The Confederacy and States' Rights

[Equat]

False conclusion, I explained it, and the discussion is over, Kevin. The real issus are that you fail to understand what 'liberty' and 'freedom' have meant philosophically through the ages. The Founders, some of them, anyway, did understand that personal liberty has to be limited at times so that communal freedom can be enhanced. That is why the states were never considered sovereign states by most of the early Founders.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were mostly sovereign. However, the US abolished its first government and established a more perfect union under the Constitution.

The Constitution simply made a stronger federal government. It didn't usurp the sovereignty of the states. Why would the states have voted away their sovereignty to ratify the Constitution? And what of the three states that explicitly reserved the right, upon their ratification, to exit the Union should it become destructive of their liberty? It certainly was not interpreted as usurping the independence of the states when it was ratified by the states. You can't change the meaning of a contract after the contract is signed and claim the moral high ground.

Which three states reserved exit from the Union upon ratification? Where's the evidence? I don't deny what you are claiming. I am simply asking for support of your argument.

 

[Douger]

United, By Force.
Wait till you see what they have planned for you next year.

 

[JakeStarkey]

False and silly implied analogy, Douger. Sheesh.

 

[Equat]

The slaves condition was not natural as the Rebs (short for "Rebels" not "Reps") claimed.

Which Union general gave permission to rape? I know that that Union tried both Union and Confederates for raping whites and slaves. Rape is commonplace for occupying armies. A German woman I knew told me that her father hid her in the hay in the barn to protect her from the Soviet rapist invaders and wished the Americans to be their occupiers.

I've got work to do. TTYL.

Sherman's men were big on rape.

The US disciplined (via hanging) its rapists post-Civil War. Have you heard of Abu Graib? "War is Hell you cannot refine it." -Sherman

 

[Equat]

Rape is an age-old military behavior that goes back to the beginning of man. And rape was customary in the old South between white men and black women. No slave woman had the right either to consent or to resist. That alone made the destruction of slavery while preserving the Union worthwhile.

So it's ok that the Union raped free women and slaves, but not the Confederacy?

No! Rape is innate to war which the Rebs chose for themselves by attacking Sumter.
The slaves didn't choose rape like the Rebs did because the slaves didn't attack the US, nor were the slaves in charge deserving the destruction of their nation. The slaves had no nation. They were denied American citizenship and rights by law.

 

[JakeStarkey]

KevinKennedy, you have offered nothing that has stood up for your contention that the primary cause of the war was anything else than slavery. The contempories of the times then would tell you to your face that you are wrong.

 

[Equat]

That does take away the sovereignty of the states. That is a forfeiting of the very thing that defines them as sovereign entities. Furthermore, the Constitution requires that the national government ensure every state a "republican form of government". If a state were to become an independent nation, the national government would no longer be able to do this.

As for your other questions, they don't really address the issue. Why would states vote to ratify a document that destroys their sovereignty? Perhaps because they saw the alternative of being gobbled up by European powers as far worse. It's not like we lack other examples of states which have surrendered all or part of their sovereignty.

As for those three states, I don't know why the felt that way, but their feelings does not change the clear language of the agreement.

The mandate to ensure a republican form of government only applies to those states that are within the Union. If they seceded then the federal government would have no authority or responsibility to ensure a republican form of government.

Also, what about nullification? If they weren't sovereign how did nullification become the force that it was?

I agree that it doesn't change the clear language of the agreement. But I think we're differing on what that clear language actually says.

And what happened when a state actually tried to nullify a law? Congress gave the President the authority to enforce the law using all necessary force.

Precisely! The other slave states didn't yelp about it nor rebel either.

 

[☭proletarian☭]

Furthermore, the Constitution requires that the national government ensure every state a "republican form of government". If a state were to become an independent nation, the national government would no longer be able to do this.

Because the counties and cities would all suddenly and necessarily cease to exist?

As for your other questions, they don't really address the issue.

Again, see the Tenth Amendment

their feelings does not change the clear language of the agreement.

Show me where it says explicitly that the States are denied the right and power to exercise their right to self-governance and secede from the union.

 

[☭proletarian☭]

nowhere does it say 'The member states are to be the bitches of the Fed

Guess you don't understand the meaning of "supreme law of the land".

And that law says that unless you caN SHOW ME WHERE IT SAYS 'tHE sTATES ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO SECEDE', THEY POSSESS THAT RIGHT AND THAT POWER UNDER THE trENTH aMENDMENT.

 

[☭proletarian☭]

I am too lazy to fix that caps lock >.>

 

[☭proletarian☭]

And what happened when a state actually tried to nullify a law? Congress gave the President the authority to enforce the law using all necessary force.

The Fed breaks a lot of Constitutional law. What's your point?

 

[☭proletarian☭]

Guess you don't understand the meaning of "supreme law of the land".

Yes, supreme law of the land while the states are under the Constitution. But since the supreme law of the land does not prohibit them from seceding they are fully within their legal rights to cast off the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

Do the Hawaiians have the right to secede and bomb Pearl Harbor as the South Carolinians did Sumpter? If so, then the Japs in WWII wouldn't look so bad, would they?

Funny that you ask if a territory that never wanted to join us and which was conquered and taken by force has the right to say they still want nothing to do with us...

 

[JakeStarkey]

Go read Hawaiin history, please. The U.S. did not "conquer" the islands. They were in the control of a business elite, some of whom who were American, who in a filibuster overthrew the rule of the constitutional monarch in the early 1890s. The islands were annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Go read Hawaiin history, please. The U.S. did not "conquer" the islands. They were in the control of a business elite, some of whom who were American, who in a filibuster overthrew the rule of the constitutional monarch in the early 1890s. The islands were annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

Sounds like conquering to me.
But "Might makes Right" in your lexicon, so conquering is as good as convincing.

Why do I remain unconvinced?

 

[☭proletarian☭]

Go read Hawaiin history, please. The U.S. did not "conquer" the islands. They were in the control of a business elite, some of whom who were American, who in a filibuster overthrew the rule of the constitutional monarch in the early 1890s. The islands were annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

Annexed with cannons surrounding the palace

 

[JakeStarkey]

OK, Proletarian, do you have snakes roiling in your brains. You and KK have been conclusively defeated whether the South had the constitutional right to secede from the Union. And if you were correct, so what if the South won? The consequences would have been catastrophic for North America.

The North would have bided its time and struck again even more violently and devastatingly at the South. The South, because it was rooted in slave agriculture, would have attempted to move into the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. The West may have seceded and struck at British Vancouver and the Hawaiin Islands. And who knows what the freaky LDS would have done in the Rocky Mountains (we see what the write here!). The northern continent would have been drenched in blood and suffering.

The South, instead, inherited the just desserts for its master race white democracy. The sonuvgans did win the peace, forced segregation and Jim Crow for another 100 years. But a reckoning came, did it not, and it was righteous, was it not, and the high schools and the colleges in the South have been teaching within the last ten years that slavery was immoral, that it was the primary cause of the Civil War, and that America has been a better place for the South's defeat. Amen.

 

[Equat]

Go read Hawaiin history, please. The U.S. did not "conquer" the islands. They were in the control of a business elite, some of whom who were American, who in a filibuster overthrew the rule of the constitutional monarch in the early 1890s. The islands were annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

Sounds like conquering to me.
But "Might makes Right" in your lexicon, so conquering is as good as convincing.

Why do I remain unconvinced?

The Confederates believed in "Might for Right" as they upheld the "righteousness" of our revolution from England, blamed the US for John Brown and Nat Turner to whom they alluded in their Declaration of Causes of Secession. Therein, the Confederates upheld "Might for Right" in their self-righteous and racists might over blacks. The Confederates decried racial equality then, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and in their present double-talk by upholding and defending the racist Confederacy, while claiming that they aren't racists.

Conquering is better than convincing when obstinate people like the Confederates refused to abolish slavery, maintain the Union, restrain themselves from attacking US military installations, and allow civil rights to blacks. The Confederates couldn't be convinced then or now. They are right in their own socially narcissistic minds, regardless of their evil.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Go read Hawaiin history, please. The U.S. did not "conquer" the islands. They were in the control of a business elite, some of whom who were American, who in a filibuster overthrew the rule of the constitutional monarch in the early 1890s. The islands were annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

Sounds like conquering to me.
But "Might makes Right" in your lexicon, so conquering is as good as convincing.

Why do I remain unconvinced?

The Confederates believed in "Might for Right" as they upheld the "righteousness" of our revolution from England, blamed the US for John Brown and Nat Turner to whom they alluded in their Declaration of Causes of Secession. Therein, the Confederates upheld "Might for Right" in their self-righteous and racists might over blacks. The Confederates decried racial equality then, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and in their present double-talk by upholding and defending the racist Confederacy, while claiming that they aren't racists.

Conquering is better than convincing when obstinate people like the Confederates refused to abolish slavery, and maintain the Union, and to restrain themselves from attacking US military installations. The Confederates couldn't be convinced then or now. They are right in their own socially narcissistic mind, regardless of their evil.

Do you consider the Union evil?

 

[Equat]

KK: You asked me if I thought the Union were evil. Sure! All societies of evil men are and always have been evil. The Union is no exception. That isn't the point of your premise. Your point was to assert the righteousness of the Confederacy. The Confederates weren't righteous, morally or legally. Their assertions were flagrantly hypocritical, which made the Union "saviors" of oppressed people. In the Civil War, the Union had the moral high ground more than the British did in our revolution. As stated previously, the US didn't revolt against England over slavery as the Confederates seceded (as stated in their http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html ) from the Union.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

KK: You asked me if I thought the Union were evil. Sure! All societies of evil men are and always have been evil. The Union is no exception. That isn't the point of your premise. Your point was to assert the righteousness of the Confederacy. The Confederates weren't righteous, morally or legally. Their assertions were flagrantly hypocritical, which made the Union "saviors" of oppressed people. In the Civil War, the Union had the moral high ground more than the British did in our revolution. As stated previously, the US didn't revolt against England over slavery as the Confederates seceded (as stated in their Declaration of Causes of Secession ) from the Union.

Well at least you're not a hypocrite. At any rate, never have I claimed that the Confederacy was righteous. You can go ahead and try to attribute that belief to me, but ultimately you can really only go by what I actually say. My claim is that the Confederate States, and any states for that matter, have the natural and constitutional right to secession and self-government.