Posted on 03/10/2013 8:19:44 AM PDT by BroJoeK
Ten Neo-Confederate Myths (+one)
In fact, a study of the earliest secessionists documents shows, when they bother to give reasons at all, their only major concern was to protect the institution of slavery.
For example, four seceding states issued "Declarations of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify Secession from the Federal Union".
These documents use words like "slavery" and "institution" over 100 times, words like "tax" and "tariff" only once (re: a tax on slaves), "usurpation" once (re: slavery in territories), "oppression" once (re: potential future restrictions on slavery).
So secession wasn't just all about slavery, it was only about slavery.
In fact, secessionists biggest real complaint was that Washington was not doing enough to enforce fugitive slave laws in Northern states.
Mississippi's Declaration is instructive since it begins by explaining why slavery is so important:
It goes on to complain that the Federal Government is not enforcing its own Fugitive Slave laws, saying that anti-slavery feeling:
In fact, the Compromise of 1850 shifted responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws from northern states to the Federal Government, so this complaint amounts to a declaration that Washington is not powerful enough.
In fact, no where in the Founders' literature is the 10th Amendment referenced as justifying unilateral, unapproved secession "at pleasure".
Instead, secession (or "disunion") is always seen as a last resort, requiring mutual consent or material usurpations and oppression.
For example, the Virginia Ratification Statement says:
James Madison explained it this way:
"It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact.
Applying this view of the subject to a single community, it results, that the compact being between the individuals composing it, no individual or set of individuals can at pleasure, break off and set up for themselves, without such a violation of the compact as absolves them from its obligations."
In fact, the 1860 Republican platform only called for restricting slavery from territories where it did not already exist.
And Lincoln repeatedly said he would not threaten slavery in states where it was already legal.
In fact, neither out-going President Buchanan nor incoming President Lincoln did anything to stop secessionists from declaring independence and forming a new Confederacy.
And Buchanan did nothing to stop secessionists from unlawfully seizing Federal properties or threatening and shooting at Federal officials.
Nor did Lincoln, until after the Confederacy started war at Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) and then formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
In fact, no Confederate soldier was killed by any Union force, and no Confederate state was "invaded" by any Union army until after secessionists started war at Fort Sumter and formally declared war on May 6, 1861.
The first Confederate soldier was not killed directly in battle until June 10, 1861.
In fact, from Day One, Confederacy was an assault on the United States, and did many things to provoke and start, then formally declared war on the United States.
From Day One secessionists began to unlawfully seize dozens of Federal properties (i.e., forts, armories, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), often even before they formally declared secession.
At the same time, they illegally threatened, imprisoned and fired on Federal officials -- for example, the ship Star of the West attempting to resupply Fort Sumter in January 1861 -- then launched a major assault to force Sumter's surrender, while offering military support for secessionist forces in a Union state (Missouri) .
And all of that was before formally declaring war on the United States.
After declaring war, the Confederacy sent forces into every Union state near the Confederacy, and some well beyond.
Invaded Union states & territories included:
In every state or territory outside the Confederacy proper, Confederate forces both "lived off the land" and attempted to "requisition" supplies to support Confederate forces at home.
Secessionists also assaulted the United states by claiming possession of several Union states and territories which had never, or could never, in any form vote to seceed.
So bottom line: the Confederacy threatened every Union state and territory it could reach.
In fact, there are remarkably few records of civilians murdered or raped by either side, certainly as compared to other wars in history.
But "pillaging" is a different subject, and both sides did it -- at least to some degree.
The Union army was generally self-sufficient, well supplied from its own rail-heads, and seldom in need to "live off the land."
In four years of war, the best known exceptions are Grant at Vicksburg and Sherman's "march to the sea".
In both cases, their actions were crucial to victory.
By contrast, Confederate armies were forced to "live off the land" both at home and abroad.
Yes, inside the Confederacy itself, armies "paid" for their "requisitions" with nearly worthless money, but once they marched into Union states and territories, their money was absolutely worthless, and so regardless of what they called it, their "requisitions" were no better than pillaging.
Perhaps the most famous example of Confederate pillaging, it's often said, cost RE Lee victory at the Battle of Gettysburg: while Lee's "eyes and ears" -- J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry -- was out pillaging desperately needed supplies in Maryland and Pennsylvania, Lee was partially blind to Union movements and strengths.
In fact, only one crime is defined in the US Constitution, and that is "treason".
The Constitution's definition of "treason" could not be simpler and clearer:
The Constitution also provides for Federal actions against "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence", "invasion" declared war and treason.
So Pro-Confederate arguments that "there was no treason" depend first of all on the legality of secession.
If their secession was lawful, then there was no "treason", except of course among those citizens of Union states (i.e., Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri) which "adhered to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort".
But the bottom line is this: in previous cases -- i.e., the Whiskey Rebellion -- once rebellion was defeated, rebels were all released or pardoned by the President of the United States.
And that pattern, first established by President Washington, was followed under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson.
In fact, lawful secession by mutual consent could be 100% constitutional, if representatives submitted and passed such a bill in Congress, signed by the President.
Alternatively, states could bring suit in the United States Supreme Court for a material breach of contract and have the Federal government declared an "oppressive" or "usurping" power justifying secession.
But Deep-South slave-holders' unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession, without any material breach of contract issues, followed by insurrection and a declaration of war on the United States -- these our Founders clearly understood were acts of rebellion and treason -- which the Constitution was designed to defeat.
That leads to the larger question of whether our Pro-Confederates actually respect the Constitution as it was intended or, do they really wish for a return to those far looser, less binding -- you might even say, 1960s style "free love" marriage contract -- for which their union was named: the Articles of Confederation?
But consider: the Confederacy's constitution was basically a carbon copy of the US Constitution, emphasizing rights of holders of human "property".
So there's no evidence that Confederate leaders were in any way more tolerant -- or "free love" advocates -- regarding secession from the Confederacy than any Union loyalist.
Then what, precisely, does the allegation of "statism" mean?
The truth is, in this context, it's simply one more spurious insult, and means nothing more than, "I don't like you because you won't agree with me."
Poor baby... ;-)
Plus, one "bonus" myth:
No, no, no way...
Yes, FDR could be the O-man's political daddy, and his political mother those 1960s radicals like, well, his mother.
And one of his grandparents is well known: his intellectual maternal grandpa is Karl Marx.
But the other grandpa is certainly not Lincoln.
Rather, it is Lincoln's evil doppelganger, the other tall thin President born in Kentucky: Jefferson Davis.
How can that be?
Well, here's my list -- both Obama and Davis are/were:
Who set that exchange rate?
“If the Democrats and other anti-Republican forces had gotten behind a single candidate and Lincoln had lost those three states but carried the rest, he would still have won the election, and there could have been a situation where a candidate with under 40% of the popular vote won the electoral college and the election.”
And that was my point. The south saw that this was the case, CA and OR notwithstanding.
Yes, Lincoln broke laws. “Union never formally declared war.”
What do we call invasions conducted without a formal declaration of war?
Declare war on who? The United States? You declare war on other countries and not rebellious parts of your own.
But since you're on the subject, if it really considered itself a sovereign nation then shouldn't the Confederacy have declared war on the U.S. before attacking Fort Sumter?
Hood was bothe a zealot and of fool IMHO. If you ask me what his plan was, I'd say it was kind of like a Hail Mary pass in the closing minutes of a football game. The Confederates knew they were losing and damn well needed som 'spectaluar victory' to change the tide. That is all assuming that Hood was a sane and rational commander. There are people who could question that opinion as well after his battle wound and his reliance on 'pain killing' drugs.
At any rate, he did manage to destroy a signifincantly large percent of the Confederate army in his futile attempt to get to the Ohio which never had a chance of success. This was all after Jefferson Davis fired their best commender, Johnston and put Hood in his place.
As to Clayborn, I don't know. He may have been the smartest of all of them, but he did not survive to tell his stories and he pissed a lot of very powerful people off by advocating arming slaves.
100% correct. Lincoln posed absolutely no threat to slavery in the South as it existed at that time. But by promising to block further expansion of slavery to the territories, he did put a knife to the throat of the Slave Power. I don't know if Lincoln, or most anti-slave people in the North at the time fully understood that threat. It was a combination of demographics and finance. To people in the South who really understood the economics of the slave system, Lincoln's humble plan to keep slavery isolated where it existed was like a nuclear weapon pointed at them... both exonomically and socially.
Slavery, by the year 1840 had ceased being a labor system. It was a massive Ponzi scheme. That was it's biggest and only real value. It was so not much the value of the labor which they provided. That labor was considerable, but could have also been provided by free labor. The real value was the slaves themselves on an open market, and not just the current slaves, but their children, grandchildren etc.
This encouraged slave owners to treat them as cattle and the more calves born the more they could sell at some future date if the need may arise. They could and did collateral their slaves, and in the event of some economic downfall, they could sell them off.
It was a very different kind of slavery than existed in the Colonial ear. People literally were property that could be bought, sold or collateralized. The economy of the South then depended just as much on the value of slaves as it did on the price of cotton.
If the market for new slaves became geographically restricted, as Lincoln promised, the slave owners would both lose the value of their existing 'property' because of over supply. In states like South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama, they would have been soon hopelessly outnumbered by slaves and children of slaves within one or two generations.
The Civil War did not start about slavery itself. It was argument over the Expansion of Slaverythat created the war. The North basically said we have had enough of that expansion... do what you want in your own states, but we don't want it anywhere else. They, I think, did that without fully understanding the economics of slavery and why continual expansion was a necessity to keep the slave society going.
For the Southern power structure, expansion of slavery was not just some political abstract... it was a mortal necessity. Without expansion their wealth and society would implode upon them. Expansion of slavery for them was not an option, it was an absolute necessity.
There is a bill floating around in the Pennsylvania legislature right now to assign electoral votes by congressional districts with the two senate votes going to the state wide popular vote winner. If that had been the case last election, Romney would have had at lest half the electoral votes in the state. Big cities vs. suburbs vs. ex-burbs vs. rural. I do know that Obama and the Democrats are isolated at least geographically in very small enclaves.
Needless to say, the Philadelphia delegation and their numerous dead voters are very much opposed to that idea. ;~))
Normally I'd stop with your words "I agree", and let it go with that, especially since the thrust of your comment is correct -- our current "Progressive Era" really got off the ground in FDR's New Deal.
But that would not have been possible without groundwork laid during the Wilson administration, 1912 to 1920, a hundred years ago -- the three major tools being the 16th & 17th Amendments, plus the Federal Reserve.
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt's administration (1901 - 1909) also gets a "fair share" of criticism.
However, when it comes to "Progressivism" as we understand it today, TR was the opposite of "talk softly, but carry a big stick".
Bottom line: except when paying for wars, the US Federal Government consumed roughly 2.5% of GDP from the administration of George Washington until the beginning of Woodrow Wilson's.
Then, as a gusher of revenues from the 16th Amendment arrived, the government began to grow, and has never looked back since.
Last time I checked it is around 24% and still growing.
You have to wonder if shop keepers in Pennsylvania in 1863 had ever even seen Confederate money, and knew what the exchange rate was -- or how far they would have to travel to find some bank to exchange it?
And might all that hassle make them a little grumpy?
But I keep telling you, you won't have that problem today.
We're friendly people, we like visitors and we'll take anybody's money, especially plastic.
Big doings around here in July, you know...
;-)
JCBreckenridge: "And that was my point.
The south saw that this was the case, CA and OR notwithstanding."
I don't agree, I think a united Democrat candidate in 1860 had a fighting chance, for the same reason that they had won in 1856: many people, then as now, vote for the party they think will win.
Plus, in those days Democrats were the "fusion party", uniting Free and Slave states.
Before 1860, to vote Democrat was to vote for the Union.
But, once Democrats split, North versus South, they were obviously neither the majority nor the "party of union".
Therefore many Democrats switched to Republicans, or in the Upper South to John Bell's Constitutional Union ticket.
You can see this clearly in the Pennsylvania vote, where Democrats lost 35,000 votes, Republicans picked up those votes and carried the state.
And the vote was still close enough in other 1856 Democrat states to give a united ticked a fighting chance to win.
That's why I say, in 1860 Democrats committed political suicide, under the direction of Southern Fire Eaters, who engineered Lincoln's election for the purpose of justifying secession in the minds of average white Southerners.
The situation for the South was a lot like that gunowners face today. Gun-grabbers claim they only want reasonable controls added now, but make no real attempt to hide their ultimate goal of grabbing all guns.
So do us gun nuts fight them now, or slide a little farther down the slippery slope first?
A Republican Congress and President could have quite easily and constitutionally put a major crimp into slavery simply by banning interstate commerce in slaves, even between slave states. Breaking up the market that way would have pretty much destroyed the value of the slaves, especially in the Upper South, where there were more than needed.
They, I think, did that without fully understanding the economics of slavery and why continual expansion was a necessity to keep the slave society going.
I think FDR did much the same with the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. The sanctions he imposed would eventually cripple the Japanese military and economy. Yet to meet the conditions required to lift the sanctions would also mean their (even quicker) crippling.
So he basically gave the Japanese leaders a choice between returning to 3rd-class power status, more or less abandoning their empire, and making a desperate attempt to preserve their empire by war.
I don't think FDR was fully aware of the choice he was forcing on them. America has never faced such a stark choice.
Except that I think the South faced a similar decision point in 1860. They had a choice between long, slow decline and eventual destruction of their way of life, and a chance for its survival by means of war.
I think both the South in 1860 and the Japs in 1941 made the wrong decision. But I believe they saw themselves as having no real choice.
This would not hold true for Sherman's torches. The only people the knew were the GA militia.
“I don’t agree, I think a united Democrat candidate in 1860 had a fighting chance.”
That’s not what the electoral numbers say. Go, look up the birth state of presidents from Grant onwards and you’ll see the point.
That would be the current crop of the completely “flipped” politics from lincoln’s time, and appealing to the “white guilt” repubs— but it does not wash with Southern conservatives. Democrats, N and South were always on the federal money bandwagon to milk the money-even as they contained it. A continuous Progressive line from the “anti-slavery” post-Lincoln (after Stanton et al murdered him-an opinion) right through to FDR then to LBJ and Great Society. DC elites always invoke lincoln when the SHTF. But recall they also tried to paint this useful idiot obamaumao as 1.)Reagan, and 2.) FDR and even a little Teddy R! before they made him lincoln to punch all the right racialist buttons, with Spielberg/Hollywood help. Commies everyone of them. LOL!
You see, the issue was always labor capital (and who would provide it) and it was a change in plantation owners which was envisioned and intended by the Union— the growing industrial oligarchs (railroads, carpetbaggers, thieves, scalawags, liars) who were to shape the West and beyond AND they wanted to control the agricultural South. And they did- and what did the South get for their ruination? The logical conclusion to all this as these powers moved to a “globalist” frontier, would be to put everyone who remains on the gubmint plantation, in lieu of actually keeping our production in the US, and make EVERYONE dependent for a vote, and anything to maintain power in the one enslaving party— a ruling class.
For example: The entire intent of amnesty for illegals is to continue to fund the ponzi social security apparatus for a “non-working” lazy elite, by bringing in yet another labor class to milk (assumedly Mexican, but back in the 1870s it was chinese coolies and Irish). Oh, and also provide money to the bankrupted (by the same elite) social security trust fund and its IOUS— which w/out the illegals fake SS contributions would have already busted.
The mackdaddy obamaumao is the monkey to the globalist/Progressive organ grinders (and, you may recall the monkey had the tin cup for “donations”).
We must ALL resist and not rise to this sophistic “MEME” you have posted— it’s purpose is diversionary, and part of an oft-used tactic of the Comintern (the black-white schism MUST be maintained to continue the chaos of Cloward-Piven, and not keep our eye on the real events)especially through the elite ivy league “history” departments, with tenured indoctrinated useful idiots.
Want to fight this new “slavery”? Then resist— find common ground with black and white, and all who love Freedom, true conservatives (cultural, financial, social). People who refuse dependency over FREEDOM. That coalition is one the socialists fear the most. Refuse the Statists, and de-fund them.
Deo Vindice.
As i say- will be interesting to read the new information in June, documented— for balance to Hood. Included is his detailed medication records from the CSA surgeon (said to show he was NOT a laudanum addict). These were desperate times, and communications were abysmal. The written communications will shed some light on this hopefully.
Hood was being told what to do by Davis, who also had serious altercations with Johnston (and one cannot discount the politics of Johnston’s replacement with R.E. Lee who had Hood as Division commander under Longstreet in Army of NVA, Hood having prior served as a brigadier under Johnston in the Peninsula campaign, and Johnston severely wounded at Seven Pines). Lot of interwoven parts and politics.
One of the most interesting things to realize is that the largest city in the South was New Orleans— and yet Montgomery, AL was removed as Capitol of the South. The true money power was New Orleans. But the Virginians, who were late to secede— had the proximity to Washington, as a pressure point for military strategy. And poor Hood and his wife and one child died of yellow fever in New Orleans and left 10 other orphaned children. Truly a tragic ending.
Cleburne was a native Irishman who wanted to be a doctor in Ireland, emigrated to Arkansas and became a lawyer—and a brave man whose blood was up. If he had not
stormed the abatis and survived— imagine his impact post war. His is also, quite a story and sad.
I think it's likely that the fire-eaters did recognize that the party split would doom the Democrats chances and the resulting Republican victory would spark secession. Another thing to take into account, though, was the possibility that no candidate would win a majority of electoral votes. In that case, the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. Each state would have only one vote.
Since there were almost as many slave states as free states and the Breckenridge faction was strong in states like Oregon and California, the Southern Democrats might have seen some hope in this. If the election did go to the House and Breckenridge prevailed with a minority of the popular vote we would likely have seen a very different commotion and uproar in 1860 from what happened in our own timeline.
I'm pretty sure, that the House of Representatives scenario occurred to some of the Constitutional Unionists (the John Bell supporters). Their party was positioned where the cooler heads in Congress (if any remained) could be expected to converge. I always considered Bell's bunch a no-hope fourth party, but if you think of them as the remnant of the conservative and Southern Whigs or as the successors to the American Party (the Know-Nothings) then they were actually the third party. Fillmore had won over 20% of the vote in 1856 and Bell's prospects might have looked even brighter if things came together for him.
Faced with a situation where no candidate would get a majority of the popular vote (or even perhaps of the electoral vote, leaving the election would be decided in the Senate) the Democrats splitting their own party doesn't look quite so crazy as it otherwise might. I mean, it was crazy for them to do so, but not quite as crazy as it would appear at first. And those were crazy times, and crazy people were in politics then.
Lincoln's nomination did a lot to prevent this possibility. It was a brilliant gamble. Brilliant, because nominating a candidate from Douglas's own state meant that the Republicans would have a fighting chance in the West. They could beat Douglas in his own region and possibly lock him out of the electoral college. If Seward or another Easterner had been nominated it would have been possible for Republicans to carry the Northeast and lose the Old Northwest to Douglas, and that would have made a congressional resolution much more likely. But it was a gamble because there was no guarantee that the unknown Lincoln would win either region.
Also, regional politics played an important role. Lincoln checked Douglas in his own region and handily carried the Northeast.
If Seward had been nominated, a Democrat could have picked up votes in the Old Northwest. With Southern votes such a Democrat could have won. Conversely, a New Yorker like Seymour just possibly could have beaten Lincoln.
I guess my point is here.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft.
9 presidents, from 1868 to 1912, everyone of them were from NY or Ohio.
Failed candidates:
Parker (New York), Seymour (Ohio), Greeley (New York), Tilden (New York),
Bryan (Illinois), Hancock (Pennsylvania), Blaine (Pennsylvania),
Life was truly tougher back then which we must consider when making judgments on those ancestors. Even though this all happened a century and a half ago, they were just people just was we are.
But what a fascinating time for us history buffs to explore. And I'm sure (at least I hope) that there will never be an end to our arguments since that would mean that no one even gives a **** anymore. :~))
Would have been a great time to buy real estate in Washington DC. All the government (and the number of government employees) has done since then is to grow biger and bigger.
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