Posted on 07/22/2015 7:36:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We call the war of 1861 the Civil War. But is that right? A civil war is a struggle between two or more entities trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?
Was President Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let's look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, "I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists." In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: "My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects." Debating Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."
What about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words: "I view the matter (of slaves' emancipation) as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion." He also wrote: "I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition." When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union.
London and Paris were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union.
The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It specifically detailed where slaves were to be freed: only in those states "in rebellion against the United States." Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion — such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln's own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. ... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.
Why didn't Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation's history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What "responsible" politician would let that much revenue go?
ping!
Abraham never hurt anyone. He was just starting to turn his life around.
That’s only true if you leave Providence out of your considerations.
With him it isn’t a matter of “can’t” as much as it is a matter of “won’t”.
I have enough evidence to consider it a credible plausibility. That the South was exporting Cotton is pretty much understood by everyone. What was New York importing? That alone is sufficient reason to suspect that the South was paying for most of the government.
That the South consumed vastly more than the 22% proportionate to their share of the population?
As I pointed out in my previous message, that European money has got to be spent somehow. It must be balanced by European goods somehow.
We know the South was getting a good chunk of it for Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar. What was the North selling to Europe?
Or that the eventual Union states consumed, and therefore paid the tariffs on, much less than the 78% proportionate to their population?
If the first bit be true, than this second bit would seemingly follow, or at least be not far off.
I’m sure you’re right.
The Premise of this free republic is that we have the freedom to leave a larger Union.
That is the foundation of our own nation.
Once again, your post completely omits the moral basis for the separation.
A necessity for you, I understand, but, there it is.
Only because Lincoln rebelled against the foundation of our government.
Read back thru the southern newspapers in 60/61. They are absolutely loaded with calls for “an appeal to arms!”
Which was a reasonable thing to do. No one trusted Abe to do the right thing and leave them alone. I guess they just never thought he would go bat sh*t insane with the Invading and Killing.
I can write stuff, but I can't make you read it. Since you didn't read it the first time, I don't see much point in re-iterating it.
I'm not aware that in 1861 there was a federal law prohibiting secession; if there was it was not in pursuance of the original constitution.
For your conveinience: 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, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
If I were a Judge in a court, I would say "untimely."
What they did after they invaded, cannot be used to justify their invasion. You can't claim moral absolvance for something you did in 1861 by what you later did in 1864.
When they initiated hostilities, they were just as guilty of a Nation as those whom they later condemned.
But writers of History books have flushed a lot of hypocrisy down the memory hole.
Oh humor me. How could tariffs be such a terrible burden for Southerners if they paid such a small percentage of it. Point me to your reply if you don't want to write it again.
What considerations? A right is a right! If you have to “consider” whether you can exercise it or not, then it isn’t a right, but something else, such as a privilege.
I’m very disappointed that people need to be reminded of this basic stuff on a conservative site. Maybe it’s time to start posting some refresher topics with quotes from Locke, Hobbes, and the rest of the gang.
The opposite was, in fact, true.
The feigned apprehension of the Northern Abolitionists and their allies, such as Lincoln, that Southern slaveholders would begin to flock northward and westward with their slaves ignored the clear historical fact that slavery had already died out in the Northern States and that the slave population had shifted almost entirely to the Gulf States.
Josiah J. Evans of South Carolina, stated that slave labor was not suited for the agriculture of the Territories: “There is no pretense that any one of the great staples that constitute the great material of our foreign commerce, can be cultivated anywhere within the limits of these Territories outside of the Territory of Kansas.”
There was absolutely no reason at all for Southern owners to move North with their slaves, and they had no inclination to do so. There was also no real inclination for most slaveholders to migrate into the Territories: They demanded a right which they could not actively use — the legal right to carry slaves where few would or could be taken. The one side fought obsessively for what it was bound to get without fighting; the other, with equal rancor, contended for what in the nature of things it could never use.
Consequently, the whole controversy over the expansion of slavery into the territories became a politically contrived issue.
Slavery was dying in the rest of the world. It had little chance of spreading further into new territories of the continent. It had reached the limits imposed on its expansion by geography and climate, as Kansas, New Mexico, and Utah amply showed. The census of 1860 revealed that there were precisely two slaves in Kansas, and only a handful more in all the remaining territories.
Even the Congressional Republicans had recognized that slavery posed no real threat in the territories, when, early in 1861, they provided for the organization of the new territories of Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota without any ban on slavery.
North and South were not divided by their mutual racism. Slavery was not a genuine issue and there was no need to go to war over it. The men of 1860-1 allowed an academic argument about an imaginary slave in an impossible place to end in a bloody civil war.
If the question was merely one of slavery in the territories, then competent political leadership would have been able to cope with it. Instead, the Northern political class, seeing that the South was steadily becoming a minority in the United States, remained frustrated at the South's ability to cling to power. Not merely was the Northern stand against the threat of slavery in the territories a misdirection, but Northern expressions of moral repugnance towards slavery were totalitarian nonsense.
The Republican party was seeking to push the South into minority status, eliminate Constitutional guarantees of freedom and limit their existence to growing crops.
There wouldn't need to be.
The Supremacy Clause says that all state laws are subject to Federal review.
An "act of secession" is a declaration that no laws of the seceding state are subject to Federal review, which is a direct violation of the Supremacy Clause.
Because the government (British Union) from which they were separating did not acknowledge their God given right to leave.
The difference is, The Confederates were not supposed to be dealing with such a government. They were supposed to be dealing with a government that recognized the right to leave, as explained in the Founding document.
The US government REBELLED against the founding document and founding principles. The British Union did not.
In the case of the British, it was reasonable to expect a fight. In the case of the US, it was not.
But a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” led them to spell out why they “of right ought to be” independent.
But which is not the same thing as a requirement. It is a courtesy, nothing else. Failure to extend such courtesy does not abrogate their rights to leave anyway.
The lion's share of all foreign goods, if tariff collection figures are any judge. If the South was paying for most of them then why weren't they delivered to southern ports?
We know the South was getting a good chunk of it for Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar. What was the North selling to Europe?
Cotton, tobacco, and sugar mostly, with grains and other agricultural goods making up the balance. You think it was Southerners brokering the cotton and selling it to foreign buyers? Nonsense. Plantation owners sold the cotton to brokers, who sold it to buyers both in the U.S. and overseas, and who paid the plantation owners for their crop with currency. That cotton, tobacco, and sugar were then shipped from southern ports, ports that were not used to import much in the way of goods, to Europe and points north.
If the first bit be true, than this second bit would seemingly follow, or at least be not far off.
Not necessarily. All one has to do is look at tariff collections for FY1863. Tariff collections were over $102 million dollars, for a year without cotton exports and without Southerners consuming all those vast quantities of imported goods. How was that possible?
This point is axiomatic. Those who argue against it are simply lying to themselves.
The "morality" of a given people is irrelevant to their right to leave.
The US Constitution acknowledges our "freedom of association" and therefore must also acknowledge it's corollary; The "Freedom of Dissassociation."
The right to leave is no different. It is sinful and tyrannical to force people to associate against their will.
Obama is forcing us to associate with massive quantities of Muslim immigrants, and third world socialist sneaking across our borders from Mexico/South America. I doubt any one of you would argue that this was not tyrannical.
I think most would argue that we have a right to NOT ASSOCIATE with these people, but the FedZilla will certainly drop a hammer on you if you refuse to rent or serve these people in your establishments, or refuse to put up with them in your schools.
It didn’t end anything. It did nothing to free a single slave, it was a political document to prevent Europe from entering the war, Lincoln’s own words and writings on this topic confirm this.
The 13th ammendment abolished slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation was drafted and created to prevent the CSA’s from getting European support and breaking the northern blockades etc. This document was a briliant political move by Lincoln, without it Europe very likely enters the war on the side of the south, the blockades around the south are ended, and 2 very capable European navies and militaries enter the fray and any attempt at a war of attrition is impossible.
It was a shrewed and correct political move, but it did not free a single slave, nor was it intended or designed to.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.