Posted on 05/05/2005 9:59:22 AM PDT by cowboyway
Still living, painfully unaware that the earth is not flat.
Having seen some of your analogies over the months I would assume you would be the last person to be mocking someone elses. But be that as it may, in 1861 the southern states walked away from their share of the obligations built up by the nation when they were a part, and cut off the Northern midwest states from access to the sea via the Mississippi River. Why are the facts acceptable and the modern scenario I suggested so outrageous to you?
Gianni-speak for "I have absolutely no idea".
Why send representatives to Washington to negotiate something that they 'walked away from' then?
and cut off the Northern midwest states from access to the sea via the Mississippi River.
Rustbucket(?was it you?) posted refutation of this long ago - probably to you, but repeat it as you wish.
Why are the fabrications acceptable and the modern scenario I suggested so outrageous to you?
The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That the peaceful navigation of the Mississippi river is hereby declared free to the citizens of any of the States upon its borders, or upon the borders of its navigable tributaries; and all ships, boats, rafts or vessels may navigate the same, under such regulations as may be established by authority of law, or under such police regulations as may be established by the States within their several jurisdictions.SEC. 2. Be it further enacted, All ships, boats, or vessels, which may enter the waters of the said river within the limits of this Confederacy, from any port or place beyond the said limits, may freely pass with their cargoes to any other port or place beyond the limits of this Confederacy without any duty or hindrance, except light money, pilotage, and other like charges; ...
What are you doing, non-seq? Trying to post to the lurkers in hopes they don't know you've been refuted on the point before?
You are forgetting the application of Saxe Coburg and Gotha to the Confederate government for an exequatur. Also, agents of the Confederacy negotiated a trade treaty and extradition treaty with another government. These agreements were honored.
Well, in the first place they had already walked away from it. In the second place, they were sent to negotiate recognition from the Lincoln administration, and only after that was there a vague offer to negotiate on 'questions of disagreement'. Unless the Lincoln adminiatration first gave into the demand for recognition there was nothing to talk about.
Rustbucket(?was it you?) posted refutation of this long ago - probably to you, but repeat it as you wish.
Rustbucket refuted nothing. Mississippi rebelled on January 9 and Governor John Jones Petus immediately closed the river to northern traffic. Two days later, Mississippi batteries fired on a steamer heading downstream, the O A Tyler. But wait, you say. Seven weeks later the confederate congress passed legislation that supposedly opened the river to Northern traffic. But did it? Pettus was a real fire-breather and I haven't seen anything that indicates that he pulled his batteries and allowed traffic to pass. After being closed for almost two months was there any traffic left to open it up to?
Which government was that?
Show that the river was closed after that January 11th date. I found the following:
Steamboats Passed Vicksburg. Vicksburg, Feb 13 -- The Horizon and Roane passed down at noon, the Natchez at 3, the Rowena at 8, and the Yazoo and New Uncle Sam at 9 P.M. yesterday; the Lexington at 2, the B. J. Adams at 4, and the Magenta at 8 o'clock this morning. [Daily Picayune Feb 14, 1861]
Steamboats Passed Vicksburg. Vicksburg, Feb 15. -- The steamers Von Phul and Magnolia passed down at noon; the Fort Wayne at 1, and the Quarrier at 11 P.M. ysterday; the Skylark and Planet at 1 o'clock this morning. [Daily Picayune, Feb 16, 1861]
Mexico. The Handbook of Texas, a joint project of The General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, says these agreements are "significant because they demonstrate the recognition of the Confederate government by Mexico".
Link?
For the trade treaty, I'll refer you to two book citations. First, from The Last Battle of the Civil War by Jeffrey Wm Hunt [pages 17 & 18]:
In June 1861, the Confederate State Department dispatched an agent to negotiate a trade agreement with Mexico. The Mexican government, or rather Santiago Vidaurri, governor of the northern Mexican states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, was willing to deal with the Confederates. Vidaurri ruled northern Mexico with virtual independence from Mexico City, and he agreed to allow private Mexican businessmen to sell lead, copper, gunpowder, and leather to the Confederates. However, no trade in weapons was permitted. Politics and firearms went hand in hand in Mexico, and the Mexicans needed all the weapons they could obtain for their own use.
The Confederates and Mexicans also came to an agreement whereby Matamoros would become the entry point for goods destined for Texas. This was exactly the kind of arrangement the Federal government had feared. However, the Confederate-Mexican treaty did little to truly aid the Southerners cause. No sooner than the ink dried on the treaty outlining the terms of trade between the two nations than a bloody civil war erupted in Mexico.
Also from Fehrenbach's classic book on Texas history, Lone Star:
Since July 1861, the Texas coast had been under naval blockade. No cotton, the state’s only resource, could be shipped to hungry European markets. But Mexico provided a loophole. Baled cotton was hauled south to the Rio Grande, delivered in Matamoros, and shipped from the Mexican side of the river in the thousands of British and French sail that congregated in the Gulf. Treaties had been negotiated with Mexican authorities in Matamoros to expedite this by the Confederate commander at Brownsville. A vast trade quickly built up; foreign ships by the hundreds lay off the mouth of the Rio Grande; while their captains clamored for cargoes and bid the price of cotton to enormous sums. The American war had caught the British mills by surprise. [page 359]
Ford [Colonel John S. "Rip" Ford] commanded at Fort Brown [Brownsville] through 1861. Again he played the diplomat and probably set a pattern that prevented the Confederacy from becoming involved in Mexico. Ford understood the importance of the Matamoros gateway. Through the services of the British and Prussian consuls, he arranged a commercial treaty by which Mexico permitted Texan cotton to pass through. This was a tremendous accomplishment done by playing on European hopes for the Confederacy and Mexican fears of invasion. [page 376]
And as for Fehrenbach's account, I find the timeline to be very interesting. He speaks of negotiations to ship cotton through Matamoros made by the local confederate authority in 1861. In 1861-62 the Davis regime initiated a cotton embargo in the hopes that by starving the European countries that they could be forced to intervene on the confederate side. So what Colonel Ford was doing was negotiating a way to violate confederate government policy, wasn't he? So any agreement couldn't be between Mexico and the confederate government and couldn't grant or imply recognition.
Cotton exportation across the Rio Grande was an off again, on again proposition. The Mexicans decided to increase their profit from the trade. "Those high costs [of shipping cotton through bandits on both sides of the border] were dramatically increased in April 1862, Governor Vidaurri imposed a tariff on all goods imported from Texas as well as exports to Texas." [page 18, paperback version of Hunt's book]
That dried up much of the cotton trade. Texas did profit from the trade, however. From Fehrenbach:
Although Texas received $2,000,000 from this export, and got back vital guns, medicines, and tools that could be gotten nowhere else, two things about this enterprise disturbed the Confederate authorities. One was that a great amount of this cotton ended up in Yankee mills – Northern manufacturers were just as desperate as the British, and sometimes through agents, outbid them. The trade was all in the South’s favor even so, but in some governmental minds it became contaminated.
The other objection was more valid. The trade was in private hands. While the wagons returned from the Rio Grande with nails, medicines, Napoleon muskets, and Enfield rifles and Kerr revolvers, they also brought back sugar, coffee, wax candles, and a few French gowns. Merchants were merchants, and the profits on luxury items were immense. … This diversion of resources to "non-essentials" understandably concerned the military.
The Confederate government tried to impress Texas cotton and pay the farmers a low price for it. The state of Texas responded by paying a higher price than the Confederate government for some 16 months. Eventually the state gave it and allowed the Confederate military to set the price.
And what I'm saying is that they are really stretching the meaning of that term.
we are stronger together than seperate besides if the South did Secede all of my gun rights probably would have been taken away by now!!
May I ask a question? What century are you living in?
The secessionist principles which shaped the founding of the American Republic are still relevant today, no matter how much many of you have been indoctrinated from years of government schools.
Absoultely wrong! The secession of the South had very little to do with chattle slavery which was a dying institution -as General Robert E Lee himslef was quoted as saying. Asserting that is did is a calumnious statement & Northren based propaganda which only emerged after the war.
Southern states had been threatening to secede ever since the Tariff of Abominations and the days of Calhoun.
Frank Conner. Several of them said that the main issue was the protection of slavery, but that was strictly for local consumption by people who did their thinking solely in terms of simple slogans. The Southern legislators could do their math; thus they knew full well that the only truly-safe way to protect the institution of slavery would be for the Southern states to remain in the Union and simply refuse to ratify any proposed constitutional-amendment to emancipate the slaves. For slavery was specifically protected by the Constitution, and that protection could be removed only by an amendment ratified by three-quarters of the states. In 1860 there were 15 slave states and 18 free states. Had the number of slave states remained constant, 27 more free states would have had to be admitted into the Union--for a total of 60 states--before an abolition amendment could be ratified. That was not likely to occur anytime soon. But with the Southern states seceding, the issue of slavery could then be settled by force of arms at any time.
From: Why The War Was Started.
FACT - Terribly untrue. The North fought the war over money. Plain and simple. When the South started Secession, Lincoln was asked, "Why not let the South go in peace?" To which he replied, "I can't let them go. Who would pay for the government?" Sensing total financial ruin for the North, Lincoln waged war on the South. The South fought the War to repel Northern aggression and invasion. MYTH - Only Southerners owned slaves. FACT - Entirely untrue. Many Northern civilians owned slaves. Prior to, during and even after the War Of Northern Aggression. Surprisingly, to many history impaired individuals, most Union Generals and staff had slaves to serve them! William T. Sherman had many slaves that served him until well after the war was over and did not free them until late in 1865. U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, Grant stated "Good help is so hard to come by these days." Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased - they were inherited) in 1862!!! Lee freed his slaves several years before the war was over, and considerably earlier than his Northern counterparts. And during the fierce early days of the war when the South was obliterating the Yankee armies! Lastly, and most importantly, why did NORTHERN States outlaw slavery only AFTER the war was over? The so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the SOUTH! NOT in the North! This pecksniffery even went so far as to find the state of Delaware rejecting the 13th Amendment in December of 1865 and did not ratify it (13th Amendment / free the slaves) until 1901! MYTH - The South revered slavery. FACT - A very interesting fact on slavery is that at the time the War of 1861 -1865 officially commenced, the Southern States were actually in the process of freeing all slaves in the South. Russia had freed it's servants in 1859, and the South took great note of this. Had military intervention not been forced upon the South, a very different America would have been realized then as well as now. MYTH - The War of 1861 - 1865 was fought over slavery.
From: Confederate History. Dispelling The Myths.
In Québéc, as you are aware, there is problem of the Parti Québécios demanding the Provence succeed from the rest of the Dominion of Canada.
I am well aware as I have lived in Quebec for most of my life. The No side only just barely won during the 1995 referendum & separation is coming back on the political radar ever since the recent sponsorship scandal by the ruling party of the Canadian government.
As a matter of fact Quebec is not the only place which would like to secede from the rest of Canada. There is a strong & growing separatist movement in the western provinces. There are other minor separatist movements throughout the country as well.
While I might not agree with the leftist aspiration of many Quebec separatists I do however as a matter of principle respect their right to pursue their goal of secession. The French Canadians particularly those who refer to themselves as Quebebcois have long felt usurped by English Canada.
Since the 1960's the antics of diehard members of the left leaning Parti Québécios has caused deep divisions. In the late 1960's & early 1970's Montréal in particular was rocked by various acts of terrorism.
Those were mainy members of the FLQ. While a few did later become members of the PQ it is important to remember that the PQ has always distanced themselves from the violent campaigns of the radical separatists.
Since the late 1970's heading into the 1980's this 'French only' secessionist Bloc has gained considerable political power within the PQ.
Indeed. Though for many years, a Montreal south shore riding (electoral district) was represented by David Payne: an English speaking member of the PQ. I actually met him once at a local sports center when I was a young teen when he was campaigning & still a member of the Parti Liberal. He retired a few years ago & was the only English speaking member of the Parti Quebecois.
In Montréal for example 'English flight' is ongoing because of the Québécios language police and other political foolishness demanding French only in the PQ, when Canadian money is bilingual, food products in most cases is listed in French and English, which is fine, but now the radical leadership of the Parti Québécios wants an 'English free' Provence.
I know. I have seen many English speaking friends leave over the years. I have more French speaking friends that English speaking friends these days & most of the people I know who speak English also speak French as a home language (having a parent of both groups). Many of these people have French surnames. So it is certainly true that the PQ are attempting to have an English free province. Though none of this negates their fundamental right to pursue secession.
The Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the only state to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate States of America.
From: Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
In Texas v White the court ruled that the southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal. Period.
No sir. Not "period". I have been doing a little research. Something I strongly suggest that you do as I have discovered that your little Texas vs White court ruling is not what it seems. First off: the court's opinion was "authored by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, himself a former cabinet member under Abraham Lincoln and leading figure in the northern government during the American Civil War." Well well well. What have we here? This ruling was completely BIASED & prejudicial & should have been thrown out considering the fact that the judge was Lincoln's own cabinet member!!!!! There is no way that anyone can take seriously such a biased / prejudiced & compromized ruling as this.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=74&page=700) (1869) was a significant case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869. The Court held that the Constitution did not permit states to secede from the United States, and that all acts of secessionist state governments were therefore void. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, himself a former cabinet member under Abraham Lincoln and leading figure in the northern government during the American Civil War. Based on his previous position, many southerners questioned Chase's impartiality and believed he should have recused himself from the decision. While legally binding, the court's decision was extremely controversial and remains so to this day. Many former Confederate officials such as Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens as well as legal theorists such as Lysander Spooner rejected the court's reasoning and defended the right of states to secede. Texas v. White.
This decision is even more meaningless than I thought. This ruling is tantamount to arguing that serial murder is legal due to a "decision" by a Judge Charles Manson. Nice try but no cigar.
And the fact that you disagree with that ruling means nothing, because the last time I checked the Constitution does not say that a Supreme Court decision needs the approval of Republic_of_Secession for it to be a valid decision.
This is where you are wrong again. The Constitution prohibits the judiciary from usurping the right of the people & powers which have not been ceded to the federal government under the 9th & 10th Amendments. As I noted before: the Courts could rule that the Earth is flat, but it will not deter those who know otherwise. Furthermore: nor does this ruling suplant the separation of powers. The other branches of government (ie: legislative & exexcutive) are free to ignore the ruling consistent with their responsibilities under the Constitution.
Texas v White was a valid decision
No it was not. As I just pointed out, it was heavily compromised. The Judge should have recused himself from the Court as he was a leading figure in the Lincoln Administration. This is corruption & cronyism of the highest order. People tend to think that this sort of political & legal corruption only happens in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe could not have operated any better -or rather worse- in this situation.
reagardless of what you may think,
Wrong again. What I think -more to the point- what the people think are paramount in a free society. Interesting to see you take the side of black robed dictators. The decisions of Judicial Tyrants does not negate the republican & liberty oriented principles of America's founding. Nor does it negate or invalidate the legal agreements reached when the Constitution was adopted nor the Declaration of Independence which expressly prescribes the right of secession.
unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states will remain un-constitutional until the Constitution is amended or the case is overturned or modified by a future court.
Wrong again. The Constitution & the Declaration of Independence supercede the court's rulings. The legal agreements which adopted the Constitution supercede the court's rulings. Since the court in this case was highly compromized & biased: the ruling is of no consequence & does not even pass the laugh test.
Republic of Secession. And where does it expressly say that? The United States Constitution was adopted in 1789 with the express guarantee of retaining the right to secession.
Read the following.
The Declaration of Independence, the most famous act of secession in history, said that the former colonies “are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States” — that is, 13 sovereign powers, subordinate to nobody. Notice that it didn’t call those states “a new nation” or even “the Union.” That kind of talk came much later. It was long customary to refer to the United States under the Constitution as a “confederacy” or “confederation,” as The Federalist Papers often do. Even Lincoln sometimes called it “this Confederacy,” as I did in the first paragraph. By definition, a confederacy is a voluntary association whose members are free to quit. It was not secession that was unconstitutional, but the suppression of secession. The North fought the Civil War by allowing its chief executive to exercise dictatorial powers, raising armies and money and suspending civil liberties without consulting Congress, and even arresting the Maryland legislature and installing a puppet government. This was “government of the people, by the people, for the people”? What happened to “the consent of the governed”?
When the sovereign state of Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution in June 1788, it did so with this proviso: “that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression.” That is, the people of the states could withdraw their consent and “resume,” or reclaim, the powers delegated to the U.S. Government. New York and Rhode Island ratified the Constitution with similar reservations of the right to “resume” or “reassume” the powers “granted” therein. Either these conditional ratification acts were valid, and the states retain the right to secede, or the acts were void, and Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island have never legally joined the United States! But nobody at that time held that by adopting the Constitution the states were surrendering their “sovereignty, freedom, and independence,” which they maintained under the Articles of Confederation.
Three states, Virginia, New York and Rhode Island, specifically had clauses in their Acts of Ratification that reserved the right to secede if they didn't like the result. Rhode Island was especially recalcitrant in ratification. George Washington was already president for over a year when RI ratified. It was only threats to begin treating RI as a foreign country that caused them to cave in. Rhode Island didn't even send a delegate to the Convention and the vote for ratification was 34-32 on May 29,1790, nearly fifteen months after the First Congress had convened. I know this because I lived in RI for more of my life than anywhere else. The state holds that as a point of pride and calls itself the Thirteenth State.
The power to create states and approve any changes in their status are powers reserved to Congress. By implication that includes the power to approve the secession of a state.
No it does not. Even using the term "by implication" gives this ruse away. The Union was created by the various states as a "voluntary" union which retained the right to secession as I outlined & documented above. Furthermore: secession is not a change of the "status" of a state (as the various states were already independent since the founding of 1776), it is merely the opting out of the confederation.
Supreme Court rulings impact more than the specific case. Brown v Board of Ed struck down all 'separate but equal' laws and not just those in the 4 districts that were part of the case. Scott v Sandford ruling covered all blacks in the United States at the time and not just Dred Scott. Roe v Wade allowed any woman to right to privacy regarding abortions and not just Jane Roe. Texas v White ruled that all the southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal, not just Texas.
The ruling might "impact" more then the specific case, but rulings are not laws therefore they have no power of enforcement. The problem I have been pointing out here is that people (such as yourself) erroneously propagate the notion that rulings are laws when they are not.
Even if true
O no. Let's not go down that road again. I think you know that this statement is true as well.
how did that deny them a republican form of government?
You must be kidding? They were denied a republican form of government since the federal governments actions & punitive tariffs compromised the agricultural states right to representation. The taxation was strongly opposed in these states. The dictatorial manner in which the taxation was imposed speaks for itself in the denying of republican government & was the cause of secession in the first place. Then the later invasion on the part of the North against the South was another clear, more brutal denial of republican government.
Frank Conner.
Second, if the Republicans somehow managed to gain control of Congress AND the White House, they would then be able to use the federal government to enact and enforce their party platform--and thus convert the prosperous Southern-states into the dirt-poor agricultural colonies of the Northern capitalists. And given the trends in demographics, the Southern states would never be able to reverse that process. The intent of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution would then have been subverted completely: the Southern states would no longer be governed with the consent of the governed--but instead bullied mercilessly by the Northern majority. Why, then, remain in the Union? continuation. Lincoln had set the perfect trap. He had given President Davis just enough time to amass his forces and fire upon the U.S. Navy. But if Davis acquiesced instead, Lincoln need merely begin sending expeditionary forces to recapture all of the former Union-forts in the South now occupied by Confederate forces; sooner or later Davis would have to fight; and the more forts he allowed Lincoln to recapture in the interim, the weaker would be the military position of the C.S.A. As a practical matter, Davis was left with no choice.
From: Why The War Was Started.
Note. Not all of the states seceded for the same reason. North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas & Tenessee originally opted to remain in the Union & only later opted to secede once Lincoln began his invasion of the South which these states viewed as both immoral & un-constitutional.
Different states seceded for different reasons. For example, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed. They reversed themselves only after Lincoln decided on an invasion that they considered both unconstitutional and immoral.
From: A Moral Accounting of The Union & The Confederacy.
The following should finally put an end to the debate on this matter. Over the years I've heard many rail at the South for seceding from the 'glorious Union.' They claim that Jeff Davis and all Southerners were really nothing but traitors - and some of these people were born and raised in the South and should know better, but don't, thanks to their government school 'education.' Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 deals in some detail with the question of Davis' alleged 'treason.' In referring to the Northern leaders he noted: "They believed the most logical means of justifying the North's war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded from the Union; so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate." Although this was the way the federal government planned to proceed, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn't keep his mouth shut and he let the cat out of the bag. Stevens said: "The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy...This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war...No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union..." And, although he did not plainly say it, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be 'reformed' into something more compatible with his beliefs. No matter how you look at it, the feds tried to have it both ways - they claimed the South was in rebellion and had never been out of the Union, but then it had to do certain things to 'get back' into the Union it had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the 'history' books never seem to pick up on this? At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while it had him in prison. Mr. Conner has observed that: "The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'." According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government's evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case. He said he had 'grave doubts' about it. Not to be undone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should just be satisfied with that. In other words - "you won the war, boys, so don't push your luck beyond that." Mr. Conner tells us that: "In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally." None of these bright lights from the North would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It's not that they were dumb, in fact the reverse is true. These men knew a dead horse when they saw it and were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O'Connor, became the legal counsel for Jeff Davis - without charge. That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that refused to touch the case, told the federal government that they really had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner. Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." At one point the government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he ask for one. Davis refused that and he demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial, or admit that they had dealt unjustly with him. Mr. Street said: "He died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." If Davis was as guilty as they claimed, why no trial??? Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional they would have done so in a New York minute. The fact that they diddled around and finally released him without benefit of the trial he wanted proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, both North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest over something that the South did that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet they claim the moral high ground because the 'freed' the slaves, a farce at best.
If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?
From: If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?
The following line reprinted from the above article disproves your erroneous thesis.
The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal.
Again who? Other than you, I mean?
Do an internet search. It is common knowledge now that many people have questions surrounding the Pearl Harbour incident. Furthermore: I never stated that I was one of them. I was using an analogy to point out how people tend to differ over the meaning of certain events. Remember: I was pointing out the inconsistency you Statists have in what constitutes terrorism vs acts of war. This was the issue - not the minutia of indivudual cases I used as examples. Do ty to follow.
Article 1, section 9 of the confederate constitution stated, "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." So again I'll ask, where did Davis get the authority to propose ending slavery in return for European recognition?
The authority which all Presidents have to approve a change in the Constitution by way of an Amendment passing Congress. It is not as if he would have been the first person as a President to have ever approved the change of a Constitution.
He would have needed more than that. He would have needed the constitution amended. He would have needed three states to propose the amendment. He would have needed 9 states to ratify it. But before doing that, the southern states would have needed to amend their state constitutions since virtually all of them had sections which prevented any legislation impairing slave ownership, something that legislation authorizing a constitutional convention would most certainly have done.
So what's the problem? Slave owners only constituted about 6 % of the Southern population & many of them were looking for ways at ending the institution & many were already in the process of freeing slaves. An apprenticeship type of program was already employed easing the transition from slavery to integration.
Davis was promising something he had very little chance of carrying out. He, in effect, lied to Europe for political purposes.
Wrong. You are lying about this right now. Davis had every hope of achieving his goal as the circumstances were in his favour. General Robert E Lee noted that slavery was a "dying institution on its way out", & the overwhelming majority of the Confederate population did not even own slaves. Therefore a vote on the matter or a change in the Constitution would have had no problem of passing.
Merriam-Webster defines 'rebellion' as "open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government." That's a reasonable description of the southern actions.
Absolute bullshit! There was no "armed resistance" until the North began its invasion! What the hell were they supposed to do, just roll over so Non-Squitur's ancestors could have their pick of the spoils? Even the Northern actions at Fort Sumter was an invasion since if the South did not resist them, they would have had to let Lincoln occupy every fort to the point of being over run. Furthermore. The established government were the governments of the seceded states. Remember: the federal government is the government of a confederacy of which the member states could opt out of at any time. This make the notion of a "rebellion" absolutely ridiculous & not supported by a single fact.
Frank Conner.
Lincoln had set the perfect trap. He had given President Davis just enough time to amass his forces and fire upon the U.S. Navy. But if Davis acquiesced instead, Lincoln need merely begin sending expeditionary forces to recapture all of the former Union-forts in the South now occupied by Confederate forces; sooner or later Davis would have to fight; and the more forts he allowed Lincoln to recapture in the interim, the weaker would be the military position of the C.S.A. As a practical matter, Davis was left with no choice.
From: Why The War Was Started.
Compensating the slave owners for their chattel at market value would have cost between $2 billion and $3 billion dollars. The federal budget in 1860 was about $65 million. So in order to buy out the slave owners Davis would have needed 50 to 75 times the entire pre-war federal buget. Where was he going to get that?
Pure nonsense. What in the world is your source for such over inflated & ridiculous figure? Furthermore: the notion that Davis had to "buy out" slave owners is moot as slavery was in the process of ending.
That is about the most ridiculous statement you've made to date. Please present any evidence at all that the southern slave owners were looking for a reason to end slavery.
Once again. This too is common knowledge at this point. The slave owners were tired of incurring the costs of maintaining the institution. They felt that it would have been cheaper as well as moral to adopt a free market system approach & many were already in the process of adopting such as system. Remember: the slave owners inherited a system which came from the North (where there were still a number of slave owners) & many were striving to finds alternative methods to the unjust institution.
Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph both contemplated the eventual emancipation of slaves. Davis spoke to Southerners of the duty of “Christianizing and improving” Africans in their charge. To this end, he instituted a system of laws, courts, and juries administered by slaves themselves so that they might learn the principles of law and civil society. Some of his slaves were taught to read, and even engaged in commercial activity. Whereas Lincoln opposed court testimony by blacks, Davis favored it even during the chaos of Reconstruction. Davis was appalled at the condition of free blacks in the North, and at frequent remarks—like those of Senator John Dix of New York—that, once freed, blacks would “continue to be an inferior caste” and would eventually die out. For Davis, blacks were integrated into Southern society as part of the household, and he was horrified to hear “their extinction treated as a matter of public policy.” During the war rhetoric proposing the extermination of Southerners also rang from Northern pulpits and in political speeches. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is perhaps the most celebrated reflection of such language. After the war, Sherman proposed a policy of exterminating the Western Indians; he called it his “final solution to the Indian problem.” We forget that there was no segregation in the antebellum South; subordination did not mean segregation. Mrs. Davis rescued Jim Limber a seven-year-old black boy, from abuse, legally freed him, and adopted him into the family. He lived, slept, ate, and played with the Davis children as a member of the family in the Confederate White House while the Davises were in Richmond. The Union army seized him by force when Davis was captured. Despite Mrs. Davis’s efforts over the years to find him and “to look after . . . Jim’s education,” he was never heard from again. It is unimaginable that Lincoln, who never did anything in Illinois to improve the conditions of blacks, would have freed and adopted a black orphan and raised him with his own children in the starkly segregated North. Both Northerners and Southerners were white supremacists; the South, however, had a vastly larger population of Africans. Unlike Northerners such as Lincoln, who viewed blacks as an alien people and Africa as their “native land,” Southerners tended to see blacks as integrated into their society through the family household. Southerners thought of Georgia and Virginia as the native land of blacks while at the same time thinking of them as politically subordinate (just as they, along with Northerners, thought of women). American liberals, though, have either denied or ridiculed as “paternalistic” the bonds of affection that had sprung up between the two races who lived together so intimately. And paternalistic they were, for the South was a quasifeudal society, but such relations, though limited, were the only solid moral ground on which the South’s evolution into a modern civil society could occur. Lincoln was content that slavery could take a century to work itself out, and, in his shortest time frame, it would have lasted until 1900. In the North and the South, the disposition to emancipate was triggered by changing conditions brought on by war. Blacks were, for the first time, necessary to maintain a political society. Had the South gained independence, its blacks would likely have had a smoother transition into civil society than they had in the North before the war or in the South after the barbarism of totalitarian Reconstruction.
There had long been an anti-slavery tradition in the South, especially in Virginia. By 1830, there were far more anti-slavery societies in the South than in the North. In 1832, the Governor of Virginia called on the legislature to do something about slavery. The legislature passed a resolution to abolish slavery in Virginia, but ran into difficulties when writing the statute, and the bill was tabled. It was at just this time that the abolitionist frenzy swept down from the North, urging immediate and uncompensated emancipation. Pamphlets urging that slaves revolt, poison wells, and murder the families of planters in their sleep—as John Brown did and was praised for doing—did not strengthen the moderate forces of abolition in the South. Thomas Hart Benton, who had worked to secure the right of a jury trial for slaves in Missouri, bitterly complained that Northern abolitionist agitation had blocked further reforms. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster said the same thing in the 1850 debates over the nature of the Union.
From: A Moral Accounting of The Union & The Confederacy.
I strongly suggest that you take some time to research this subject & to download & read the full length articles to which I have posted excerpts. There is a lot more to this topic than you were taught (indoctrinated with) in biased government schools.
When did he say it was a dying institution?
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