Posted on 01/10/2011 8:57:06 AM PST by cowboyway
It was 150 years ago today that Florida declared itself sovereign from the United States.
Some Southern states have marked the anniversaries of secession with celebrations; in South Carolina, a secession gala was met with protests and controversy.
In Florida, a reenactment was quietly held by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tallahassee on Saturday, where about 40 volunteers dressed in period attire performed a condensed version of the convention. It was at that convention where a 62-7 vote led to secession in 1861, making Florida the third state to leave and later join the Confederate States of America.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...
I agree that Onesimus was a spiritual Jew, as indeed are all Christians.
However, the author of Philemon himself made it very clear that Christians were not bound by the Jewish Law.
According to the DOI, God gave all men equal right to liberty, but does God say that?
No, quite the opposite is true. If you look at what God grants to all men, it can be summed up as life and a chance to serve and give glory to God, even if it results in death. I in no way think that liberty is not a great blessing, but it’s not an automatically God-granted right, it’s a blessing.
Your post is a perfect example of judging people who lived generations ago by today's values. Turn it around, and we all burn at the stake for witchcraft, paganism, heresy, apostasy, and worse.
The question I keep coming back to is, why is it so important to you guys, to make the South wrong about standing up for their rights?
Don't you see that someone else can play the same game with you some day at your show trial, and try to get you to "confess" to the "crime" of having owned firearms? Of having committed thought crimes?
You're indulging in revisionism -- as much as we talk about revisionism around here -- and setting yourself up for a fall. What's in it for you that is so attractive, that you'd go for the cheese of moral relativism and teleological "truth"? That's a mug's game, a "gotcha" game for motivated losers. You make yourself a prey for Stalinist bear-baiters and the kind of ugly games Solzhenitsyn described in The Gulag Archipelago, as Stalin filled the Gulag with "wreckers", "capitalist roaders", "gold bugs" and other Enemies of the State, most of whom had long resumes as dedicated, true-believing Bolsheviks. And you want to play?
I would agree to a large portion that the United States, when it was founded, was founded upon the ideals underpinning the doctrine of Christian Liberty via Grace, but where I believe they failed is by attributing Liberty as an automatic right granted by God. To be sure, it is a blessing and as a country we have benefited greatly from it, but to say that Liberty is a right is, strictly speaking, incorrect.
Umm, no. This is not the Big Lie (never heard it called that, btw, that’s a new one), it’s the truth and the election of 1860 had nothing to do with it. The ACW was unavoidable from the very time that the Founding Fathers refused to deal with slavery during the Constitutional Convention. They may have postponed it for a time, but it just made matters worse. The principle of “be sure your sins will find you out” was at work here.
So Christian converts were bound by obscure passages of the Jewish Law that even the Jews no longer observed?
You have provided not one single point of evidence that would indicate Philemon and/or Onesimus would have felt obligated to follow the rules of Levitical Slavery. Or even been aware of them.
I ran across one comment that Onesimus was a Phyrgian, though I'm not clear on the authority for that statement. If so, he was definitely not a Jew and the Levitical rules would not have been applicable anyway.
Link is busted.
The South never declared War as far as I can tell. There are no documents.
I agree that the Bible does not say God gave the right to liberty to all men. I’m not sure why you seem to want to argue with me about this. Your disagreement seems to be with the authors of the DOI, who said it was self-evident that God had granted such rights to all men.
Suggest you debate Tom, Ben, John, Robert and Roger.
To mention Lincoln and the spirit of 1787 in the same sentence is both a hilarious and heinous bastardization of history unless the goon is cast in the role of the King George III. Really funny and sick.
You sound pretty vindictive. What's your deal?
It contains not one word about some major "usurpation" or "abuse," "injury" or "oppression" which did happen, but only expressions of fear about what might happen in the future.
Conceding nothing on the question of whether something did happen (the Texans said the Congress DID refuse to appropriate money for defending the frontier in Texas), and setting that aside for a minute, who says they had to prove a past injury to anybody?
Either they were sovereign and could decide their own fate, or they were not. If they were sovereign, that means, no apologies and no explanations to anybody. Kings don't explain themselves -- that is what sovereign means.
You're setting yourself up to be their judge. They quite rightly demanded a test of arms over that proposition, just as we would if China's politburo thugs decided that we needed their permission to hold elections.
And let's take a quick look, as a practical proposition, at the question of whether the Southern States should have waited until they were being demonstrably abused..... but wait, by whose sayso?
If the Northern States were extracting vast sums of money from the Southern cotton trade, and the South complained, what would Lincoln and the Republican Congress do? Deny it. No damage. No injury. Zero complaint. Go home and go back to work -- slaves! (The North was really in favor of slavery. They just had a beef, that the Southerners were not slaving for them quite enough yet!)
So the South decides they've been injured and demonstrably so (remember, Lincoln is denying it and pettifogging it, and Northern orators are loudly pooh-poohing Southern complaints) ...... what should they do then? Secede then, after the fact, after Lincoln has covered the South with federalized troops from other States -- from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio? Yes, that would be the time to try the secession issue. But wait -- Lincoln says, NO, you can't secede! You must get the permission of the other States -- DENIED!!!
So, given the South is being sucked dry, drained of cash, gradually driven to bankruptcy by Northern tariff and business arrangements ..... what would you recommend they do for a remedy under those circumstances? "Lie back and enjoy it"?
Well?
You need to stop saying that unless you can produce a declaration of War. Which you will never be able to do. The Confederacy never declared war. The Union never declared war either.
So "conservatives" from Ohio and the Midwest should never, ever, vote for or cooperate with a Southern conservative, because Southerners won't disown their past, right?
That is exactly Clinton's politics. And you're doing Clinton politics on Free Republic.
Gotta give it to you -- you've got brass ones.
You may have stumbled on the truth, so in your opinion it wasn't about slavery. Bravo.
Jeepers, dude, you really think recognizing that the CSA was a bad cause equates to disowning your past? I have ancestors who fought for the CSA and I certainly don’t think of it that way.
Should I think recognition that the USA was often wrong in how it treated the Indians disowning my past? Is it necessary for me to claim the USA was right in every action it ever took to believe it has been of net benefit to the world? If I disagree with present US policy am I disowning my country?
I actually missed this one a second ago, sorry about that.
If by “a defender of the Southern Cause” you mean am I a person who believes in the rule of law, local government is better government and the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution granting the States the rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government, then yes.
If you mean to imply that I’m a defender of chattel slavery, then absolutely not.
As for a good sense of humor, I believe that you’ve already grasped that I do have that.
Now, on to your argument. In a nutshell and after long review, I have this to say.
Neener Neener Neener, you’re a freakin’ Yankee! ;)
Seriously, while I hold to the idea that the South was within their right to secede, I’m also a realist in that there was no way it was going to happen peacefully. Slavery, to me, is a non-starter as I see it as a national sin that both sides were guilty of committing so for me all that’s left is if the South had the right to secede, which I think they did.
I agree that the atrocities committed by Lincoln's USA were on a par with those you mentioned.
Eh, that’s been a sore spot for me for some time now, sorry about blindsiding you like that.
Anyway, I think I understand your suggestion to debate Tom (Jefferson?), Ben (Franklin?) and John (Adams or Hancock?) but I’m lost as to who you mean by Robert and Roger.
None the less, you’ve provided a good deal of debate thus far, thank you for that.
Lee's career:
The question is whether all those "brevet" promotions meant that he was considered a captain at Harpers Ferry and Fort Mason in Texas.
It appears to me that Fort Mason was the 2nd Cavalry's regimental headquarters, previously commanded by Col. Albert Sidney Johnston.
So, in all likelihood, Lee as commander would also have gone by his brevet rank of Colonel.
I also think Fort Mason could be considered the key outpost defending Texas' western frontier at that time.
So I'm not exaggerating to say that Lee was then the key figure responsible for the safety of Texas -- a safety which the Texas secession document (falsely) claimed it sorely lacked.
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.