The Original Secessionists

the tea party tribune ^ | 2/18/12 | jim funkhouser

[HMS Surprise]

There is nothing more irritating to a warrior-poet than an unwillingness to debate. If speech is troubling, or blatantly false, or amateurish, then it will fall of its own weight. I don’t need, and I suspect a majority of truthseekers don’t want, an administrator hovering above the public forum deciding which issues are too controversial for polite company.

The Civil War has become untouchable, unless you agree with the standard arguments. 1. Lincoln was a god among men. 2. The South was evil. 3. Union is the ultimate goal of the American experiment. 4. The Federal government’s design trumps the rights of the People, and the States. 5. Political bands are eternal, and must be preserved at all costs. 6. The ends justify the means.

The arguments for the necessity of the War between the States are considered unassailable, and I have noticed lately that the political-correctness has reached such a high level that even purportedly conservative blogs are beginning to remove threads that stray into pro-rebellion territory.

I understand the temptation to ignore this issue for political expediency, but the goal of individual liberty (personal freedom), as well as State sovereignty (political freedom), can never be accomplished unless we acknowledge and understand that the Civil War planted the seeds of the eventual unconstitutional federal takeover of every aspect of American life.

Some basics that are undeniable, albiet censorable, follows.

[mek1959]

Help me understand Sherman.

If the moral standard of the DOI is the slave issue (Inalienable Rights), and the Framers most assuredly understood this as did the Ratifiers who did not end slavery with the Constitution, then it seems that under your MORAL standard, the Union has no Moral right to exist? I’m not poking at you at all, just trying to clarify if I’m reading your opinion correctly.

[x]

It was an irregular process. Arkansas called for a referendum but didn't hold it. The state legislature ratified the convention's decision, rather than the voters. Tennessee voters rejected a convention. The legislature decided for secession and submitted it to the voters.

Voters also rejected a convention in North Carolina. The legislature called for a convention which passed the ordinance of secession without ratification by the legislature or the voters. As indeed, the first six states to secede had no popular referendum to confirm the decision of the conventions.

Was a popular referendum necessary? Well, if you didn't have one, people would certainly question the legitimacy of the process and whether it truly reflected the opinion of a majority of voters. I'm pretty sure whenever secessionist movements arise again, observers and participants wouldn't be content with letting a convention of notables decide the question entirely on their own.

The Virginia and Arkansas conventions rejected secession, then voted for it. Apparently, any number of rejections would count for nothing, but one acceptance of secession would sever the connection with the United States forever.

You could say that this was parallel to what happened when the Constitution was ratified. The difference is that we had grown together so much in the years in between that there had to be more attention paid to common responsibilities and obligations that had developed over time.

In the 1970s, Georgia historians concluded that there were so many irregularities -- fraud and coercion -- in the vote for convention delegates that they couldn't rightly say whether the result reflected the view of the majority of voters. Charges of corruption have also been made about the Texas referendum, though they've been disputed.

As a result of all this, there was plenty of room to question the results of the secession process. It was a hurried process, rushed by those who wanted as much territory as possible for their new country. Even if a numerical majority of voters in the states concerned were for secession there were still large minorities which were overridden by the process. In short, the way the secessionists went about their work in 1861 can't be recommended as a good process for severing political ties.

[x]

Other federal troops had left and abandoned other sites located in the seceded states, but only Sumter had defied the demand to vacate. Why? Because Lincoln wanted Sumter to serve as a cause de guerre.

Lincoln hoped that if he could maintain the appearance of an unbroken union perhaps things might settle down. Signs of federal authority in the rebel states -- post offices, mints, customs houses, courthouses -- were all in the hands of rebels. Stolen, in effect. By keeping hold of a fort in federal hands, the United States could maintain that the union was intact. It was also a matter of saving face, of saying that not everything had been grabbed.

Some Southerners, by contrast, wanted and used Sumter as a causus belli, a way of sparking a war fever that would bring the Upper South in to the Confederacy. I don't know if this applied to Jefferson Davis. He may have been the guy who has to get out in front of the hotheads in South Carolina, so as to preserve his own authority. But it's as true for all we know to say that Davis wanted the fort to spark a war as it is to say that Lincoln did -- if not more so.

South Carolina was faced with a hard choice: Accept the re-supply and reinforcing of an installation with declared hostile forces within its borders — a definite threat to South Carolina — or neutralize that installation and eliminate that threat. No sovereign state or nation would allow the buildup of hostile forces within its own borders, and South Carolina did what it felt obligated to do, and what Lincoln KNEW South Carolina would do (indeed, were the circumstances reversed Lincoln most assuredly would have done exactly what South Carolina did).

So we have Guantanamo as a provocation to Cuba, a challenge to them that will produce a war? Is that what we were doing with Berlin? Look, we have learned a lot more about enclaves and exclaves since 1861. Use it to understand the situation. Maybe people at the time didn't know what we know now, but a wise statesman should have.

Lincoln did not give a rat’s ass about blacks or slavery.

Something you two may have in common.

But what he did give a rat’s ass about was the revenue collected from Southern trade and commerce, and that revenue would be lost if the Southern states seceded; and that Lincoln was not about to tolerate (indeed, his first comments upon being made aware of the Southern states seceding were focused entirely on the loss of revenue: “But what is to become of my revenues?” he said).

That's not necessarily true. It's one of those stories Confederate sympathizers convinced themselves must have happened.

And where were those revenues spent? Almost exclusively in the Northern states. And what industry benefitted tremendously by the collection of those revenues? The railroads. And who, prior to his presidency, represented railroad interests? Abe Lincoln.

You are putting the cart before the horse. Federal railroad subsidies didn't come into their own after secession. I suspect if any region benefited inordinately from federal expenditures it was the West, where there were forts to be built and maintained.

Southerners complained that their cotton exports paid for the country's expenses. But it was imports that were taxed, rather than exports. It hasn't been established that most imports went to the South. Slaveowners took the money they "earned" from cotton and used it to buy things in the North, as much as in Europe, and those Northerners had the funds to make their own imports. Because the North had more people, more imports probably went North, rather than South, and more taxes were probably paid by Northerners.

[central_va]

They insisted on a BOR as a way of limiting central power.

I will stand by my original point: the USC's primary purpose was to establish a limited central government and a strong republic. I am not saying it was designed based on ancient Greece, however it's original intent IMO was closer to Plato's Greek city-state republic than what we have today - which is a socialist empire.

The BOR was tacked on, there was nothing to prevent each state from passing their own individual BOR's had one not been included in the USC. The BOR overshadows the original intent, IMHO.

[BroJoeK]

HMS Surprise: "If your argument descends to “klan” I will apply the appropriate moniker.
Moron fits like a glove."

Fact is, the average American will never understand how a reasoned defense of the Confederacy is not, at the same time, a defefense of slavery, the Klan, Jim Crow and everything else racist in America.

You have to explain it, carefully and patiently, and take the occasional insult without flipping it back -- because it's only natural, and you are arguing a very unnatural position, that: yes, slavery and racism are wrong, but the idea of the Confederacy was nothing more than our Founders' beliefs in the high ideals of freedom, liberty and independence.

Most all Americans will naturally assume that you are only trying to defend the old slave-holders and racists, and you will never prove them wrong by returning insult for insult.

HMS Surprise: "The South lost a war, America lost its soul. The proof is all around you."

We've had this debate here many times: America did not "lose its soul" because the South lost the war, that's just nonsense.
America's "loss of soul" began with the Progressive era, starting 50 years after the Civil War, when Southern Progressive Democrat President Woodrow Wilson signed the 16th (income tax) and 17th (direct election of senators) ammendments to the Constitution.
Until then, the US Federal Government consumed around 2% of the GDP, today it has grown to 25%.
Without the income tax especially, that could not be possible, and both of those ammendments were ratified by most Southern states.

Until fairly recent decades, the South was more than eager to get its "fair share" of money overflowing from the Federal trough.

HMS Surprise: "Lincoln was not a Marxist.
The Civil War and its aftermath paved the way for the marxist/socialist/statist agenda."

There was not a Marxist bone in Lincoln's body, and the United States was no more "Marxist" on the day he died than when he first came to office.
The Civil War did nothing more than preserve the Union and destroy slavery.
All the rest came later -- much later -- and was for decades cheered on by the now allegedly conservative South.

HMS Surprise: "Tell me, without trying to scare me with electronic bulletin board hokum, how that was a good thing?"

Simple: slavery was worse, and the Confederacy first seceded, then started, formally declared and fought a war to the bitter end, in order to defend their "peculiar institution" of slavery.

"HMS Surprise":

[HMS Surprise]

Post-Civil War America was under martial law for all intents and purposes. This led to a misapprehension of the legitimate relationship between Washington and the States. Federal power was flexed, and forever fixed in the American mind via vast Armies marching under a U.S. flag from State to State. America had a new national identity. The world still refered to America as “The States,” but the American People now saw themselves as U.S. citizens first, State citizens hardly at all. This national identity made us ripe for a national statism, which occurred as you said, 50 years later. If we had avoided war, and maintained the jurisdicitonal integrity of the States, regardless of any national iteration, the progressive movement would have been dead on arrival. The Civil War prepared America for the yoke of national statism.

[rockrr]

Nonsense.

“Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.” — George Washington, 1796

[rockrr]

BTW: notice how I didn’t ding you on your obviously unintentional misspelling of ‘jurisdictional’?

[HMS Surprise]

I don’t argue about whether or not we are Americans, or that we should have pride being such. I put my hand over my heart when the National Anthem is sung, salute the flag, recite the pledge, etc. Yes, I am an American. In the pledge that I recite is the phrase, “and to the Republic, for which it stands.” What is a Republic? Is it not a conglomeration of sovereigns, bound together, respecting each others jurisdiction, and supporting each other in times of war or national disaster? Are we not ostensibly a Constitutional Republic? Or should every State fall into shadow and diminish so that the national government can rule unencumbered? I know this is complex for the modern sensibility, which is trapped in the national paradigm, but at the present time the Republic is but a dying corpse, and sunshine patriots offer no hope in reviving it.

[donmeaker]

When Britain fought and won the French and Indian war, the colonies raised troops and funds using their own legislatures. They continued to raise their own forces, and funded their own governments, and paid for the ‘swarms of officerse’ appointed by the English to positions in the colonies. The colonies didn’t raise so much money as Engliand, but as a ratio of their population, they colonists fielded more soldiers, thanks to the militia.

[central_va]

Fact is, the average American will never understand how a reasoned defense of the Confederacy is not, at the same time, a defefense of slavery, the Klan, Jim Crow and everything else racist in America.

Who cares what New England Yankees and left coast commies think. I am only trying to talk to Southerners. Southerners understand totally what Federal Usurpation is all about. If it wasn't for the South this stupid country would be fully commie by now.

[central_va]

Post-Civil War America was under martial law for all intents and purposes. This led to a misapprehension of the legitimate relationship between Washington and the States. Federal power was flexed, and forever fixed in the American mind via vast Armies marching under a U.S. flag from State to State. America had a new national identity. The world still refered to America as “The States,” but the American People now saw themselves as U.S. citizens first, State citizens hardly at all. This national identity made us ripe for a national statism, which occurred as you said, 50 years later. If we had avoided war, and maintained the jurisdicitonal integrity of the States, regardless of any national iteration, the progressive movement would have been dead on arrival. The Civil War prepared America for the yoke of national statism.

Well stated.

[donmeaker]

Lincoln organiced the legal response to illegal rebellion in 1860, just as Washington organized the legal response3 to illegal rebellion in 1789.

[donmeaker]

So Lincoln was so pro slavery that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and supported the 13th Amendment.

He was opposed to the kind of slavery that southern slave holders wanted to establish: The kind that would have forced northern states to permit and support southern slavery.

The US government made war when necessary to put down an illegal rebellion, and only after being attacked. The southern traitors rebelled to support and extend the institution of human slavery, and made war when it was not necessary to support their illegal rebellion.

May all southern traitors rot in hell.

[donmeaker]

You claim there are two kinds of law, criminal and contract, and that criminal law requires a response, up to and including war.

What criminal act had Major Anderson performed that justified the southern initiation of war?

Rather, to prove my point, I would demand peace, and people who demand war because they can not win in court, or in the legislature should see more violence than they can stomach. and so it proved in that case.

There were no roadsided lined with gibbets at the end of the war. The deluded soldiers of the pretended confederacy merely had to go home and not make war. Exactly one confederate soldier was tried as a war criminal, and that was for the horrific prison camp at Andersonville. The rebels had murdered more US soldiers than that for the crime of being of African ancestry and daring to be a US soldier.

[donmeaker]

You must be so proud of yourself for taking your wife and daughters to the airport so they can be molested. Most people would try to keep their wife and daughters away from molestors. So proud you are of it, that you deliver them into evil.

Or perhaps at the airport you consented to the search.

[rockrr]

What is a Republic? Is it not a conglomeration of sovereigns, bound together, respecting each others jurisdiction, and supporting each other in times of war or national disaster?

Google: Dual Sovereignty

Are we not ostensibly a Constitutional Republic?

What a curious interrogatory from such a fount of wisdom. We're more than that: we're a Constitutional Republic in fact.

I know this is complex for the modern sensibility, which is trapped in the national paradigm, but at the present time the Republic is but a dying corpse, and sunshine patriots offer no hope in reviving it.

Yes, we mere mortals cannot possibly see above the trees to the heavens above, but somehow we muddle through, lol. Of course this begs the question; "If the republic is dying (as you suggest), what do you propose be done with the corpus?"

[HMS Surprise]

You ignore history because it doesn’t favor your fantasy world. Lincoln was without question willing to allow slavery to continue in order to win. But he was ambivalent, so he chose another gambit, which was pretending that he had the power to free them by proxy in order to create unrest. It was a war tactic, not an effort to help people that only months earlier he was willing to throw under the bus. What I am saying is historical truth, but somehow Lincoln has escaped into a wormhole and had been allowed a free pass on this issue. Lincoln was the traitor. He stood by as tens of thousands of Americans of every stripe slaughtered each other, and only cared to free the slaves when he thought that they may also somehow be employed to help with the carnage. Sorry Bud, lay it on the table and look at it for the first time in your life. Lincoln’s folly was an epic failure.

[HMS Surprise]

Don’t respond anymore, I won’t be reading any of your future posts. Talk to someone who finds you interesting for awhile.

[rockrr]

And he cedes the field...