Posted on 06/28/2017 11:20:43 AM PDT by Sopater
My understanding is that the Confederate constitution did not allow secession. Interesting that.
“Because southern states were denying some of their citizens their constitutional rights the federal government had to step in and secure those rights.”
If your statement is true, we should be able to read Lincoln’s first inaugural address and confirm it.
Your statement is not - is not correct.
Article III, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
Nothing in there about overthrowing or conquering. And by the strict interpretation of that definition then Lee was a traitor.
It’s sad that you’re serious.
Depends on your interpretation. But the Confederate Constitution did protect slave imports and did not allow non-slave states.
The victors did write the history. Or most of it. And more to the point, the victors defined the terms of the peace. After the Civil War, "the victors" could have gone either way, and their choice was hotly debated. There were those who wanted hangings and retribution. The peace and reconciliation faction won out -- remarkably, after Lincoln's assassination. Reconciliation was complex, and it involved a mutual understanding that the former enemies would honor the valor and sacrifice of the soldiers on both sides. They sacramentalized the war and agreed to remember it as a shared tragedy.
150 years later, leftists want to tear down the memorials, desecrate the graves, reopen the wounds and rub them with salt -- not to eradicate vestiges of white supremacy, which is long gone, but to strip American history of its mythic, unifying and ennobling themes, of which the tragedy of the Civil War is an important element. And because they see short term political advantage in inflaming racial hatred, which is to be manipulated for partisan purposes.
I guess 150 years after the fact people think they can get away with rewriting history. On that subject, I wrote the below letter, which the Washington Times (Reagan’s favorite paper) published. For the men with the greatest motive to apply the word “traitor”, the idea never crossed their minds. I sometimes wonder if Ken Burn’s Civil War could be shown today?
Demeaning Our Military Heritage
This country owes as much of its enviable martial heritage to the South as the North. But now to serve popular morality, we must banish from history the Confederate battle flag and those who served under it. Responding to these assertions, I quote Joshua Chamberlain who received the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.
“Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?”
Winston Churchill commented concerning American entry into WW II that victory was then assured, because our Civil War demonstrated the tenacity required to defeat the Nazis.
Joshua Chamberlain
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joshua_Chamberlain
P.S.
At Appomattox General Grant said, “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us”.
The poisonous fruit of cultural Marxism.
The vile calling out their betters in moral fauxraging.
In the preamble: "It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch-treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc., and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore, and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse , between the two countries upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and mutual convenience as may promote and secure to both perpetual peace and harmony...
In Article 2: "And that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared, that the following are and shall be their boundaries..."
In Article 3: "It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland...
In Article 8: "The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States."
In Article 9: "In case it should so happen that any place or territory belonging to Great Britain or to the United States should have been conquered by the arms of either from the other before the arrival of the said Provisional Articles in America, it is agreed that the same shall be restored without difficulty and without requiring any compensation."
And finally John Adams, Ben Franklin, and John Jay signed in the name of the United States. Nobody signed in the name of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North or South Carolina, or Georgia.
Eisenhower rubber stamped FDR’s kicking the Constitution to the curb and give us instead a government that can do as it may because it says so.
As a general he was great.
But that misdeed alone makes him as bad as FDR as a POTUS.
And also worse than the general he disparages.
Again: the government as an ongoing concern in all it’s illegal abuses is NOT what he swore an oath to uphold and protect, but it is what he chose to honor over what he swore in vain to uphold and protect.
“I remember when the morons infiltrated here and called themselves Southrons.”
There was some jackwad here years ago who would that term as a sarcastic insult in diatribes about how much the South sucked. I don’t miss that loser one bit. Yes, the generals of the confederacy were patriots.
Germany's claim was that they invaded Poland because Poland started the war. Pretty much the same claim you're making for the Confederacy.
The States formed the Union to begin with. The Union didn’t form the States.
The truth is, President Washington et. al. declared independence from and rebelled against the British Crown.
The truth is, General Lee et. al. declared independence from and rebelled against the United States of America.
One emerged victorious, and one lost.
Is that not true?
They were Americans same as anyone else.
These question come up from time to time as somehow the Confederacy was a “them”
The Confederacy was “us” it is part of American history and as American as apple pie.
They were Americans, not traitors.
It was if they read Article IV, Section 3. The process for admission is right there.
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