Posted on 02/12/2018 3:57:10 AM PST by harpygoddess
Here you go around in a circle again. No, *I* don't say so. The US Constitution says so, but you want to pretend it doesn't because you don't actually have a valid argument to counter my point.
So change "you say so" to "you say the Constitution says so". Not seeing much of a difference in light of the fact that the courts say you're still wrong.
If you are going to plant yourself on the foundation of "The Courts are right", then you will have to accept Judge Taney's Dred Scott decision.
You see? Once more you are attempting to believe things that are contradictory.
Here's a piece of objectivity for you. The Courts are sometimes wrong, and the Courts are sometimes right. You can't merely accept what the court says as "proof" that something is correct. You have to think for yourself.
If the courts are always right, then Judge Taney was right. Smoke on that for awhile.
I said it would be done for political reasons, consolidating the plantation/slave zone to make slavery more secure.
And once again you contradict your own premise: could Southerners really have gotten more economic performance, by cutting Northern merchants out of the picture?
You want to say yes and that Northern predominance was all a matter of unfair competition and cronyism, but is that really the case? Maybe markets were the way they were in 1860 for sound economic reasons.
In any event, efforts to annex Cuba are a historical fact that you can't deny. Google "Ostend Manifesto" or "Knights of the Golden Circle." Given the whole history of territorial expansion, annexation of Cuba looked logical to many Southerners.
Maybe, but I noticed the US didn't feel any great need to go down to those places and put a stop to slavery.
That was because those areas were governed by Spain. Annexation to the Confederacy might have made a difference.
In any event, both Britain and the US were concerned about the rise of new powers in the hemisphere, especially if they were slaveholding powers.
Really? And who was buying the sugar then?
Who's buying oil? And why did we oppose Saddam annexing Kuwait? States will naturally oppose others that try to control markets if it's done through military means.
My point, though, was that military expansion and annexation would have been opposed by Britain and the US, both for anti-slavery reasons and because of great power rivalry.
I have already predicted (In absence of war) that they would have expanded the confederate sphere into the territories, and probably would have eventually had other states leaving the Union and joining the confederacy as well.
So you think Illinois or Iowa joining the Confederacy was a rational possibility and the thing that caused the war, even though few sensible people said or thought that at the time, and Southern expansion into the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America, which had often been talked of at the time, wasn't? Your mind works in strange ways, if it works at all.
First, we should note here DiogenesLamp's inner-Democrat peaking out, despite his contrary claims.
We see here the inner-Democrat expressing a Democrat First Principle, namely, the double standard -- one set of rules (I.e., the Constitution) for thee, but different rules (or better yet, no rules) for me.
DiogenesLamp wishes us to buy his claims that whatsoever Confederates did was A-OK, because they were unbound by anything like the U.S. Constitution, but whatsoever Unionists did was wrong because DiogenesLamp can very imaginatively interpret the Constitution to forbid it.
Inner-Democrat, DiogenesLamp as they say: if not for your Double Standards, you'd have no standards at all.
Second, the answer here & elsewhere is the 1807 Insurrection Law, passed by Southerners in Congress, signed by Southern President Jefferson.
It says, in part:
The language is pretty broad, and was approved by Southerners themselves, at a time when they expected it would be used to suppress secession & rebellion, in New England.
I think it's perfectly adequate to cover Lincoln's actions of 1861, and answer DiogenesLamp's inner-Democrat interpretations.
Do I agree with the Scott decision that as a slave Scott had no standing to sue in federal court? Yes, that part of the decision, while loathsome, is correct. Do I agree with everything he said after that? No, but since those comments were made in dicta then they are not binding as judicial precedent so it doesn't matter what he said.
You see? Once more you are attempting to believe things that are contradictory.
I don't see where.
Here's a piece of objectivity for you. The Courts are sometimes wrong, and the Courts are sometimes right. You can't merely accept what the court says as "proof" that something is correct. You have to think for yourself.
The objective question is who do I think is more likely to be right, you or the courts? Given past history, that's a no-brainer. I'll take the court's interpretation over yours every time.
Says none other than our own Olympic gold medalist in hand-waving, DiogenesLamp.
You remember DiogenesLamp, who hand-waves away every mis-deed of Confederates as irrelevant to DiogenesLamp's claim that Unionists somehow violated his interpretations of constitutional law.
DiogenesLamp: "If the Confederates are correct, and they were a separate country, then seizing their assets is understood under long standing rules of war.
But if Lincoln was correct, and they are merely in Rebellion, they are still subject to the jurisdiction of the US Constitution, which does not allow the President to do this, so long as state laws exist to the contrary."
Now look here: if that isn't world class sophistry, what is?
Of course, two can play this game, since Confederates insisted they were indeed a separate country, thus by DiogenesLamp's own (double) standard, they should **welcome** Union confiscation as confirming their claims.
They should thank Lincoln for ratifying their secession by confiscating as "contraband" their slaves!
Why don't they?
Well, because they were Democrats and Democrat First Principles, double standards, prevent them.
But Lincoln's actions were fully covered by the 1807 Insurrection Act and subsequent Congressional laws such as the 1861 Confiscation Act.
DiogenesLamp: "Constitutional law was broken by applying rules of war to a 'rebellion.' "
Only according to DiogenesLamp, not any other court, legal expert or Congress.
DiogenesLamp: "Also Constitutional law was broken in recognizing West Virginia as a separate state."
DiogenesLamp likes to forget that Virginia approved at the time, and has never since revoked its approval.
In the 1841 Amistad case, who sued whom for their freedom?
How would that differ from Dred-Scott?
If the law of any state granted permanent residents freedom, how could they be denied a right to sue?
In U.S. v. The Amistad the Supreme Court ruled that since the Africans had been brought into the U.S. illegally then they were never slaves to begin with. Therefore they had access to the courts.
If the law of any state granted permanent residents freedom, how could they be denied a right to sue?
Slaves were property and not residents.
Like I said, it was loathsome. But that didn't change the law, however loathsome it might have been.
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.