Posted on 05/17/2010 7:04:35 PM PDT by Idabilly
I would also remind any Conservative that America is in the hole it is today because we have forgotten so much of our history. We are right to demand that our representatives remember the founding documents, we are right to demand these documents be taught in school. Again, how is studying the Confederacy any less important? Is not the essential question right now, on so many issues, NOT States rights? And what was the fight from 1861-65 over again? Yes, States rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at renewamerica.com ...
States Rights refers to powers retained by the states under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. These retained powers do not include powers delegated to the central government, assigned elsewhere in the Constitution, or prohibited to the states.
The Constitution required of all states that "No Person held to Service or Labour 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 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." [Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution.] Northern states agreed to to this clause when they ratified the Constitution. This part of the Constitution was the basis of the federal fugitive slave laws. Northern state laws that violated the Constitution with regard to the return of fugitive slaves were not valid laws at the time and cannot be legitimately claimed as States Rights.
By the way, your timing appears mixed up. The two Fugitive Slave Laws were passed into law years before the Dred Scott decision, not afterward. Both laws were ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court.
Lincoln's two secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, in Volume 3 of their book Abraham Lincoln, A History noted that a careful 1860 study of the personal liberty laws by the National Intelligencer found that the personal liberty laws of Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin were clearly unconstitutional.
About the same time, three distinguished jurists in Massachusetts led a host of other lawyers in declaring that the Massachusetts laws were unconstitutional and saying that these laws could lead to secession (which they did). The three were the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, a former member of the US Supreme Court who had resigned in protest of the Dred Scott decision, and a Harvard constitutional law professor who had been Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Once states started seceding, a number of Northern states started amending and repealing their personal liberty laws, but it was too late to stop secession.
Gentleman: I have your letter of the 11th, in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the cause, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only at Atlanta, but in all America. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we must defeat the rebel armies which are arrayed against the laws and Constitution that all must respect and obey. To defeat those armies, we must prepare the way to reach them in their recesses, provided with the arms and instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose. Now, I know the vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of military operations from this quarter; and, therefore, deem it wise and prudent to prepare in time. The use of Atlanta for warlike purposes in inconsistent with its character as a home for families. There will be no manufacturers, commerce, or agriculture here, for the maintenance of families, and sooner or later want will compel the inhabitants to go. Why not go now, when all the arrangements are completed for the transfer, instead of waiting till the plunging shot of contending armies will renew the scenes of the past month? Of course, I do not apprehend any such things at this moment, but you do not suppose this army will be here until the war is over. I cannot discuss this subject with you fairly, because I cannot impart to you what we propose to do, but I assert that our military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer of services to make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always comes back to that of Union. Once admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation.
You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.
We don't want your Negroes, or your horses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.
You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, bu the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or title of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.
But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.
Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes in Atlanta. Yours in haste,
W.T. Sherman, Major-General commanding
And thus—the war between the Americans and Yankees continue...(LOL—that’s what my 2nd grade teacher called it!)
So, you sound like an admirer of Lincoln. Good for you.
While agreeing with much of what you say, I'd point out that the Texas Declaration did include a very specific item, sore to Texans, about the failure of the federal government to honor its Article IV obligations to defend the States (which had delegated the power to keep troops, in Article I) against Invasion (Mexican irruptions) and domestic violence (Kiowas, Comanches). Congress refused to appropriate adequate funds for frontier and border defense (n/w/s Col. Lee's posting in San Antonio).
The sophistry was pretty workaday -- of course, he was being lazy, since he knew that if anyone argued, he could just pull his sidearm and shoot them.
For Union, of course, and the preservation of liberty.
What part of your post is not a Clintonista ad hominem?
Come on, show us.
Yeah...it was SO much “about slavery” that he did nothing for 18 months...and then it was only half-assed and tailored to suit his megalomaniac, unconstitutional agenda.
When he finally decided to “free” them, he fully intended to ship them ALL out of the US because he himself said the two races were incapable of coexisting.
As far as “admiring” him, hell no.
I do not admire ~any~ tyrant who subverts the US constitution, especially one who violates state’s rights by force.
>>...the failure of the federal government to honor its Article IV obligations to defend the States (which had delegated the power to keep troops, in Article I) against Invasion (Mexican irruptions) and domestic violence (Kiowas, Comanches). Congress refused to appropriate adequate funds for frontier and border defense (n/w/s Col. Lee’s posting in San Antonio).<<
Some things never change. The Yankee government had/has no interest in the Constitution - except when it suits them.
Unfortunately, Reconstruction included re-writing history....
No need. You're doing a much better job of presenting an erroneous view than we ever could.
Because ending slavery in those states not in rebellion required a Constitutional amendment, which Lincoln also got.
It's amazing how little Lost Causers know about the Constitution.
It was not “State Rights” that lead a SC Congressmen to beat a Massachusetts Senator to the edge of death on the Senate floor.
It was not “State Rights” that brought Abraham Lincoln back into politics in the 1850
It was not “State Rights” that caused men to butcher each other in “Bleeding Kansas”.
It was not “State Rights” that lead John Brown to raid Harper's Ferry.
No issue but Slavery lead men to political violence in the antebellum period. Without Slavery all other issues between the North and South could be dealt with in the normal political progress. Only Slavery is the "irreconcilable difference" that makes it impossible to forge a political solution.
To ignore the facts of that period to create a faux history in order to justify current political dogmas is not only utterly stupid from a public relations stand point, it is also intellectually dishonest and serious damages the movements credibility with the voting public.
We on the Right routinely decry the attempt by the Left to rewrite history to justify their current political dogmas. We should not do it either.
That Slavery was fundamental issue that split the North and the South in the Civil War is just plain fact. That it was the issue in no way is relevant to the current arguments about the 10th Amendment and State Sovereignty.
Conservatives should give up this foolish attempt to rewrite Civil War history to justify current political arguments
Good point. However, I’m sure you see the difference between a federal government that fails to properly fulfill its responsibilities and one that tramples on the rights of the states.
I didn’t say 1 thing about slavery, but Lincoln did-! And guess what he said-! I didn’t use the word ‘scoundrel’ lightly.
Excellent points.
It’s only fair to point out that Davis and Stephens weree not ardent advocates of secession. Davis believed secession was inevitable at some point, but counseled delay while the South prepared itself for war. Stephens fought against secession right up to the point where GA seceded, when he remained loyal to his state.
Ruffin, of course, was one of the Fire-Eaters, and thus a member of the group most directly responsible for the war.
I’d also like to point out that almost every other national institution, including almost all the Churches, had split in the decade or so before the war, and in every case specifically over the issue of slavery. It destroyed the Whig Party.
One of the very last institutions to split was the Democratic Party, in the summer of 1860, followed by the nation itself in the fall and winter of 1860/61.
A true strawman if ever there was one. Prior to the rebellion, in every election during the period Texas had been a state a Southerner had been elected either president or vice president. Half the time a southerner had been Speaker of the House. Southerners occupied the office of Secretary of War for the 10 years prior to the rebellion, and for 13 of the 15 years Texas had been a state. If Texas was left undefended against Indian attacks then it was Southerners who left her in that condition.
A foolish attempt to rewrite history to validate current political dogmas merely hurts the causes intellectual credibility. Conservative need to learn falling into the Leftists trap of debating the issues on their terms.
Instead of trying to defend the indefensible, Defenders of the 10th Amendment should simply response in this fashion
For example, when they try to discredit your support for the 10th Amendment by making the US Civil War about Slavery
"To argue, as you do, that because the US Civil War was fought over Slavery the US Government now has the power to impose a health care mandate on individual citizens is intellectually absurd"
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Your ignoring Northern slavery, and hypocritical positions of the North.
Let's say slavery was the whole story, and only Southern States practiced slavery. Then it was a bad marriage. What would you call me if - I married my wife, and she had this horrendous mole upon her nose. During our marriage, I'd sneak around trying to cut that mole off. Despite me having several moles myself - I continued with my demerits. Hypocrite? Spouse abuser? S.O.B?
Wife leaves. Then, I hire 'bob and rick' to force her back home.
As Louis T. Wigfall said:
Let my neighbor believe that his wife is an angel and his children cherubs, I care not, though I may know he is mistaken; but when he comes impertinently poking his nose into my door every morning, and telling me that my wife is a shrew and my children brats, then the neighborhood becomes uncomfortable, and if I cannot remove him, I will remove myself; and if he says to me, “you shall not move, but you shall stay here, and you shall, day after day, hear the demerits of your wife and children discussed,” then I begin to feel a little restive, and possibly might assert that great original right of pursuing whatever may conduce to my happiness, though it might be kicking him out of my door.
Read post 38 this thread
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