Posted on 10/07/2013 8:37:27 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
One of the most overlooked facts of the American Civil War Era is the sympathy the South gained from Europe's most influential monarch - the pope of Rome.
Pope Pius IX never actually signed any kind of alliance or 'statement of support' with the Confederate States of America, but to those who understand the nuance of papal protocol, what he did do was quite astonishing. He acknowledged President Jefferson Davis as the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America."
News of this reached the North, and the Whitehouse was considerably irate about it, prompting a response from the Vatican that the pope's letter did not amount to an "official" recognition in the "formal sense."
The pope's letter to Jefferson Davis was accompanied by an autographed picture of the pope.
From this we can glean three things about Pope Pius IX...
He called Jefferson Davis by the customary title "Honorable." He acknowledged him as president of a nation. In doing so, he (at least on a personal level) effectively recognized the Confederate States of America as a sovereign entity, separate from the United States of America.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicknight.blogspot.com ...
The “Know Nothings” had a fair degree of political power in the 1850s (Northern Republicans were often sympathetic). Since anti-Catholic sentiment was a strong pillar of the Know Nothings, I don’t imagine the Pope saw the North as “the good guys”.
News of this reached the North, and the Whitehouse was considerably irate about it, prompting a response from the Vatican that the pope's letter did not amount to an "official" recognition in the "formal sense." The pope's letter to Jefferson Davis was accompanied by an autographed picture of the pope.
From this we can glean three things about Pope Pius IX....
Ping for later
So many lies, so little time.
Lincoln never, ever said the war had nothing to do with slavery. Probably the closest he ever came was when he said he would free no slaves if that's what it took to preserve the Union. A very different concept indeed.
The quote from Grant is at best a highly unlikely rumor.
Grant was a slave owner for a while before the war, and freed the only slave he ever owned, at a time when his finances were in deep distress. Other slaves in his household were probably legally owned by his father-in-law. In any case, they would have been freed by MO state action well before the end of the war.
By my count that's three untruths or at least distortions in as many sentences.
I agree the war was not only about slavery, and admit there are a group of liberal nuts who try to claim it is. But that it is at the core of what led to war is quite simply beyond reasonable dispute.
All other issues between the sections could have been, and were, able to be compromised. Slavery and its expansion was something many on either side were unwilling to compromise.
The “American Party,” often called the Know-Nothings, is a more complex issue than usually presented. It was one of the parties scrambling around trying to pick up the pieces from the disintegrating Whigs. It had several strongholds in the South, notably LA, AL and MD.
The AP actually lasted longer in the South than the North, primarily among ex-Whigs who just couldn’t stand to vote for a Democrat. But they got over it eventually.
“Lincoln never, ever said the war had nothing to do with slavery”.
Lincoln was a racist bigot of the first degree. He thought the white man was superior to the black man in intelligence and should always be his master. The quotes are all over the internet. Historical quotes from Ape Lincoln.
Not going to argue the point with you. It’s non-responsive to my statement.
The claim was that Lincoln said the War had nothing to do with slavery. If you can come up with a quote to that effect, be my guest.
So, in your eyes he was a more egregious “racist” than the southron slavers who actually owned people?
Seriously?!
“.....we have no right at all to disturb it (slavery) in the states where it exists, and we profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it…We also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits. We don’t suppose that in doing this we violate anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or anything due to the constitutional guarantees thrown around it”. Lincoln/Douglas Debate, 1858
Another quote from the great liar.
“In the first place what is necessary to make the institution [of slavery] national? Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets and with a young n****r stuck on every bayonet march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war on them”.
The great liar in all his glory.
http://lincolnandslavery.com/lsjom/events/landmark-events/118-the-lincoln-douglas-debates.html
Would you say that (some) Catholic leaders were of a similar mind?
Related threads:
Cause for sainthood introduced for first black U.S. priest
Abp. Dolan: American Catholic Leadership against Abortion Redeems Laxity against Slavery
Black History: The Slave Coast
Statue of first Catholic Supreme Court justice may go [Chief Justice Taney/"Dred Scott" decision]
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The Jesuits' Slaves
In Supremo Apostalatis
""We have judged that it belonged to Our pastoral solicitude to exert Ourselves to turn away the Faithful from the inhuman slave trade in Negroes and all other men. Assuredly, since there was spread abroad, first of all amongst the Christians, the light of the Gospel, these miserable people, who in such great numbers, and chiefly through the effects of wars, fell into very cruel slavery, experienced an alleviation of their lot. Inspired in fact by the Divine Spirit, the Apostles, it is true, exhorted the slaves themselves to obey their masters, according to the flesh, as though obeying Christ, and sincerely to accomplish the Will of God; but they ordered the masters to act well towards slaves, to give them what was just and equitable, and to abstain from menaces, knowing that the common Master both of themselves and of the slaves is in Heaven, and that with Him there is no distinction of persons.
But as the law of the Gospel universally and earnestly enjoined a sincere charity towards all, and considering that Our Lord Jesus Christ had declared that He considered as done or refused to Himself everything kind and merciful done or refused to the small and needy, it naturally follows, not only that Christians should regard as their brothers their slaves and, above all, their Christian slaves, but that they should be more inclined to set free those who merited it; which it was the custom to do chiefly upon the occasion of the Easter Feast as Gregory of Nyssa tells us. There were not lacking Christians, who, moved by an ardent charity 'cast themselves into bondage in order to redeem others,' many instances of which our predecessor, Clement I, of very holy memory, declares to have come to his knowledge. In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people having been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity, it at last comes about that, since several centuries, there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations. But—We say with profound sorrow—there were to be found afterwards among the Faithful men who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely and distant countries, did not hesitate to reduce to slavery Indians, Negroes and other wretched peoples, or else, by instituting or developing the trade in those who had been made slaves by others, to favour their unworthy practice. Certainly many Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to the duties of their charge, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous for the spiritual welfare of those engaged in the traffic and a shame to the Christian name; they foresaw that as a result of this, the infidel peoples would be more and more strengthened in their hatred of the true Religion.
It is at these practices that are aimed the Letter Apostolic of Paul III, given on May 29, 1537, under the seal of the Fisherman, and addressed to the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and afterwards another Letter, more detailed, addressed by Urban VIII on April 22, 1639 to the Collector Jurium of the Apostolic Chamber of Portugal. In the latter are severely and particularly condemned those who should dare 'to reduce to slavery the Indians of the Eastern and Southern Indies,' to sell them, buy them, exchange them or give them, separate them from their wives and children, despoil them of their goods and properties, conduct or transport them into other regions, or deprive them of liberty in any way whatsoever, retain them in servitude, or lend counsel, succour, favour and co-operation to those so acting, under no matter what pretext or excuse, or who proclaim and teach that this way of acting is allowable and co-operate in any manner whatever in the practices indicated.
Benedict XIV confirmed and renewed the penalties of the Popes above mentioned in a new Apostolic Letter addressed on December 20, 1741, to the Bishops of Brazil and some other regions, in which he stimulated, to the same end, the solicitude of the Governors themselves. Another of Our Predecessors, anterior to Benedict XIV, Pius II, as during his life the power of the Portuguese was extending itself over New Guinea, sent on October 7, 1462, to a Bishop who was leaving for that country, a Letter in which he not only gives the Bishop himself the means of exercising there the sacred ministry with more fruit, but on the same occasion, addresses grave warnings with regard to Christians who should reduce neophytes to slavery.
In our time Pius VII, moved by the same religious and charitable spirit as his Predecessors, intervened zealously with those in possession of power to secure that the slave trade should at least cease amongst the Christians. The penalties imposed and the care given by Our Predecessors contributed in no small measure, with the help of God, to protect the Indians and the other people mentioned against the cruelty of the invaders or the cupidity of Christian merchants, without however carrying success to such a point that the Holy See could rejoice over the complete success of its efforts in this direction; for the slave trade, although it has diminished in more than one district, is still practiced by numerous Christians. This is why, desiring to remove such a shame from all the Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions.
We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices above-mentioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter.""
Lincoln must have been a greater racist than Jeff Davis because Lincoln had no children of African heritage, while Jeff Davis did.
QED.
Lincoln as he said in one of his speeches, was able to leave the Negro woman alone. Jeff Davis wasn’t able to do that.
It makes an assertion that using the magic word “honorable” in a letter is the same as recognition.
That is patently false. The rest of the article is more of the same.
Lincoln did not start the war. The slave power did that.
Lincoln did win it. The slave power and it’s apologists have never forgiven him for that.
Bigotry is bigotry, whether you were a landed slave owner or an Illinois lawyer. The average prebellum southerner had more personal interaction with blacks and could arguably be less racist per say.
Nice example of selective quotation out of context. You carefully left out the rest of the paragraph.
... Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no state under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the territorial legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done.
Reasonable people can differ on whether there was any such plan, but a case that might have been used in this way was making its way towards the Court, and the South had a large majority there. Protecting slave property, like any other property, in a state is in theory not all that different from doing so in a territory.
In contrast, General Robert E. Lee was an abolitionist.
There's a whopper. The letter expressing his most vehement opposition to the institution was most notable for his expressed disdain for actual abolitionists. He thought slave "might" be ready for freedom in one or two thousand years.
Many Southerners shared his views.
Lie 2: Expressing abolitionist sentiments in the South not only made you liable to mob action, but was a crime in many southern states. The southern-dominated Lecompton Constitution of KS made it a capital offense.
President Jefferson Davis requested land owners to promise their slaves freedom in exchange for military service.
True, in 1865!The abolition movement was also growing in the South before the war.
Untrue. See above. In 1780 and 1820 conventional southern wisdom was that slavery was an evil they knew not how to get rid of. In 1860 it was considered a positive good.
The 13th Amendment that legally freed the slaves, (not the Emancipation Proclamation), was actually ratified by many Southern states before many Northern states.
True enough. However, most of these states were Reconstruction puppet governments.
Sorry for the formatting errors.
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