Posted on 01/19/2011 11:35:34 AM PST by kosciusko51
“But that is indeed a might makes right argument isn’t it?”
No. Like I said, nations hold it as a principle that they don’t need to sacrifice territory, wherever it may be, just because someone else lays claim to it. Guantanamo Bay doesn’t belong to Cuba because Cuba says so.
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...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 Saviour 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..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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I referenced that statement to a BING search. I even provided the link to the website I quoted as required by the rules here. So if it’s disjointed, it’s how you read or interpreted it. Go to that site and complain to them.
Like I've said before, you guys bitch about Lincoln being a dictator, then you complain that he wasn't more dictatorial. No, Lincoln couldn't sign a paper and free all the slaves in the border states because those states weren't in rebellion and he didn't have the constitutional authority as commander in chief over them that he had over the confederate states. It would require a constitutional amendment to end slavery in non-rebelling states, and Lincoln repeatedly pressed for one, but Democrats in the House of Representatives consistently blocked him from getting the supermajority needed for passage and submission to the states. It was only after the November, 1864 election, which increased Republican numbers, that a few lame duck Democrats, suddenly worried about their legacy, switched their votes and allowed the 13th to pass.
Who were then pressed into contraband camps and put to work.
WTF! You just make it up as you go.
standwatie, is that you?
Tariff-free imports through the Port of New Orleans? You mean smuggling or what?
You can search the Times archive on line now. Give a date and a few of the key words and we'll see if you're right.
Oh, and by the way, said paragraph directly addresses itself to a question that isn’t even at stake here. Namely, whether the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves in the United States. I never said it did.
“I referenced that statement to a BING search.”
So?
“I even provided the link to the website I quoted as required by the rules here.”
Good.
“So if it’s disjointed, it’s how you read or interpreted it.”
No, it’s how it was written.
“Go to that site and complain to them.”
No thanks.
How is that worse than Lincoln's plan? His plan was to deport them all back to Africa where most of them would surely die. At least those southerners who did foresee the end of slavery envisioned the western territories as the solution (an idea viscerally opposed by Lincoln).
“Do you want to think about that and try again?”
No. Because you have to admit that even if they were more or less enslaved by the U.S. government, per your description, they weren’t bonded to their former masters and weren’t kept in a new state of perpetual bondage, and hence were freed.
So you're saying that a lifetime of bondage for you and your posterity is preferable to freedom in Africa with all its dangers?
To the extent that life is better than death, it would seem so.
The following link is for the many who hold the completly erroneous idea that the Northern states never had a thing to do with the institution of slavery and never owned a slave. I’ve seen that revisionist lie repeated over and over.
http://www.floridareenactorsonline.com/realslavetraders.htm
Lincoln never had any such a plan. Maybe you were thinking of Thomas Jefferson?
Yes he did. It's not a secret and you can find it if you look. Start with the "Colonization" section on this wiki page: Abraham Lincoln on slavery
There is nothing at the link that you provided that says, suggests, or even hints at any Lincoln plan to deport slaves or ex-slaves to Africa.
So you want to nit pick about the particular destination? I'm not sure why Africa would be any better or worse than Panama or Honduras. But he did originally try Africa. Lincoln established diplomatic relations with Liberia specifically to facilitate colonization but Congress didn't go along because of the expected cost. So he started trying other sites.
Try googling lincoln colonization plan.
You do understand the difference between “colonization” and “deportation” don’t you?
You think Lincoln was planning a voluntary exodus? What in any part of the man’s career would lead you to imagine that he would not simply impose his wishes?
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