Posted on 12/16/2004 6:48:26 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
I don't know about you but I would rather have been one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves than have been a coal miner.
ML/NJ
Well, that's your right. A coal miner can quit, leave and go do something else. A slave can't. A coal miner's kid can go do anything with his life. A slave's kid is a slave, too. But, hey, to each his own.
I mean, you might be happy serving Jefferson, but maybe tomorrow he'd sell you to pay for some frippery at Monticello that distracts him for a week or two, and you end up stuck in a malarial swamp for a few years until you die of disease or out in the field working from sunup to sundown. Unless, of course, you didn't work hard enough, in which some sadistic bastard will open your back for you. Your spouse and children would either stay with Jefferson (if he still owns them) or they'll be sold someplace else. Maybe your beautiful young daughter will be given to one of the master's house guests to rape as his plaything. Would you ever see them again? Who cares. You don't count. You're livestock. But let's say you're smart, and you claim your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (you could have sworn that you heard that expression from someone, but from whom???) You run away. You're soon chased by dogs and worse and even if you do escape, maybe North, you have worry every single day of your life. See, the slave owners have rigged the system so that they get credited with federal representation for 3 out of every 5 of you there are, as an insult to your bondage. They have ensured that at any moment agents of the state may legally kidnap you and spirit you away back into slavery. Oh, and if you are a woman, and you have a child in, say, Vermont, years after you ran away, that child is a slave too and is kidnapped along with you. Neat, huh? When you return, will you be branded? hobbled? killed outright? Who knows. Who cares, really. You're not a person. You're just a slave. Property. A thing.
But if you'd rather be a slave, that's your business.
All of us, meaning everyone living in our great country, are better off because the South lost. That's the bottom line.
free dixie NOW,sw
I disagree here. The Nazi reference is interesting in that they eliminated the traditional role of the Länder and made the state a unified state. The Bundesrepublik after the war revered the Länder to a federated state. I would not say that the Federal Gov't in the US, even at its strongest, ever eliminated the existence of the state governments.
The Reconstruction Congress did everything possible to reduce the State Governments in the South to puppets for an over-riding totalitarian vision of what American Societies should conform to. It is very much analogous to the Hitlerian concept of one Germany, with one Will (his). The America of the Founding Fathers was something very different. South Carolina and Massachusetts could both adhere, because it was premised on an understanding of what values were common and what were not.
We were not, by reason thereof, a House Divided Against itself, because we understood that we were not a single House but a friendly neighborhood; one which allowed each Household to manage their own affairs in all the vast areas, where our values were not common. The South seceded, because for the first time, a Government was elected with only the perceived values of some of the people in one Section. That was a situation that George Washington, the one American who clearly defined the common values, specifically warned against.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
[Where the resources include not only several essays directly relevant to these questions, as they pertain to the present era, but also addresses by such luminaries of the earlier era as Webster and Calhoun, to help put these issues in a truer perspective.]
If states suceeded every time they didn't get their way in national elections, we wouldn't have a country left.
At the present time, both a coal miner's kid and the descendant of one brought here to be a slave, both have the rights to quit a job, etc.. But it was not always thus. And this illustrates the absurdity of those who want to treat the existence of Slavery in the Old South as some sort of outlandish crime against civilization.
Prior to the reign of George III--the one the Founding Fathers repudiated--both coal miners and salt miners in the North of England were deemed the property of the mines in which they labored. Their daughters, on the other hand, could gain a monetary stipend by bearing future coal miners. While it may not have been called slavery, it was the same thing.
The fact is, that virtually every race and sub-race on the planet, has at some time used some form of forced labor, or bondage system. It is one of the most frequently recurring social patterns in the human experience. You and I may feel it is a mistaken system; but neither you, nor I, have been anointed by God to define its morality. That does not, of course, mean that we cannot rationally argue against its reimposition in other, perfectly valid terms.
William Flax
The issue in 1860 was not about getting their way. There was a large bloc in the new party, which openly assailed the South and its people; which wanted to repudiate the bases of the original Federation.
Let us reverse issues and times. For, an example, what if Hillary Clinton were to actually be elected President in 2008, with a overwhelmingly, Secular Humanist Congress, and she were to avow an intention to change the religious orientation of rural and small town America, in the interests of diversity; and to punish for perpetrating "Hate Crimes," any prelate or minister, who dared suggest that there was such a thing as a True Religion; vowing to show the same contempt for what the First Amendment actually says--as opposed to the ACLU nonsense--as those who were later known as the "Reconstructionists" vowed to show to Article IV, Section 2.
Since the suppression of religion cuts across State lines, the reaction would more likely be revolution than succession. But the outrage, that might bring it about, is clear.
William Flax
Sorry. I obviously meant secession in the last sentence of my Reply #69.
Changing the context doesn't really help. Regardless of how many motives the South had to succeed, slavery was central, and the Confederacy should therefore not have been allowed to exist. While racisism was prevalent in the North as well, it was one of the guiding ideologies of Southern society and in particular, its economy. And thank God that it was so short lived. Our country is better than that.
Come on, "everything"? I forget reading about the mass slaughter of former reb politicians and soldiers, and the concentration camps where all the little reb children were put to death... An "over-riding totalitarian vision"?? The South had to suck it up for a dozen years or so, and then they were left alone to oppress their blacks for another 80 years. Big deal. How this is over-riding totalitarianism is beyond me.
The America of the Founding Fathers was something very different. South Carolina and Massachusetts could both adhere, because it was premised on an understanding of what values were common and what were not.
We were not, by reason thereof, a House Divided Against itself, because we understood that we were not a single House but a friendly neighborhood; one which allowed each Household to manage their own affairs in all the vast areas, where our values were not common. The South seceded, because for the first time, a Government was elected with only the perceived values of some of the people in one Section. That was a situation that George Washington, the one American who clearly defined the common values, specifically warned against.
There were differences between the states, for sure. However, that does not mean that the Constitution created a neighborhood or a social club or a contract or anything else. It created a state. By ratifying the Constitution, the states granted the Federal Government powers only inherent in fully sovereign states, such as the power to declare war, carry on foreign relations, etc. Since, for example, Virginia did not have the powers of a fully sovereign state, it was not a fully sovereign state. But the document did provide a way for the states to change the manner in which sovereign power was distributed - that of the amendment process. Had the southern states been able to pass an amendment to the Constitution reverting to themselves their full sovereign powers they gave up upon ratification of the Constitution, then they would have been free to go. They did not, however, have the right to declare themselves in a state of rebellion and expect it to be respected by the other states or the Federal Government.
You have a very strange perspective on history, to which I have already responded in another reply, to another poster. Slavery is not the defining issue in the determination of human morality. Slavery, for example, was tolerated and accepted in both the Old and New Testaments of the Western Bible. It has existed in one form or another in virtually every non-Biblical religion, as well.
I believe that it is a mistaken system--unfair to both slave and master, for a variety of reasons. But you cannot revise the whole human experience, the way many hereabouts have tried to do, in order to make an angry statement.
And so far as relations between the races? There was then, and still is now, more goodwill between Caucasian and Negro inhabitants in the South than in the North. The reason why the Old South was considered the last true Civilization was because it accorded everyone respect, from the greatest plantation owner to the lowliest field hand. There is no equivalent respect between different classes and conditions in America today.
No, the system was not a good one. But it was not the consummation of evil, either. Read what Booker T. Washington, who rose from it had to say, a generation later: Booker T. Washington.
William Flax
On the other hand, it most definitely created a compact--which is the equivalent, in the relations between States, of a contract between individuals.
For more on the Constitutional approach to our Federal Government, see Constitutional Overview.
William Flax
No, it merely shows that there is the potential to reform even the most vile social systems so that the individual's God-given rights are respected by the state. Slavery in the United States was an outlandish crime against civilization, humanity, and the "inalienable rights" supposedly valued by Jefferson.
Prior to the reign of George III--the one the Founding Fathers repudiated--both coal miners and salt miners in the North of England were deemed the property of the mines in which they labored. Their daughters, on the other hand, could gain a monetary stipend by bearing future coal miners. While it may not have been called slavery, it was the same thing.
And it was equally as vile, and equally worthy of elimination by all means at the disposal of those fighting against that injustice.
The fact is, that virtually every race and sub-race on the planet, has at some time used some form of forced labor, or bondage system. It is one of the most frequently recurring social patterns in the human experience.
This, again, does not mitigate against the evil inherent in slavery, whether it occurred in pre-Columbian Patagonia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Antebellum South. Simply because everyone commits murder does not make murder moral. It merely means there are many immoral people.
You and I may feel it is a mistaken system; but neither you, nor I, have been anointed by God to define its morality.
I disagree. By virtue of the fact that we were endowed by God with intellect, reason and a sense of morality, I believe that we are not only permitted or anointed by God to define the morality of evil systems such as the slave system in the Old South, but are commanded by God to recognize and denounce the immorality inherent in them.
That does not, of course, mean that we cannot rationally argue against its reimposition in other, perfectly valid terms.
If anyone considers himself a conservative and believes in the rights of individuals and if the subject of reimposition of slavery is raised, I would expect him to do more than simply argue against it rationally.
...up to the point where the field hand didn't want to be property anymore, then the skin was torn from their backs. In a "civilized" manner, of course...
I honor the bravery of the soldiers who served in the CSA, but will not honor the cause they served.
I'm sure black inhabitants of the South throughout its history would disagree. I don't know what notion of respect you refer to, but I do not find much respect in slavery or Jim Crow laws, which were predicated on the notion that blacks were mentally, morally, and socially inferior. Sure, slavery existed thoughout human history, but history turned against it, and the fact that most people, at least in our country, today find it morally repugnant is a good thing. Now, I have no intention of lambasting the South, it is part of our country, and the North was complicit in slavery as well, but sugar-coating oppressive race-relations and a slave-ownership society is contrary to the values of our great nation and the self-evident truths upon which it was founded.
As always.....well said!
A "state" is simply a body politic. A republic is a body politic, and the Constitution established the Federal Republic. Remember Ben Franklin: "What have you created?" "A republic, if you can keep it"?
On the other hand, it most definitely created a compact--which is the equivalent, in the relations between States, of a contract between individuals.
No, it did not. It, by its terms, is a law; in fact, the supreme law of the land. It binds everyone under its jurisdiction, regardless of whether they agree with the law or not. A contract requires the agreement of the parties to the contract to be enforceable.
Further, it cannot be a compact between the states, because it does not derive its power from the states, but from the people. It explicitly states that it was ordained and established by "the people of the United States," not the states. It required the states' participation for ratification, etc., because it incorporated the continued existence of the states. But it was an exercise of the authority of the people.
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