made it illegal for him to do so.  No, it was a thing peculiar to those in the South who professed to follow the example of their Virginian forebears, but repudiated their principles while venerating their memory.  

Also note:  I wasn't just pulling the idea that Confederate success would embolden European aristocracy out of my ass; it really was a major concern at the time, and not just among Union scholars and officials.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> You err in subscribing to the idea that the majority of classical liberals were slave owners or supporters of slavery.  That is an opinion that you will not be apply to quantify, I think.  But, if you can, do so.  Your thesis is interesting.



The Democratic Party, descended from Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, was the party of classical liberalism, as opposed to the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, all of which were big government parties.  The platform of the Democratic Party of 1856 has this to say:



> Resolved, That we reiterate with renewed energy of purpose the well-considered declarations of former conventions upon the sectional issue of domestic slavery, and concerning the reserved rights of the states
> 
> 1. That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that all such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
> 
> 2. That the foregoing proposition covers and was intended to embrace the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress, and therefore the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise measures, settled by the Congress of 1850"the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor" included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the constitution, can not, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency.



The Democratic Platform (1856)

And there's plenty more there, as well.  Now while you're right that I can't prove that every classical liberal at the very least supported slavery, I can say that the political party of classical liberalism did support slavery.


----------



## JakeStarkey

You suggest that classical liberalism opposed strong national governments.  That simply cannot be supported by evidence or by analysis.  Go for it, though, and at least I will read it avidly.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

> With the king gone, a group of middle-class radicals emerged called the Levellers. *They protested that not even Parliament had any authority to usurp the natural, God-given rights of the people.* Religion, they declared, was a matter of individual conscience: it should have no connection with the state. State-granted monopolies were likewise an infringement of natural liberty. A generation later, John Locke, drawing on the tradition of natural law that had been kept alive and elaborated by the Scholastic theologians, set forth a powerful liberal model of man, society, and state. Every man, he held, is innately endowed with certain natural rights. These consist in his fundamental right to what is his property  that is, his life, liberty, and "estates" (or material goods). *Government is formed simply the better to preserve the right to property. When, instead of protecting the natural rights of the people, a government makes war upon them, the people may alter or abolish it.* The Lockean philosophy continued to exert influence in England for generations to come. In time, its greatest impact would be in the English-speaking colonies in North America.



The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism, Part 1


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> With the king gone, a group of middle-class radicals emerged called the Levellers. *They protested that not even Parliament had any authority to usurp the natural, God-given rights of the people.* Religion, they declared, was a matter of individual conscience: it should have no connection with the state. State-granted monopolies were likewise an infringement of natural liberty. A generation later, John Locke, drawing on the tradition of natural law that had been kept alive and elaborated by the Scholastic theologians, set forth a powerful liberal model of man, society, and state. Every man, he held, is innately endowed with certain natural rights. These consist in his fundamental right to what is his property  that is, his life, liberty, and "estates" (or material goods). *Government is formed simply the better to preserve the right to property. When, instead of protecting the natural rights of the people, a government makes war upon them, the people may alter or abolish it.* The Lockean philosophy continued to exert influence in England for generations to come. In time, its greatest impact would be in the English-speaking colonies in North America.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism, Part 1
Click to expand...


OK, I finally understand your philosophy.  I think Locke and Mills would disagree, but that is what make discussions go around.  I will note that The Future of Freedom Foundation is a hardcore free-market libertarian entity that is basically nothing more than a "get off my property" organization.


----------



## Rogue 9

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> You err in subscribing to the idea that the majority of classical liberals were slave owners or supporters of slavery.  That is an opinion that you will not be apply to quantify, I think.  But, if you can, do so.  Your thesis is interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Democratic Party, descended from Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, was the party of classical liberalism, as opposed to the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, all of which were big government parties.  The platform of the Democratic Party of 1856 has this to say:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Resolved, That we reiterate with renewed energy of purpose the well-considered declarations of former conventions upon the sectional issue of domestic slavery, and concerning the reserved rights of the states
> 
> 1. That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that all such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
> 
> 2. That the foregoing proposition covers and was intended to embrace the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress, and therefore the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise measures, settled by the Congress of 1850"the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor" included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the constitution, can not, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Democratic Platform (1856)
> 
> And there's plenty more there, as well.  Now while you're right that I can't prove that every classical liberal at the very least supported slavery, I can say that the political party of classical liberalism did support slavery.
Click to expand...

Jesus Christ.  Those provisions of the platform _flatly contradict_ each other.  Seriously, read the words; first they say that the federal government has no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of the states, and then they advocate the strict enforcement and sustaining of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was to date the _biggest such act of interference  the United States had ever seen._  I mean, really?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Rogue 9 said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> You err in subscribing to the idea that the majority of classical liberals were slave owners or supporters of slavery.  That is an opinion that you will not be apply to quantify, I think.  But, if you can, do so.  Your thesis is interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Democratic Party, descended from Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, was the party of classical liberalism, as opposed to the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, all of which were big government parties.  The platform of the Democratic Party of 1856 has this to say:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Resolved, That we reiterate with renewed energy of purpose the well-considered declarations of former conventions upon the sectional issue of domestic slavery, and concerning the reserved rights of the states
> 
> 1. That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that all such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
> 
> 2. That the foregoing proposition covers and was intended to embrace the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress, and therefore the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise measures, settled by the Congress of 1850"the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor" included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the constitution, can not, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Democratic Platform (1856)
> 
> And there's plenty more there, as well.  Now while you're right that I can't prove that every classical liberal at the very least supported slavery, I can say that the political party of classical liberalism did support slavery.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Jesus Christ.  Those provisions of the platform _flatly contradict_ each other.  Seriously, read the words; first they say that the federal government has no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of the states, and then they advocate the strict enforcement and sustaining of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was to date the _biggest such act of interference  the United States had ever seen._  I mean, really?
Click to expand...


That's kind of the point.  Slavery was opposed to the ideas of classical liberalism.


----------



## Rogue 9

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The Democratic Party, descended from Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, was the party of classical liberalism, as opposed to the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, all of which were big government parties.  The platform of the Democratic Party of 1856 has this to say:
> 
> 
> 
> The Democratic Platform (1856)
> 
> And there's plenty more there, as well.  Now while you're right that I can't prove that every classical liberal at the very least supported slavery, I can say that the political party of classical liberalism did support slavery.
> 
> 
> 
> Jesus Christ.  Those provisions of the platform _flatly contradict_ each other.  Seriously, read the words; first they say that the federal government has no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of the states, and then they advocate the strict enforcement and sustaining of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was to date the _biggest such act of interference  the United States had ever seen._  I mean, really?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That's kind of the point.  Slavery was opposed to the ideas of classical liberalism.
Click to expand...

Yes, it was, but that's not what I pointed out.  It wasn't just slavery itself that was opposed to classical liberalism; so were the enforcement measures demanded by the South.  They weren't principled classical liberals by that point; they were pro-slavery partisans who were all too willing to use the bludgeon of federal power to preserve their institution.  The going theory by then wasn't that all men had the basic rights; it was that without black slavery whites would no longer all be _privileged_ to be in the upper class.  Calhoun and Hammond said this in so many words on more than one occasion, and it was trumpeted in editorials across the South.  An 1856 editorial of the Richmond Enquirer made this assertion:  





> In this country alone does perfect equality of civil and social privilege exist among the white population, and it exists solely because we have black slaves.  Freedom is not possible without slavery.


Why would they think this?  Well, because the underclass would either consist of black slaves or white laborers, and on the whole they much preferred that it not be the master race doing the drudge work.  Senator Hammond's famous King Cotton speech said it in so many words:  





> [T]he man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it;  in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves.   The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated;  there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either.   Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns.


This idea finds its basis in Thomas Jefferson's assertion that a wage-laborer, not being independent, is unable to effectively function in governing a republic, since he is dependent upon his employer and therefore easily suborned.  That is why ownership of real property was a voting requirement in the early United States; Jefferson and his party believed that only those who owned their own means of production, that is an independent farmer, artisan, business owner, planter, and so forth, were sufficiently independent to effectively use the vote.  

This idea, while abhorrent today, at least did not include a mandate to exclude blacks or artificially make all whites non-wage workers as formulated by Jefferson.  Jefferson feared that the growing working class would subvert the republic, saying:


> Let our workshops remain in Europe. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the human body. ... I consider the class of artificers [workmen] as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned.


The rise of European immigration from the 1820s on made this an untenable position, and the vote was expanded to include wage-earning white males in the North.  This triggered the Southern reaction that I've cited here, as the new Northern voting blocs proceeded to vote in ways not favorable to Southern interests, particularly slave and territorial interests.  Working conditions of industrial laborers in the 19th century were of course deplorable, and Southern agriculturalists were horrified to think that this would be their fate if not for the slave underclass taking that role for them.  To go back to Calhoun for a moment:  





> With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.


That should be sufficient, I think.  If anyone wishes more, I can readily go on.

Incidentally, I recommend this essay for further discussion of the Deep South's rejection of classical liberalism, particularly their walkout at the Democratic National Convention in 1860 when the party refused to adopt a platform plank calling for a federal guarantee of the right of slavery in all territories.


----------



## Ravi

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> Ravi said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The Constitution supported slavery.
> 
> 
> 
> No, it didn't. It was interpreted to do so, but it didn't.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Mandating that they be returned to their masters and only counting them as 3/5's of a person is supporting slavery in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. The spirit of the constitution did not, the 3/5 thing was a political compromise and should never have been included.


----------



## JakeStarkey

I think the 3/5ths compromise was made in order for the national government to be able to tax imports.  The South gave up the one to get the other.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> I think the 3/5ths compromise was made in order for the national government to be able to tax imports.  The South gave up the one to get the other.



The 3/5's clause was to apportion representation in the House of Representatives.  The south wanted slaves to count as a whole person because it would give them greater representation, and the north didn't want them to count at all.  The compromise was that they would count as 3/5's of a person.


----------



## JenyEliza

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.



NO SHIT.

I live surrounded by the ghosts of Sherman and his blood thirsty mayhem.  Literally.  

I can't drive more than a mile before I am driving past a Confederate battlefield, or a sign memorializing an important building or home Sherman burned to the ground--occupants included.

FUCK you Yankees....

I like what Lewis Grizzard had to say about you and your ilk....

He said it just right...and God Rest His Soul, I wish he was here still to stuff your head up your ass!




			
				 Lewis M. Grizzard said:
			
		

> The issue on my mind is white Southerners like myself.
> 
> _*They don't like us. They don't trust us. They want to tell us why we're wrong. They want to tell us how we should change.
> 
> They is practically every s.o.b. who isn't one of us. *_
> 
> I read a piece on the op-ed page of the Constitution written by somebody who in the jargon of my past "ain't from around here."
> 
> He wrote white Southerners are always looking back and that we should look forward. He said that about me.
> 
> I'm looking back? I live in one of the most progressive cities in the world. We built a subway to make Yankees feel at home.
> 
> And I live in a region the rest of the country can't wait to move to.
> 
> A friend, also a native Southerner, who shares my anger about the constant belittling of our kind and our place in this world, put it this way: *"Nobody is going into an Atlanta bar tonight celebrating because they've just been transferred to New Jersey."
> 
> Damn straight. *
> 
> I was having lunch at an Atlanta golf club recently. I was talking with friends.
> 
> A man sitting at another table heard me speaking and asked, "Where are you all from?" He was mocking me. He was mocking my Southern accent. He was sitting in Atlanta, Ga., and was making fun of the way I speak.
> 
> He was from Toledo. He had been transferred to Atlanta. If I hadn't have been 46 years old, skinny and a basic coward with a bad heart, I'd have punched him. I did, however, give him a severe verbal dressing down.
> 
> I was in my doctor's office in Atlanta. One of the women who works there, a transplanted Northerner, asked how I pronounced the world "siren."
> 
> I said I pronounced it "si-reen." I was half kidding, but that is the way I heard the word pronounced when I was a child.
> 
> The woman laughed and said, "You Southerners really crack me up. You have a language all your own."
> 
> Yeah we do. If you don't like it, go back home and stick your head in a snow bank.
> 
> _*They want to tell us how to speak, how to live, what to eat, what to think and they also want to tell us how they used to do it back in Buffalo. *_
> 
> Buffalo? What was the score? A hundred and ten to Zip.
> 
> The man writing on the op-ed page was writing about that bumper sticker that shows the old Confederate soldier and he's saying, "FERGIT HELL!" _I don't go around sulking about the fact the South lost the Civil War. But I am aware that once upon a long time ago, a group of Americans saw fit to rebel against what they thought was an overbearing federal government. There is no record anywhere that indicates anybody in my family living in 1861 owned slaves. As a matter of fact, I come from a long line of sharecroppers, horse thieves and used car dealers. But a few of them fought anyway -- not to keep their slaves, because they didn't have any. I guess they simply thought it was the right thing to do at the time.
> 
> Whatever the reason, there was a citizenry that once saw fit to fight and die and I come from all that, and I look at those people as brave and gallant, and a frightful force until their hearts and their lands were burnt away.
> 
> I will never turn my back on that heritage. _
> 
> *But know this: I'm a white man and I'm a Southerner. And I'm sick of being told what is wrong with me from outside critics, and I'm tired of being stereotyped as a refugee from "God's Little Acre." *
> 
> If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, and I'll probably have to say it a thousand times again.
> 
> _Delta may be hurting financially, but it's still ready to take you back to Toledo when you are ready to go. _
> 
> -- Published Feb. 5, 1993


----------



## Rogue 9

Whine and cry some more.  His ancestors (and mine, I might add) rebelled because they lost an election.  The most overbearing stuff the federal government had done up until that time had been done at the behest of southerners for their own benefit.  And Mr. Grizzard lies through his teeth, blatantly so, because his Civil-War fighting ancestors can't have sold used cars, since cars weren't invented yet.  

In my last post I already answered the objection that non-slaveholders wouldn't have fought to sustain slavery.  They would and did because black slavery kept whites by default in the ruling class of the Deep South.  Slavery was of social benefit to whites in general whether they directly owned slaves or not.  So fuck you, Johnny Reb, and hope we don't let loose Zombie Sherman to burn the south _again._


----------



## JenyEliza

Fuck off, dirtbag.

The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.

In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.

You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.

So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think the 3/5ths compromise was made in order for the national government to be able to tax imports.  The South gave up the one to get the other.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 3/5's clause was to apportion representation in the House of Representatives.  The south wanted slaves to count as a whole person because it would give them greater representation, and the north didn't want them to count at all.  The compromise was that they would count as 3/5's of a person.
Click to expand...


That was only part of the compromise; read further and you will see the North gave the 3/5ths because the national government could tax imports.  Read up on it.


----------



## JakeStarkey

JenyEliza said:


> <snip> JE's sniveling mewling



Enough to make a true southerner kick her butt.  The driving Dixie down clearly revealed that God loved America after all, and that the human haters in the South were destined for the grave where they belonged.


----------



## JakeStarkey

JenyEliza said:


> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.



No, they would not, JE.  Those southerners, and I know dozens of them here, would have yellow stain on their britches if it happened again.  Has nothing to do with real liberalism or real conservatism.  Has to do with right and wrong.  You were wrong and put on your knees.  Just so.  This may help you mind better: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Xk8Cp09aM[/ame]

You lost.  Get over it.  You lost in 2008.  Get over it.  You are going to lose in 2010 and 2012.  You taint nevah gonna evah that bunch of reactionary bent-neck wierdos playing the humbug wizard behind the curtain running the GOP again.  The party either gets rid of those folks or it will be in the minority for ever.  Why?  It has not represented mainstream America for decades.


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

Rogue 9 said:


> Whine and cry some more.  His ancestors (and mine, I might add) rebelled because they lost an election.  The most overbearing stuff the federal government had done up until that time had been done at the behest of southerners for their own benefit.  And Mr. Grizzard lies through his teeth, blatantly so, because his Civil-War fighting ancestors can't have sold used cars, since cars weren't invented yet.
> 
> In my last post I already answered the objection that non-slaveholders wouldn't have fought to sustain slavery.  They would and did because black slavery kept whites by default in the ruling class of the Deep South.  Slavery was of social benefit to whites in general whether they directly owned slaves or not.  So fuck you, Johnny Reb, and hope we don't let loose Zombie Sherman to burn the south _again._



Maybe those non-slaveowners fought to repel the invaders from their home?


----------



## Kevin_Kennedy

JakeStarkey said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think the 3/5ths compromise was made in order for the national government to be able to tax imports.  The South gave up the one to get the other.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 3/5's clause was to apportion representation in the House of Representatives.  The south wanted slaves to count as a whole person because it would give them greater representation, and the north didn't want them to count at all.  The compromise was that they would count as 3/5's of a person.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That was only part of the compromise; read further and you will see the North gave the 3/5ths because the national government could tax imports.  Read up on it.
Click to expand...


They were going to tax imports regardless because the Constitution forbid direct taxation such as an income tax up until the 16th Amendment in 1913.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The 3/5's clause was to apportion representation in the House of Representatives.  The south wanted slaves to count as a whole person because it would give them greater representation, and the north didn't want them to count at all.  The compromise was that they would count as 3/5's of a person.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That was only part of the compromise; read further and you will see the North gave the 3/5ths because the national government could tax imports.  Read up on it.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> They were going to tax imports regardless because the Constitution forbid direct taxation such as an income tax up until the 16th Amendment in 1913.
Click to expand...


No, the north could not get the votes until it compromised on the 3/5ths issue.  Both sides traded off.  You have not read about this before, I think.


----------



## JakeStarkey

JenyEliza said:


> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.



Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.


----------



## JenyEliza

JakeStarkey said:


> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.
Click to expand...


Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.

I am a mother, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.

Doh, dumbass.


----------



## paperview

Wow.  

Jeny sure has a way of bringing this rather elevated discussion - or maybe I should say _just about any discussion_, down to her low-rent trash level.

I never knew a human being could contain so much bile.


----------



## Rogue 9

JenyEliza said:


> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.


Yank?  My family's from Alabama.  My great great great grandfather served under General Forrest, and he was a right son of a bitch; I've read his journal.  He fought to keep the "abolition hordes" from freeing the negroes and forcing his daughters to marry them, whatever the hell that idea came from.  Of course, being a slaveholder himself, he also had more of a direct self-interest, as well as a hatred for any black man in any position other than that of slave; after Forrest's division massacred the defending colored artillerymen at Fort Pillow, he wrote his approval of the action, saying that such should be the fate of any slave who dared take up arms against the white man.  

As an ancestor of this man and of a long line of Southern heritage, I say the South deserved to burn and the road from Richmond to Washington lined with the hanged bodies of the insurgent leaders.  That Lincoln and Johnson were more merciful than that speaks well of them, but it would have been just.  That you defend this scourge upon the history of man is disgusting.


----------



## ScottBernard

I can't believe this subject is still discussed with so much rancor almost 160 years after the fact. 
Humiliation and resentment echoes for generations. 
The Army of the Tennessee and the The Army of the Ohio under Sherman borrowed many 'tactics' of the Southern Army. Sherman spent many years in the South before the war and "knew them well". 
If you want to get a sense of the man, read the correspondence between him and Confederate General Hood during the siege of Atlanta. Sherman basically told him that Southerners brought on the war to their home and hearth. He also politely told Hood to shove it. 
Interesting thing about Sherman was that he was rather congenial with the slaves that were set loose by the Union forces. His fellow officers were put off by this. I think he was refreshed by the gratefulness and humbleness expressed; and enjoyed not being around the formal and haughty peers for those brief moments.


----------



## JakeStarkey

JenyEliza said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.
> 
> I am a mother, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.
> 
> Doh, dumbass.
Click to expand...


Your actions define white-trash American female.  You have nothing of merit, worth, or good to offer society.  Until you realize how damaged you truly are, you will continue to spew the vile bile.


----------



## JakeStarkey

Rogue 9 said:


> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> Yank?  My family's from Alabama.  My great great great grandfather served under General Forrest, and he was a right son of a bitch; I've read his journal.  He fought to keep the "abolition hordes" from freeing the negroes and forcing his daughters to marry them, whatever the hell that idea came from.  Of course, being a slaveholder himself, he also had more of a direct self-interest, as well as a hatred for any black man in any position other than that of slave; after Forrest's division massacred the defending colored artillerymen at Fort Pillow, he wrote his approval of the action, saying that such should be the fate of any slave who dared take up arms against the white man.
> 
> As an ancestor of this man and of a long line of Southern heritage, I say the South deserved to burn and the road from Richmond to Washington lined with the hanged bodies of the insurgent leaders.  That Lincoln and Johnson were more merciful than that speaks well of them, but it would have been just.  That you defend this scourge upon the history of man is disgusting.
Click to expand...


Forrest, let's not forget, was a slave trader as well: a vile person.


----------



## Rogue 9

ScottBernard said:


> I can't believe this subject is still discussed with so much rancor almost 160 years after the fact.
> Humiliation and resentment echoes for generations.
> The Army of the Tennessee and the The Army of the Ohio under Sherman borrowed many 'tactics' of the Southern Army. Sherman spent many years in the South before the war and "knew them well".
> If you want to get a sense of the man, read the correspondence between him and Confederate General Hood during the siege of Atlanta. Sherman basically told him that Southerners brought on the war to their home and hearth. He also politely told Hood to shove it.


I already posted it in the "Lincoln = t3h H1TL3R!!1!" thread, but hey, might as well.  





> I say that it is kindness to these families of Atlanta to remove them now, at once, from scenes that women and children should not be exposed to, and the "brave people" should scorn to commit their wives and children to the rude barbarians who thus, as you say, violate the laws of war, as illustrated in the pages of its dark history.
> 
> In the name of common-sense, I ask you not to appeal to a just God in such a sacrilegious manner. *You who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war&#8212; dark and cruel war&#8212;who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of peaceful ordnance-sergeants, seized and made "prisoners of war" the very garrisons sent to protect your people against negroes and Indians, long before any overt act was committed by the (to you) hated Lincoln Government; tried to force Kentucky and Missouri into rebellion, [in] spite of themselves; falsified the vote of Louisiana; turned loose your privateers to plunder unarmed ships; expelled Union families by the thousands, burned their houses, and declared, by an act of your Congress, the confiscation of all debts due Northern men for goods had and received! Talk thus to the marines, but not to me, who have seen these things*, and who will this day make as much sacrifice for the peace and honor of the South as the best-born Southerner among you! If we must be enemies, let us be men, and fight it out as we propose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical appeals to God and humanity. God will judge us in due time, and he will pronounce whether it be more humane to fight with a town full of women and the families of a brave people at our back or to remove them in time to places of safety among their own friends and people.
> --from a letter, dated 10 Sep 1864, from W.T. Sherman to J.B. Hood





JakeStarkey said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> Yank?  My family's from Alabama.  My great great great grandfather served under General Forrest, and he was a right son of a bitch; I've read his journal.  He fought to keep the "abolition hordes" from freeing the negroes and forcing his daughters to marry them, whatever the hell that idea came from.  Of course, being a slaveholder himself, he also had more of a direct self-interest, as well as a hatred for any black man in any position other than that of slave; after Forrest's division massacred the defending colored artillerymen at Fort Pillow, he wrote his approval of the action, saying that such should be the fate of any slave who dared take up arms against the white man.
> 
> As an ancestor of this man and of a long line of Southern heritage, I say the South deserved to burn and the road from Richmond to Washington lined with the hanged bodies of the insurgent leaders.  That Lincoln and Johnson were more merciful than that speaks well of them, but it would have been just.  That you defend this scourge upon the history of man is disgusting.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Forrest, let's not forget, was a slave trader as well: a vile person.
Click to expand...

Slave trader, planter, first Grand Wizard of the Klan...  Yes, I know it all.


----------



## paperview

JakeStarkey said:


> Rogue 9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> Yank?  My family's from Alabama.  My great great great grandfather served under General Forrest, and he was a right son of a bitch; I've read his journal.  He fought to keep the "abolition hordes" from freeing the negroes and forcing his daughters to marry them, whatever the hell that idea came from.  Of course, being a slaveholder himself, he also had more of a direct self-interest, as well as a hatred for any black man in any position other than that of slave; after Forrest's division massacred the defending colored artillerymen at Fort Pillow, he wrote his approval of the action, saying that such should be the fate of any slave who dared take up arms against the white man.
> 
> As an ancestor of this man and of a long line of Southern heritage, I say the South deserved to burn and the road from Richmond to Washington lined with the hanged bodies of the insurgent leaders.  That Lincoln and Johnson were more merciful than that speaks well of them, but it would have been just.  That you defend this scourge upon the history of man is disgusting.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Forrest, let's not forget, was a slave trader as well: a vile person.
Click to expand...

To his credit, Forrest later renounced that 1st Klan, and even advocated for the admission of blacks into law school.


----------



## bodecea

paperview said:


> Wow.
> 
> Jeny sure has a way of bringing this rather elevated discussion - or maybe I should say _just about any discussion_, down to her low-rent trash level.
> 
> I never knew a human being could contain so much bile.



Yep...and it never ends either.


----------



## bodecea

JenyEliza said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NO SHIT.
> 
> I live surrounded by the ghosts of Sherman and his blood thirsty mayhem.  Literally.
> 
> I can't drive more than a mile before I am driving past a Confederate battlefield, or a sign memorializing an important building or home Sherman burned to the ground--occupants included.
> 
> FUCK you Yankees....
> 
> I like what Lewis Grizzard had to say about you and your ilk....
> 
> He said it just right...and God Rest His Soul, I wish he was here still to stuff your head up your ass!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lewis M. Grizzard said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The issue on my mind is white Southerners like myself.
> 
> _*They don't like us. They don't trust us. They want to tell us why we're wrong. They want to tell us how we should change.
> 
> They is practically every s.o.b. who isn't one of us. *_
> 
> I read a piece on the op-ed page of the Constitution written by somebody who in the jargon of my past "ain't from around here."
> 
> He wrote white Southerners are always looking back and that we should look forward. He said that about me.
> 
> I'm looking back? I live in one of the most progressive cities in the world. We built a subway to make Yankees feel at home.
> 
> And I live in a region the rest of the country can't wait to move to.
> 
> A friend, also a native Southerner, who shares my anger about the constant belittling of our kind and our place in this world, put it this way: *"Nobody is going into an Atlanta bar tonight celebrating because they've just been transferred to New Jersey."
> 
> Damn straight. *
> 
> I was having lunch at an Atlanta golf club recently. I was talking with friends.
> 
> A man sitting at another table heard me speaking and asked, "Where are you all from?" He was mocking me. He was mocking my Southern accent. He was sitting in Atlanta, Ga., and was making fun of the way I speak.
> 
> He was from Toledo. He had been transferred to Atlanta. If I hadn't have been 46 years old, skinny and a basic coward with a bad heart, I'd have punched him. I did, however, give him a severe verbal dressing down.
> 
> I was in my doctor's office in Atlanta. One of the women who works there, a transplanted Northerner, asked how I pronounced the world "siren."
> 
> I said I pronounced it "si-reen." I was half kidding, but that is the way I heard the word pronounced when I was a child.
> 
> The woman laughed and said, "You Southerners really crack me up. You have a language all your own."
> 
> Yeah we do. If you don't like it, go back home and stick your head in a snow bank.
> 
> _*They want to tell us how to speak, how to live, what to eat, what to think and they also want to tell us how they used to do it back in Buffalo. *_
> 
> Buffalo? What was the score? A hundred and ten to Zip.
> 
> The man writing on the op-ed page was writing about that bumper sticker that shows the old Confederate soldier and he's saying, "FERGIT HELL!" _I don't go around sulking about the fact the South lost the Civil War. But I am aware that once upon a long time ago, a group of Americans saw fit to rebel against what they thought was an overbearing federal government. There is no record anywhere that indicates anybody in my family living in 1861 owned slaves. As a matter of fact, I come from a long line of sharecroppers, horse thieves and used car dealers. But a few of them fought anyway -- not to keep their slaves, because they didn't have any. I guess they simply thought it was the right thing to do at the time.
> 
> Whatever the reason, there was a citizenry that once saw fit to fight and die and I come from all that, and I look at those people as brave and gallant, and a frightful force until their hearts and their lands were burnt away.
> 
> I will never turn my back on that heritage. _
> 
> *But know this: I'm a white man and I'm a Southerner. And I'm sick of being told what is wrong with me from outside critics, and I'm tired of being stereotyped as a refugee from "God's Little Acre." *
> 
> If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, and I'll probably have to say it a thousand times again.
> 
> _Delta may be hurting financially, but it's still ready to take you back to Toledo when you are ready to go. _
> 
> -- Published Feb. 5, 1993
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


Too bad...the Southern Aristocrats wrote checks they couldn't cash....the U.S. just showed them that War is Hell.   Bummer for them.    They're lucky the political leaders weren't hung as traitors when it was all over.


----------



## SpidermanTuba

JakeStarkey said:


> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.
> *
> I am a mother*, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  *My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important* than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.
> 
> Doh, dumbass.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> *
> Your actions define white-trash American female*.  You have nothing of merit, worth, or good to offer society.  Until you realize how damaged you truly are, you will continue to spew the vile bile.
Click to expand...

Wow, you're fucked in the head starkey.


----------



## bodecea

JenyEliza said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.
> 
> I am a mother, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.
> 
> Doh, dumbass.
Click to expand...


Why oh why do we always get subjected to Jeny's family drama on every single thread she's in, no matter what the topic?   Why?    Why are we being punished????????


----------



## nraforlife

bodecea said:


> ................
> Too bad...the Southern Aristocrats wrote checks they couldn't cash.............



This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.


----------



## bodecea

nraforlife said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................
> Too bad...the Southern Aristocrats wrote checks they couldn't cash.............
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.
Click to expand...


   Is that the best you've got?    I mean....seriously?   It doesn't even make sense.


----------



## JakeStarkey

SpidermanTuba said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.
> *
> I am a mother*, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  *My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important* than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.
> 
> Doh, dumbass.
> 
> 
> 
> *
> Your actions define white-trash American female*.  You have nothing of merit, worth, or good to offer society.  Until you realize how damaged you truly are, you will continue to spew the vile bile.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Wow, you're fucked in the head starkey.
Click to expand...


Why?  She never has anything of merit to add.  The unreconstructe confederate crap is old.  They got beat, righteously and rightfully and religiously so.  I don't tolerate a bully.  They are all losers.


----------



## JakeStarkey

bodecea said:


> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................
> Too bad...the Southern Aristocrats wrote checks they couldn't cash.............
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Is that the best you've got?    I mean....seriously?   It doesn't even make sense.
Click to expand...


nra4life simply is nonsensical, right along with Jeny.  Couple of losers big time.


----------



## paperview

JakeStarkey said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is that the best you've got?    I mean....seriously?   It doesn't even make sense.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> nra4life simply is nonsensical, right along with Jeny.  Couple of losers big time.
Click to expand...

It's so "quaint" (cough) how he calls Obama's children_ "pickaninnies."_


----------



## JakeStarkey

nra4life was probably found behind the woodshed as an infant.


----------



## bodecea

JakeStarkey said:


> nra4life was probably found behind the woodshed as an infant.



He was probably 'made' behind the woodshed.


----------



## JakeStarkey

OK, shame on me, but the reactionaries far to the right of the conservatives are simply wack jobs.


----------



## nraforlife

bodecea said:


> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................
> Too bad...the Southern Aristocrats wrote checks they couldn't cash.............
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> .................    I mean....seriously?   It doesn't even make sense. QUOTE]
> 
> To your sort Truth never does make sense.
Click to expand...


----------



## nraforlife

paperview said:


> ......................
> It's so "quaint" (cough) how he calls Obama's children_ "pickaninnies."_



It what they are.


----------



## bodecea

nraforlife said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> This from a piece of bog irish trailer trash who never tires of blathering about her glorious hyphenated ancestry. There is a reason the English Aristocrats shipped your ancestor's to ellis island after tumbling their shacks. Yeppers the sheep brought in as replacements were more productive, better looking and certainly smelled better.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .................    I mean....seriously?   It doesn't even make sense. QUOTE]
> 
> To your sort Truth never does make sense.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I'm glad you capitalized "Truth"...giving it a pet name....unfortunately, your pet, Truth, ran away from you...you were NOT a good owner.
Click to expand...


----------



## JakeStarkey

nraforlife is out looking for Truth.


----------



## nraforlife

bodecea said:


> ................I'm glad you .........................



I'm Glad its soooooo Obvious you are an Ignorant Trailer Trash- American.


----------



## bodecea

nraforlife said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................I'm glad you .........................
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm Glad its soooooo Obvious you are an Ignorant Trailer Trash- American.
Click to expand...


Well, I DO own an RV...but that's just for vacations.   

But, feel free to speak of what you know.


----------



## JakeStarkey

nraforlife said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................I'm glad you .........................
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm Glad its soooooo Obvious you are an Ignorant Trailer Trash- American.
Click to expand...


You just described a large portion of the far-right reactionary agenda-driven wacko front led by the likes of Rush and Glenn.


----------



## jillian

JenyEliza said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JenyEliza said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck off, dirtbag.
> 
> The South and Southerners aren't afraid of YOU or your stupid threats.
> 
> In FACT....I think there are a LOT of Southerners who'd dearly love a chance at a re-match.  Cuz they'd kick your lily-livered, yellow-bellied, liberal, yankee asses.  BAD.
> 
> You weepy, whiny, pansy ass Yanks would be be BEGGING FOR MERCY when we got done with you.
> 
> So...bring it. (as if you even HAVE it to bring).   You bad ass liberals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I knew you couldn't take it.   Never met an unreconstructed confederate who wasn't a puke.  Word.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Whatever, you fuckwhit.  You're not worth my time or trouble.
> 
> I am a mother, I have responsibilities and that doesn't mean sitting here on USMB all day/night.  My kids just got back from a week at their Dads.  Spending time with THEM is WAY more important than dealing with a whiny, diarrhea-mouthed shithead like you.
> 
> Doh, dumbass.
Click to expand...


anyone want to point out to jenye the irony in someone with a foul mouth like hers complaining about someone else's language.... 

as she calls him a fuckwit, a shithead and a dumbass?


----------



## jillian

nraforlife said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................I'm glad you .........................
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm Glad its soooooo Obvious you are an Ignorant Trailer Trash- American.
Click to expand...


project much?


----------



## JakeStarkey

Jeny is simply an anti-intellectual ho, and nraforlife is a psycho talker.


----------



## nraforlife

bodecea said:


> ...............
> But, feel free to speak of what you know.



woman you reek with the stink of po' buckra.


----------



## nraforlife

JakeStarkey said:


> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> ................I'm glad you .........................
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm Glad its soooooo Obvious you are an Ignorant Trailer Trash- American.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You just described a large portion of the far-right reactionary agenda-driven wacko front led by the likes of Rush and Glenn.
Click to expand...


damn nothin' slips by you.


----------



## nraforlife

jillian said:


> ............
> project much?





Nope not at all. 

I see you have been busy showing solidarity with the rest of the LezBo Bitch Coven. You 'ladies' must be having the monthly bitch-in-sync roundtable, eh.


----------



## nraforlife

JakeStarkey said:


> Jeny is simply an anti-intellectual ho, and nraforlife is a psycho talker.



and jake is just the figurative turd on the bottom of our shoes. Piss off, uncle.


----------



## bodecea

nraforlife said:


> jillian said:
> 
> 
> 
> ............
> project much?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nope not at all.
> 
> I see you have been busy showing solidarity with the rest of the LezBo Bitch Coven. You 'ladies' must be having the monthly bitch-in-sync roundtable, eh.
Click to expand...


We've got a COVEN now!   This is SOOOOOOOO cool!


----------



## JakeStarkey

nraforlife said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> Jeny is simply an anti-intellectual ho, and nraforlife is a psycho talker.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and jake is just the figurative turd on the bottom of our shoes. Piss off, uncle.
Click to expand...


tuff luck, sonny, 'cause you are irrelevant.


----------



## JakeStarkey

bodecea said:


> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jillian said:
> 
> 
> 
> ............
> project much?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nope not at all.
> 
> I see you have been busy showing solidarity with the rest of the LezBo Bitch Coven. You 'ladies' must be having the monthly bitch-in-sync roundtable, eh.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> We've got a COVEN now!   This is SOOOOOOOO cool!
Click to expand...


If you have a coven, does Jeny get to be Acolyte #1?


----------



## bodecea

JakeStarkey said:


> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nraforlife said:
> 
> 
> 
> Nope not at all.
> 
> I see you have been busy showing solidarity with the rest of the LezBo Bitch Coven. You 'ladies' must be having the monthly bitch-in-sync roundtable, eh.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We've got a COVEN now!   This is SOOOOOOOO cool!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> If you have a coven, does Jeny get to be Acolyte #1?
Click to expand...


Please do not put us in the same catagory....Jeny makes Satin look good...Satan even.


----------



## jillian

nraforlife said:


> jillian said:
> 
> 
> 
> ............
> project much?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nope not at all.
> 
> I see you have been busy showing solidarity with the rest of the LezBo Bitch Coven. You 'ladies' must be having the monthly bitch-in-sync roundtable, eh.
Click to expand...


why is it always insane losers like you who amuse yourselves by saying any woman you disagree with is a lesbian?

does that make losers like you feel like having microscopic genitalia doesn't matter so much?

just because someone thinks you're a loser, doesn't mean they're gay... it just means you're a loser.


----------



## JakeStarkey

bodecea said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bodecea said:
> 
> 
> 
> We've got a COVEN now!   This is SOOOOOOOO cool!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you have a coven, does Jeny get to be Acolyte #1?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Please do not put us in the same catagory....Jeny makes Satin look good...Satan even.
Click to expand...


You are right, of course.  She is something on the bottom of a shoe, for sure.


----------



## midcan5

While I didn't get a chance to go through the thread, it looks like it got a bit off topic.

Anyway I thought this stuff interesting.

"Her conclusion is that the Americans who fought the Civil War overwhelmingly thought they were fighting about slavery, and that we should take their word for it."

AmericanHeritage.com / Why the Civil War Was Fought, Really


Southern Arguments for and Against Secession from the Union - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com


AmericanHeritage.com / How the North Lost the Civil War


----------



## editec

Just rereading the ebb and flow of this debate.

Kudos to those of you who have been seeking to make your agurments using understandable logic supported by documentation.

Some issues here are entirely based on what we believe, and some not.

For example, if one posits that states have every right to succeed, and another takes the position that they do not, there really is no debate possible.

The consitution is somewhat unclear about that, so that debate is impossible to end.

However there is no shortage of evidence to support the view that the Southern States went to war over the issue of slavery.

Rogue 9 and others documented the evidence that supports THAT argument about as well as can be done.

The motivation of the Southern Rebs to break away from the Union was slavery.

Tariffs, while certainly an issue, were NOT the primary cause of the war.

That revisionist argument is NOT sustainable, because the Rebs themselves did not identify it as their primary concern.


----------



## paperview

A rebel 

bump.


----------



## JakeStarkey

bump bump


----------



## paperview

_Confederate History Month _bump.


----------



## Agit8r

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> We've been here before Kevin.
> 
> The South fired the first shots even before Lincoln was President.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, in another act of belligerence by Lincoln's predecessor, at least he had the sense not to escalate the situation.  This prior incident also shows that Lincoln knew what the consequences of his actions would be, and still went ahead and tried to resupply Fort Sumter.  He knew the south would attack, and he knew he could use that to get public opinion on his side for a war with the south.
Click to expand...


Buchanan did nothing to provoke the South, nor did he take decisive action to quell the crisis. The latter is why he consistently ranks at the bottom of lists of presidential greatness.


----------



## natstew

JakeStarkey said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> *The states voluntarily ceded sovereignity when they joined the union.  If they were to maintain it, the Constitution would have stated it.  But it did not.*  Only did it regulate the entry of new states into the union.
> 
> Secessionists are the height of hypocrisy to suggest the same of the union.  For shame.
Click to expand...


Read the tenth amendment, carefully, it's only one sentence, but maybe the most important one sentence in the Constitution, (and yes, it is an integral part of the Constitution), "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.

 Here's what the founders were telling us:
 The power of secession was not given to the United States to either prevent, or to force on any State, and it was not prohibited by the Constitution to  the States, so it remained with the States.
 Now that's the Constitutional aspect of secession.

 Here's something else that should be considered:
 There were over four million slaves in the States that seceded, that doesn't include the four "slave States" that remained in the Union. What was to be done with these people if slavery were to be ended. They didn't own any land, they barely owned the clothes they wore. 
 There were people in the South who would have gladly participated in a plan to eliminate slavery that wouldn't have thrown them into poverty and put millions of illiterate blacks lose to survive any way possible. That would have resulted in gangs of blacks roaming the countryside, raping and pillaging at will, as happened anyway at the end of the war.
 But no, just like forced integration a hundred years later, the powers that be had to do it instantaneous[y, resulting in decades of   racial violence.

 I have four ancestors who served during the War Between The States,  two in the 16th Maine Infantry (Thomas Dorset and Sylvanus Chick) Regiment and two in the Fifth Florida Infantry Division (William James Stewart and Robert May)., only one family owned slaves, the May family of Jefferson County Florida, and Asa May, the Patriarch of that  family wanted to end slavery, but in a peaceful way that would not throw the slave owners into poverty. He had several  ideas that would spread the expense .of converting to a paid workforce over all who profited from the institution of slavery, including the Northern Textile Mill owners and the people who bought and wore the clothes made from the cotton produced by slaves. But no again, the hothead abolitionist leaders and Textile Mill Mogels would hear nothing of it, So over 600,000 had to die, and over a million more go missing in action (some just went west, some went home, and others were miscounted, but even if one fourth of these were killed it would add another 250,000 to the killed list)
 Now, you may say, and I'm sure some of you will, that I'm just making this up after the fact, but that's your prerogative. I got it from personal research into my family history inspired by family 'tradition'. In any case, there were many slave owners who would have gladly traded their slaves for a life free of the curse bestowed upon them by their ancestors, if they could have done it without throwing their children into abject poverty.

 Now, as one man who was raised by a Mother from Maine, and a Father from Wakulla County Florida, say that you who say the slaves should have been set free instantly with no regard for the safety of the Southern Whites,  mostly who didn't own slaves but owned 99% of the fire arms, or the slaves themselves who owned nothing and would have had no choice but to pillage a survival by any means available to them, you people are worse morally than the institution of slavery itself.

 How about lets debate a way slavery could have been ended without the violence of war and the 100 years of racial violence that followed. Come on, I challenge you!


----------



## natstew

What, no takers?


----------



## JakeStarkey

Nothing to be taken.

A great Civil War resolved that issue a long time and was confirmed by SCOTUS.

You are certainly entitled to the silly concept in which you want to believe.


----------



## Rogue 9

natstew said:


> JakeStarkey said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> paperview said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Might doesn't make right.
> 
> 
> 
> But when Might is used for Right, it shines as its own evidence in the Sunlight.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I tried to think of something that rhymed and made sense, but I failed.
> 
> The Colonies fought for the right of self-government, and it's hypocritical for the government created by the Colonies to deny that right to the Confederacy.  So in this case, might wasn't used for right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> *The states voluntarily ceded sovereignity when they joined the union.  If they were to maintain it, the Constitution would have stated it.  But it did not.*  Only did it regulate the entry of new states into the union.
> 
> Secessionists are the height of hypocrisy to suggest the same of the union.  For shame.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Read the tenth amendment, carefully, it's only one sentence, but maybe the most important one sentence in the Constitution, (and yes, it is an integral part of the Constitution), "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.
> 
> Here's what the founders were telling us:
> The power of secession was not given to the United States to either prevent, or to force on any State, and it was not prohibited by the Constitution to  the States, so it remained with the States.
> Now that's the Constitutional aspect of secession.
Click to expand...










			
				United States Constitution said:
			
		

> The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and *nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States*, or of any particular State.


This one's the kicker.  When taken in the context of the Supremacy Clause, we see that the states cannot violate the territorial sovereignty of the United States.  Secession is such a violation.  Here is that Clause, in case you've forgotten:  





			
				United States Constitution said:
			
		

> This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, *shall be the supreme Law of the Land*; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, *any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding*.


You lose.  Good day, sir.



natstew said:


> Here's something else that should be considered:
> There were over four million slaves in the States that seceded, that doesn't include the four "slave States" that remained in the Union. What was to be done with these people if slavery were to be ended. They didn't own any land, they barely owned the clothes they wore.
> There were people in the South who would have gladly participated in a plan to eliminate slavery that wouldn't have thrown them into poverty and put millions of illiterate blacks lose to survive any way possible. That would have resulted in gangs of blacks roaming the countryside, raping and pillaging at will, as happened anyway at the end of the war.
> But no, just like forced integration a hundred years later, the powers that be had to do it instantaneous[y, resulting in decades of   racial violence.
> 
> I have four ancestors who served during the War Between The States,  two in the 16th Maine Infantry (Thomas Dorset and Sylvanus Chick) Regiment and two in the Fifth Florida Infantry Division (William James Stewart and Robert May)., only one family owned slaves, the May family of Jefferson County Florida, and Asa May, the Patriarch of that  family wanted to end slavery, but in a peaceful way that would not throw the slave owners into poverty. He had several  ideas that would spread the expense .of converting to a paid workforce over all who profited from the institution of slavery, including the Northern Textile Mill owners and the people who bought and wore the clothes made from the cotton produced by slaves. But no again, the hothead abolitionist leaders and Textile Mill Mogels would hear nothing of it, So over 600,000 had to die, and over a million more go missing in action (some just went west, some went home, and others were miscounted, but even if one fourth of these were killed it would add another 250,000 to the killed list)
> Now, you may say, and I'm sure some of you will, that I'm just making this up after the fact, but that's your prerogative. I got it from personal research into my family history inspired by family 'tradition'. In any case, there were many slave owners who would have gladly traded their slaves for a life free of the curse bestowed upon them by their ancestors, if they could have done it without throwing their children into abject poverty.
> 
> Now, as one man who was raised by a Mother from Maine, and a Father from Wakulla County Florida, say that you who say the slaves should have been set free instantly with no regard for the safety of the Southern Whites,  mostly who didn't own slaves but owned 99% of the fire arms, or the slaves themselves who owned nothing and would have had no choice but to pillage a survival by any means available to them, you people are worse morally than the institution of slavery itself.
> 
> How about lets debate a way slavery could have been ended without the violence of war and the 100 years of racial violence that followed. Come on, I challenge you!


Wow.


Your facts are all wrong, sir.  I mean, I hardly know where to begin, so I'll start from the top.

First, no, the people of the South (or at least the slaveholders of the South, which is who mattered) were not glad to participate in any plan to eliminate slavery, compensated or otherwise.  Such a plan was offered to the border states during the war, and flatly rejected.  Such plans were proposed in the decades prior and the literature proposing them was barred from the mails, and if the proposer was dumb enough to go South to make his pitch personally he stood a fairly good chance of being run out of town at best and lynched at worst.

Second, you have who was doing the roaming around raping and pillaging backwards.  You may wish to examine the history of the Ku Klux Klan.

Third, the Freedman's Bureau was supposed to assist the freed slaves to prevent exactly the sort of desperate poverty you decry - but its agents were run out of town most everywhere they went, because preventing that desperate poverty would have short-circuited the sharecropping system, slavery by another name.  Desperate people only go around pillaging against people much more heavily armed than they are if they aren't given another option - which they were.  And that option was to return to working the fields for pay that was immediately taken back in rent. 

Your ancestry has nothing to do with whether you're right or wrong on any of these facts, and as it happens you are most decidedly the latter.  I myself have multiple ancestors that served in the 45th Alabama Infantry, CSA, but that doesn't make them right.  The chattel slavery system is one of the most brutal and evil atrocities ever perpetuated by man against man, and those perpetuating it were unwilling to end it - in case you failed to notice, they *started a war when its mere EXPANSION was threatened,* to say nothing of an actual attempt to end it.  Any claim that they were willing to go along with an emancipation scheme when emancipation was made unconstitutional under the government they created for themselves is laughable.


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## Rogue 9

*Ahem*  "What, no takers?"


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## bripat9643

RetiredGySgt said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The South saw to it no peaceful resolution would occur. Lincoln REFUSED to act as the South rebelled, wanting to wait for the Congress to act. The South would have none of that resorting to armed rebellion, FORCING Lincoln to raise an Army in defense of the loyal States.
Click to expand...

Unmitigated horseshit.


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## initforme

How did any of the idiots that owned slaves(anyone who did was not a truly great American) come up with the idea that it was ok to own a slave?


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## bripat9643

initforme said:


> How did any of the idiots that owned slaves(anyone who did was not a truly great American) come up with the idea that it was ok to own a slave?



So George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not great Americans?


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## bodecea

Kevin_Kennedy said:


> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.


That was an option...until the South fired on Fort Sumter.


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## bripat9643

bodecea said:


> Kevin_Kennedy said:
> 
> 
> 
> The roots of nullification go much deeper than just John C. Calhoun, to the days of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.
> 
> And if the south was such a nuisance to the north it would seem like good policy to simply wish them well and let them go, rather than waging a war to force them to stay.
> 
> 
> 
> That was an option...until the South fired on Fort Sumter.
Click to expand...


Firing on Ft Sumter had nothing to do with the option.


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## initforme

"So George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not great Americans?"

Anyone who condones slavery or owned a slave will not ever get the" great" label next to their names.   Deep down they knew it was anti Christian, anti human, and totally immoral to even think of considering a person someone's property".  In no way shape or form can anyone justify slavery.  The reason I believe is that they wanted to become rich and needed to mistreat others in order to have their work done.  I call it lazy. They were lazy.


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## bripat9643

initforme said:


> "So George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not great Americans?"
> 
> Anyone who condones slavery or owned a slave will not ever get the" great" label next to their names.   Deep down they knew it was anti Christian, anti human, and totally immoral to even think of considering a person someone's property".  In no way shape or form can anyone justify slavery.  The reason I believe is that they wanted to become rich and needed to mistreat others in order to have their work done.  I call it lazy. They were lazy.



I guess we build monuments to people in Washington D.C. because they are despised.


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## initforme

I could care less about monuments.  While they had a hand in forming this nation, the fact that they felt that owning slaves was somehow OK in my eyes takes them down several notches on the great category.  Slave owners were greedy, immoral bastards who were too lazy to do the work themselves and too cheap to pay a decent wage for the work.  It is sad they didn't see the total error in their ways.  So do I see them as great?  Nope I don't.  I believe thbey knew it was wrong and sadistic to own slaves yet did anyway.   What is wrong in every way is simply wrong.


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## bripat9643

initforme said:


> I could care less about monuments.  While they had a hand in forming this nation, the fact that they felt that owning slaves was somehow OK in my eyes takes them down several notches on the great category.  Slave owners were greedy, immoral bastards who were too lazy to do the work themselves and too cheap to pay a decent wage for the work.  It is sad they didn't see the total error in their ways.  So do I see them as great?  Nope I don't.  I believe thbey knew it was wrong and sadistic to own slaves yet did anyway.   What is wrong in every way is simply wrong.



I could care less about your opinion.  You're looking at them with 20/20 hindsight and judging them by modern standards.  Slavery is as old as civilization.  Older, even.  The practice was considered normal and socially acceptable at the time.  It makes as much sense to condemn the Founding Fathers for practising slavery as it does to condemn Julius Caesar or Pericles for owning slaves. 

Many of the libs in here claim to be the ideological descendants of the Founding Fathers, but you all condemn them for owning slaves.  You're all astounding hypocrites.


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## initforme

Slavery is wrong in every way.  You agree with this I assume.  If it is wrong today was it not wrong back then?   Simply because there were thousands of slave owners back then and it was considered normal, does that make it right?  If they were that great they wouldn't have owned slaves and would have had the conviction to speak out against it.  If you want work done, you pay people a good wage, you don't whip them and rule with fear and not pay them. Where is the greatness in that?


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## natstew

bripat9643 said:


> initforme said:
> 
> 
> 
> I could care less about monuments.  While they had a hand in forming this nation, the fact that they felt that owning slaves was somehow OK in my eyes takes them down several notches on the great category.  Slave owners were greedy, immoral bastards who were too lazy to do the work themselves and too cheap to pay a decent wage for the work.  It is sad they didn't see the total error in their ways.  So do I see them as great?  Nope I don't.  I believe thbey knew it was wrong and sadistic to own slaves yet did anyway.   What is wrong in every way is simply wrong.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I could care less about your opinion.  You're looking at them with 20/20 hindsight and judging them by modern standards.  Slavery is as old as civilization.  Older, even.  The practice was considered normal and socially acceptable at the time.  It makes as much sense to condemn the Founding Fathers for practising slavery as it does to condemn Julius Caesar or Pericles for owning slaves.
> 
> Many of the libs in here claim to be the ideological descendants of the Founding Fathers, but you all condemn them for owning slaves.  You're all astounding hypocrites.
Click to expand...


I agree 100% with the above. I taught my children and grandchildren that you can't judge our forefathers by morals of today.


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## Rogue 9

Ah, moral relativism.  Where would we be without you?  

But that isn't the point.  The point is that it was the Slave Power that was the aggressor, not the free states - not only at the outbreak of the war, but in matters of internal policy for over a decade prior.


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