Posted on 03/31/2010 3:04:35 PM PDT by TitansAFC
>Epic fail on the political front.
>I am not talking theology, but how men govern their affairs.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, 2nd President of the Constitutional United States of America
Ah, but theology DEEPLY impacts how men conduct themselves, how they treat others, and [thusly] how the govern. Or would you argue that Muslim countries have a more elevated/civilized law deriving from the idea that man is a clod? {As opposed to the Jedo-Christian worldview of man being made in God’s image.} Or the pagan religions?
>A man who claims to be King is not Jesus.
Four Gospels say otherwise.
Matt 11:27
Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied.
Mark 15:2
Pilate questioned Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him, “It is as you say.”
Luke 23:3
So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied.
And, my favorite, John 18:33-37
Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?”
Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?”
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
>“No King but Jesus” was a common revolutionary slogan.
Then, by your own words, you have proven that not all kings & kingdoms were rejected by the revolutionaries.
In logic, all that is required to disprove a ‘for all’ statement is ONE counter-example.
>You may think that God bequeathed slavery to you,
I never made such a claim.
>Jesus was the Son of God, but he was also the son of a carpenter and learned a skill, he was not by that measure an aristocrat,
I agree. Certainly not in that measure.
>nor did he claim his power was because of some hereditary allotment from God,
Then explain John 5:19
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
>Jesus IS God.
Jesus IS also [a] man.
>Epic fail on the theology front.
Really? This from someone who said that Jesus never claimed to be a king isn’t worth much.
For example?
And I'm sure that about half of them are true. The other half are Southron myth.
Our nation was founded on the idea that all men are created equal. Not that some men were created or appointed rightfully over us by God as Counts, Dukes, Barons or Kings.
God intended us to be free, and bequeathed to us inalienable rights. Recognition of those rights are entirely incompatible with the idiotic notion of hereditary rule.
Self determination to enslave men, women and children.
Count how many times the word “slavery” is mentioned in the Declaration of Secession.
If the north bought slaves from he south, the south would go out and get new slaves to replace the old ones.
The ex-slaves that were freed by the Union Army stretched for miles.
From the Texas Declaration of Secession:
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union...She was received into the confederacy...as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
In all the non-slave-holding States...the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party...based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color— a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States
...all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations...
I wasn’t talking about after slavery was illegal at all. First pauls saying that buying all the slaves would have been better then fighting the war to end slavery did not compute.
I was trying to make the point that we had to fight a war to make it illegal. The south didn’t want to abolish slavery, they wanted to advance it into the new territories. And states had more rights back before the civil war.
Without slavery itself being illegal, for paul to think that we could have bought up all the slaves and then these states, the same states that would rather secede then give up the practice of slavery, for a multitude of their own reasons, would just make slavery illegal on their own and not replace the slaves he bought just does not compute. I believe they would have just smuggled in new slaves to replace the imaginary ones that paul says he would have bought.
In this imaginary world. How many replacement slaves would they have smuggled in? Your guess is as good as mine, but think about it. Some person willing to pay for their slaves and they could get new one’s cheaper and make boo coos of profit. It’s like I keep saying, unless the southern states wanted to make slavery illegal, which they did not, then paying for their slaves would have been a fools game.
Back in the real world, back before the war, there were laws about not bringing in any new African born slaves but new slaves were smuggled in anyway. And some money seekers came up north and stole free blacks to sell into slavery.
Can’t prove it, but I wouldn’t be afraid to bet there were people from the north who made money off of smuggling slaves too. Just like people make money today smuggling in drugs and illegals. People from the north, south, east, and west. Where there’s money to be made there are people who don’t care one bit about breaking the law.
You wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it, but there are thousands who don’t think twice about breaking the law for a few dollars.
But if we want to make up an imaginary world, where the southern states would have for some imaginary reason made the practice of slavery illegal in their states, without having to fight a war to force them, then they couldn’t have replaced the slaves that paul imagines he would have bought. But then again, that’s not the real world.
You should look it up. I grew up in Texas so we were taught that in Texas History.
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
He (Lincoln) claims for free negroes the right of suffrage, and an equal voice in the Government-- in a word, all the rights of citizenship, although the Federal Constitution, as construed by the highest judicial tribunal in the world, does not recognize Africans imported into this country as slaves, or their descendants, whether free or slaves, as citizens.
If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate-- all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country. -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality. --Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions-- nothing less than an open declaration of war-- for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one. -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
Mr. President, if pecuniary loss alone were involved in the abolition of slavery, I should hesitate long before I would give the vote I now intend to give. If the destruction of slavery entailed on us poverty alone, I could bear it, for I have seen poverty and felt its sting. But poverty, Mr. President, would be one of the least of the evils that would befall us from the abolition of African slavery. There are now in the slaveholding States over four millions of slaves; dissolve the relation of master and slave, and what, I ask, would become of that race? To remove them from amongst us is impossible. History gives us no account of the exodus of such a number of persons. We neither have a place to which to remove them, nor the means of such removal. They therefore must remain with us; and if the relation of master and slave be dissolved, and our slaves turned loose amongst us without restraint, they would either be destroyed by our own hands-- the hands to which they look, and look with confidence, for protection-- or we ourselves would become demoralized and degraded. The former result would take place, and we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin; and we must, therefore, this day elect between the Government formed by our fathers (the whole spirit of which has been perverted), and POVERTY AND CRIME! This being the alternative, I cannot hesitate for a moment what my duty is. I must separate from the Government of my fathers, the one under which I have lived, and under which I wished to die. But I must do my duty to my country and my fellow beings; and humanity, in my judgment, demands that Alabama should separate herself from the Government of the United States. -- Speech of E.S. Dargan, in the Convention of Alabama, Jan. 11, 1861
Artillery can be used to command a harbor.
Oh, I’m also a sir. Note my bragging to wardaddy about Mrs. Christian_Capitalist. (smile)
That's Ron Paul's line and he picked it up from Rothbard and Rockwell. But Lincoln was a great admirer of Jefferson author of the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest ordinance:
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Lincoln was not particularly a fan of Alexander Hamilton. Lincoln's hero, Henry Clay, had been a Jeffersonian, though he supported tariffs, a national bank, and public works.
Most Jeffersonians did come around to supporting those things during the Madison and Monroe Administrations. It was Andrew Jackson who brought back some of the Jeffersonian purism that had been lost over time.
The way that Paul and DiLorenzo make use of Jefferson and Hamilton has more to do with the politics of the 20th than that of the 18th or 19th century. It would be more honest to recognize that "pure" Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism don't exist in the real world. As Jefferson himself put it:
[E]very difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
Lumping Hamilton and Lincoln and Obama together and contrasting them with some pure Jeffersonianism that doesn't exist is just silly.
And it's another myth, although one that's often repeated. It can't be found, however, in the Ordinance of Annexation approved by the Texas Convention, or in the US Congressional resolution of annexation, or in the Texas Constitution. So where is it?
Not 5,000 but a lot.
“Targeting Lost Causers” 31,157 views.......
WHAT?!?!
LS, respectfully, you're not thinking this through.
At progressively higher prices, a lesser quantity of any particular commodity will be demanded. And frankly, you probably know that as the demand curve approaches this point, its curvature usually tapers off rather than accelerates. And, see here -- as I am sure that you already know, on every (and I do mean, "every") P/Q chart, there is a price point, somewhere on the upper end of the demand curve, at which zero will be the Quantity Demanded.
This represents the "top dollar" that will be paid for the last unit of that commodity -- and that price will never exceed the marginal utility that commodity offers to the purchasing consumer.
And as the professional economists which I have cited have already proven, in the case of slaves that marginal utility was almost exclusively determined (by an extremely strong correlation of 0.97 to 1) by the value of their labor, i.e., the value of the crops their labor was able to produce.
That's what put an upward bound on the prices of slaves (and what puts an upward bound on the demand curve of any commodity) -- the maximum marginal utility of the good in demand.
So, no, trees don't grow to the sky, and the price of slaves (or any commodity) does not go to infinity.
That's the economic argument that seems to be escaping you.
However, in the case of Compensated Emancipation, I don't expect that the Federal Government should have been willing to pay this "top dollar" price; rather, an average price (estimates of around $500 to $700 seems to be about the 1850-1860 norm if one includes the pricing of women and children slaves) should have been selected, and then mandated under a mass exercise of Eminent Domain.
In this case, the "public use" for the slaves would simply be their immediate emancipation; but the mechanism for a Compensated exercise of Eminent Domain was already existent in the Constitution -- it was just never really used, except in the compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia, in which DC slaveholders were paid an average of $300 per slave to emancipate them.
It was also made POLITICALLY unfeasible (to answer the question that you tried to shift the argument to) because of the unique nature of government support of slavery in a particular region.
Well, that's your supplemental contention, to which I must plead Nolo Contendere -- because as to whether or not most Southerners would have generally accepted a monetarily-substantial Compensated Emancipation (not every single Southerner, but a sufficiently large majority to deter secession), there's not really any probative evidence to debate the issue, one way or the other. You may well, be right; but we don't know, because aside from the $300-per-head Compensated Emancipation effected in DC, it was never really tried.
Either way, the cost of the slaves was infinte, because you would never, ever get to zero without force.
I understand this argument, but my basic question is: should the Federal Government have used the Force of Eminent Domain employed in conjunction with a monetarily-substantial Compensated Emancipation offer, or used the Force of Military Invasion (as it actually did)?
My own view is that the former ("the force of Eminent Domain employed in conjunction with a monetarily-substantial Compensated Emancipation offer") would have resulted in far fewer deaths and far less economic damage, with the deaths and damage primarily falling upon perhaps a few thousand recalcitrant plantation owners (those unwilling to take the money and shut up).
Idiot? OK, now it’s personal.
Slavery is definitely bad, but it was not worth killing thousands over it - or rather, the desire of those holding them to break off. I support the right of the Feds to outlaw slavery in the new territories, which would’ve helped squeeze it out - although either way, it still would’ve been better if the Feds had years ago sunsetted the whole thing. As it was, it still wasn’t worth the blood.
1st) In 1869??? That’s AFTER the fact - RIGHT after the fact, with stacked courts. What did people think all before this war?
2nd) Again, what about the Constitution? There is nothing in there. Case law is the trend of Progressives, instead of reading the Constitution itself for oneself. Interpretations can be very wrong.
3rd) Who cares if it’s failed or not? Irrelevent. The point is, someone felt the need to explicitly mention it in amending the Constitution. There had to be a reason for that.
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