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 ...
Historical note: Natchez MS voted against Secession in 1861.
The Underground Railroad, for all the attention it gets, was hardly incredibly successful. First, only slaves from border or near border states were able to access it. Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri saw the lion's share of successful runaways. In the deeper south, the runaway success rate was nearly zero.
Second, even in those more northerly slave states, the total number of successful runaways per year through the 1840s and 1850s was about 1500, or, of a slave population of 3.2 million (per the 1850 census) less than 0.05% a year. For all the south bitched and moaned about northern personal liberty laws not giving them back their slaves, runaways were an incredibly minor annoyance, economically speaking.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.(Emphasis yours.)
I'm not sure you make your point the way you wanted it to be taken. That is, yes, the Texans are arguing that the Northern States' congressional representatives, in denying the military appropriation, made it clear that their reason for doing so, was that Texas was a slave State. It was the Northern politicians who made slavery the issue, when the issue Texas took with their having done that, was that it was a violation of the Constitution, viz., denying Texans the protection of federal troops, which was still extended to other States that were in better political odor with the Northern political faction.
Which is pretty much how the whole issue of slavery came to the fore in the first place. The Abolitionists made it an issue, and the Republican Party took up the cudgels for their own, somewhat different reasons.
There has been some recent scholarship on the subject of the Northern moral crusade against slavery, its content and the method and tenor of its propagation, that tells us a good deal about how the issue came to be such a large one.
Remember, slavery wasn't the issue in 1832 when North and South clashed over the 1828 Tariff. It was Northern politicians who sought to make it a sectional issue, and attached the slavery crusade to it (being a moral crusade, and therefore absolute, its appeal could never be appeased except by the destruction of its object), the better to unite their advantage in numbers, consolidate the North with the agrarian Midwest, and overwhelm their opponents in the Congress and take over the federal government, which at length they did, after the slavery issue neutralized Northern exponents of the National Democracy like Stephen Douglas. Douglas had been a viable future presidential candidate when he helped engineer the 1850 Compromise, but his political career was utterly destroyed by the slavery issue and Kansas-Nebraska. Kansas-Nebraska was his effort to straddle and finesse the slavery issue being pushed by Free Soilers and Northern Whigs. Lincoln not only unhorsed Douglas but wrecked his party with the slavery issue.
That is why slavery was an issue in 1860: because the Republicans and Free Soilers insisted on making it the paramount issue, when thanks to Henry Clay and the 1820 Missouri Compromise, it hadn't been before Texas's (denied) application for statehood in 1836. The territorial gains of Texas annexation and the Mexican War required it to be put to bed again with the 1850 Compromise, but after Kansas-Nebraska and Dred Scott, Lincoln and the Republicans set sail on a policy of "no victory, no peace", when Lincoln gave the 1858 "House Divided" speech, the implications of which were clear: that no matter what he said about the extension of slavery, Lincoln was committed to the extinction of slavery, and therefore the extinction of the cotton economy and with it the livelihood of the agrarian South.
Sorry -- you're right, I had another look, and saw the link to the Texas Declaration I wanted to address.
My bad, I should have looked closer.
That all said, I wanted to point out, and I think I did above (or on the other thread) that the "it was all about slavery!" meme is one that has been pushed for 20 years by notoriously Pink professors for justly suspect reasons, and it just happens to conform to the political needs of 'Rat Fink ex-SDS, ex-New Democrat politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Something Clinton was always telling "battleground State" voters when he was running for president was, "Ah grew up with those boys, Ah know how turrible awful wicked bad they are!" It was rabble-rousing and bloody-shirt politics at its worst, and the "slavery" meme has been made to subserve the Clintons and Obamas at the expense of anything resembling historical perspective.
Just as well the controversy brought attention to the issues, though, since eventually people will cut through the smoke and mirrors and see who's been lying to them.
Not that Thomas DiLorenzo will be sustained in all his revisionist tropes -- but at least the issues get raised to be fought out again, this time with more research, more rediscovered papers, and more truth than has been seen since the Civil War itself, when certain subjects got all covered up in thick coatings of powdered marble.
"I was much pleased the with President's message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Savior have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?"--Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856
Natchez was full of transplanted Northerners hoping to get rich.
"Under this Constitution, as originally adopted and as it now exists, no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States; and this Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its delegated powers, are the supreme late [sp?] of the land, anything contained in any constitution, ordinance, or act of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
28 nays to 18 yeas
Link. (courtesy FReeper Idabilly, who posted it to another thread last March)
Although the abolitionist must know this, .... and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?"
Yankees from Massachusetts and Ohio haven't changed in 160 years. "Yankee" is originally a Dutch word that arose among the Anglo-Dutch privateers of the 17th century; its etymology is somewhat cloudy, but it seems to have meant, originally, something fairly close to "horse's ass".
I suspect the breakdown of the votes would be nays/South, yeas/north.
And who who was responsible for and what tool was implemented to bring about and maintain that high price, sir?
LOL! You must be new here. There are apparently thousands of such morons running around, and they all seem to find there way to these WBTS threads.
I don't know about that. Back in the Federal Period, there were several crosscutting boundary lines in society, socially and politically.
For instance, the Antifederalists (the Liberty Interest) tended to be upland/Piedmont "yeoman farmers", future Jeffersonians; and they were very skeptical about the Constitution, especially the infamous "General Welfare" clause, which they correctly zeroed in on as Alexander Hamilton's glory-hole of General Federal Overweening.
The Tidewater planters, the big planters with lots of money, tended to side with the commercial, shipping, and newspapering interests as Federalists. One reason was that a lot of them owned federal debt instruments which would trade sharply higher the minute the Feds got the power to bind individuals directly to pay taxes to support the federal debt. The planters were all for the Constitution.
There was even a shadow of that early parallel-to-the-coast division in U.S. politics during the 1860 election, when the really big, big-rich planters split from the Breckinridge Democrats (the "fire eaters") to form the Constitutional Union Party, which opposed secession and nominated John Bell. They were fourth in balloting; their best States were Virginia and Texas.
"Under this Constitution, as originally adopted and as it now exists, no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States; and this Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its delegated powers, are the supreme late [sp?] of the land, anything contained in any constitution, ordinance, or act of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
Good Grief...
The vote on the article you cited above was part of a proposed amendment to the US Constitution taken up by the US Senate on March 2 1861, the day after Lincoln took office.
The Philidelphia Convention where the US Constitution was drafted took place in 1787, involving a completely different set of circumstances and cast of characters.
Please consider this post a general cease and desist order.
STOP FABRICATING US HISTORY!
Interesting, in re to the SC secession document that you provided a link to, you have to go through 14 paragraphs of reasons as to why they felt compelled to secede before there is ANYTHING mentioned connected to slavery. The concept of state sovereignty, however, appears as early as paragraph six and is sprinkled throughout the document.
So, thanks for confirming the southern perspective. It is, as I have maintained for some time, that you can find writings that support “slavery was the cause” and can find writings that slavery was only one of the reasons. And yet, people in your camp focus on, and point to, slavery as THE cause despite the overwhelming documentation that demonstrates it was not. (The example that YOU YOURSELF provided being just one.) You can point to the “slavery” writings forever, but until you acknowledge that other writings exist you are not being intellectually honest. Of course, once you acknowledge that they do exist, you can never again make the “it was only about slavery” argument.
Which explains a lot.
RE Lee made these statements in a private letter, not in public discourse.
While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.
Doesn't sound as if RE envisioned abolition in coming years or even decades. More likely centuries.
Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?
The liberty Lee here refers to is the freedom of some men to hold other men as property. This is the great "spiritual liberty" the CSA was founded to defend.
Is it not even more strange that the son of one of the great heroes of a war for human liberty could pen such a disgusting defense of its negation?
From this quotation it is quite obvious that Lee had rejected the great ideal that "all men are created equal" for which his father fought.
So sorry, but you didn't specify 'public' discussion:
"In fact, I doubt there is much discussion of slavery as an evil by prominent southerners during the whole decade of the '50s."--Sherman Logan
From this quotation it is quite obvious that Lee had rejected the great ideal that "all men are created equal" for which his father fought.
You're cherry picking and misrepresenting at that. It's obvious that Lee is writing about the spiritual liberty of the blacks: "Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. "
Is it not even more strange that the son of one of the great heroes of a war for human liberty could pen such a disgusting defense of its negation?
Please.....
How many more times are you going to post this same pablum, spike?
We get it. We all know where you're coming from. Now why don't you just go on back to DU and slam Sarah Palin some more.
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