Posted on 03/10/2013 8:19:44 AM PDT by BroJoeK
Ha! Well, I don't know how many of these to take seriously.
Some sound like our Southern FRiends are just pulling st*ff out of their... posteriors to throw at us.
;-)
How’d it work out for you? Enjoying King Obama the First?
Not at all. But what does he have to do with anything?
Since the Southern Slave Power in Congress and the Presidency set tariff rates however they wanted them, tariffs were not the reason for secession.
Protecting slavery was the reason.
I thought you were going to go out and find that wondrous law which amazingly says that just because you and your buddies get together and declare your "secession", suddenly, magically, by the power invested in WHO, all Federal property suddenly becomes yours.
That's such an amazing law, I can't understand why nobody's ever found it. LOL ;-)
Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark ;-)
It’s called the constitution. :)
JCBreckenridge: "It’s called the constitution. :)"
Well then, FRiend, don't hold back!
Tell us the Article and Section where all that is spelled out.
I've never seen it, but maybe I missed something?
;-)
I know, cv hates when I do that, but I only do it when he starts getting nasty with me.
;-)
JCBreckenridge post #597: "Then why is the Union permitted to steal property from teh confederates?"
The only stealing that went on before May 6, 1861 was secessionist forces stealing dozens of Federal properties (forts, armories, arsenals, ships, mints, etc.) and threatening Union officials, all over the Confederacy.
But once the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861), then US forces began (May 23) to liberate Confederate human "contraband property" -- which (who) escaped into Union protection in ever increasing numbers.
You're right, I don't understand it.
In all those years I lived in Germany, only once met a German with a nostalgia for the old reich, and even he didn't seem to hold a grudge against Americans.
But I do know how Southern Appalachian mountain people feel about their low-lander and flat-lander cousins -- they don't like the (cv's term) "haughty bastards".
I doubt if many hillbillies want to shoot at flat-landers, but they sure don't want to be bullied by the Southern equivalent of (another poster's term) "Yankee self-righteousness."
So, while cv and others here get all riled up about some supposed New England cultural pretentiousness, they don't themselves do so much to "win friends and influence people" in their own back yards, it seems.
;-)
Nuff said. You hate the United States. I'm sure there are better places on the net where you could hang out with like minded prople. But FreeRepublic is not that place.
The same clauses that permitted the 13 colonies themselves to rebel from Britain. If the British treated the colonies like Lincoln treated the south, we’d all be British today.
The forts of the north were not their exclusive property to dispose of as they saw fit.
So you admit that the Southern actions were a rebellion?
If the British treated the colonies like Lincoln treated the south, we’d all be British today.
By that do you mean that in 1776 the Colonists fell strongly enough about their cause to win their rebellion and in 1861 the Southerners didn't feel strongly enough about their cause to do the same?
They weren't going to follow a constitutional or congressional procedure that might eventually result in a dissolution of the union by common consent. In their own minds they had to perform the act themselves. As one of the few women posters here commented, it was a manhood or courage or testosterone thing.
Dissolution of the union by a breakaway state without federal consent was something no president could consent to, all the more so since the rebel leaders were trying to break off as many (slave-owning) states as they could, which would result in the capital itself being surrounded or annexed by a hostile power.
Lincoln (or any other president) could have presided over a dissolution of the union if it were achieved at the federal level through common consent, but couldn't accept a breakdown of the union by subversive or seditious forces acting in the states without federal input and consent. It would look like cowardice or appeasement in the face of anarchy or aggression, and there were important matters to be decided before any parting.
For one thing, there was the question of whether the procedures in the seceding states actually were valid and representative of the popular will. And there was the question of what to do with Southern unionists and areas that wished to remain inside the union.
It was also not out of place that the US might want to retain for national security purposes some military installations it had been given. You could think of that as part of the price of independence, a minor concession to achieve a larger goal. But if you still think it was just to seize all federal property in your territories as a cockeyed compensation for the common federal property you "lost" when you ran away, you probably won't.
One could make a comparison to the Irish Civil War. With 90 years hindsight we know that Ireland was all but independent when the war broke out. All they needed to do was consent to the King's portrait on money and stamps and a do-nothing Governor General (and of course, the partition) and wait until they could eventually make independence a formality.
Michael Collins accepted this. De Valera didn't. So there was war. Collins was killed. His side won. De Valera was eventually elected and, in time, declared independence. My parallel with our own civil war is that pride and emotionality may have gotten the better of wisdom and restraint (though plenty of Irish people would disagree).
Contrast both civil wars with civil disobedience movements like Gandhi's in South Africa and India, or Martin Luther King's in the US and similar movements in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. They accepted the authorities de facto. That is, whether or not they thought the government was legally legitimate or justly entitled to hold power over them, they accepted that it was in fact in power. Then they tried to make such a nuisance of themselves that the government would eventually throw up its hands and give them what they desired -- equality, desegregation, or independence.
We also have the developing law of enclaves and exclaves: Hong Kong, Macao, West Berlin, Guantanamo. A change in status in the surrounding territory didn't affect their status. This was largely because the countries occupying the enclaves had great military might, but still we do have the example now. And the example of Canada, which set conditions for a possible exit of Quebec.
Clearly the secessionist leaders didn't have these examples before them, and they were influenced by the American Revolution (wrong-headedly but influenced none the less), but I'd have to call them a very poor example of how to achieve political ends. They were more impatient, wrathful, domineering than they should have been.
Some people say that as slave owners the leaders of the movement couldn't whole-heartedly appeal to liberty. I don't know if that's true, but certainly there was too much of the master in their approach. Sometimes you have to give a little -- to make largely formal concessions, to bend the knee a bit -- in order to achieve large goals, and this they were not able to do. Their loss, I guess. But at least we shouldn't act like there wasn't a lesson to be learned in that.
“They weren’t going to follow a constitutional or congressional procedure that might eventually result in a dissolution of the union by common consent”
Sez who? Lincoln? Not so. The confederacy was perfectly happy (and would vastly prefer peaceful secession). Lincoln said that wasn’t an option so war it was.
“So you admit that the Southern actions were a rebellion?”
The declaration permits the dissolution of common authority to preserve individual liberty in the face of tyranny.
You can argue that the South was misguided, but you cannot argue they did not have the authority, as free men and free people, to do what they did attempt.
Too much tit for tat makes you a twit and a tw*t. Turning sensible points around to make nonsensical arguments makes you look foolish.
You can't claim to be in and out. You can't claim that you aren't part of the union and claim that forts and courthouses in other states are your "property" in the way that they would be if you were in the union.
In the unionists' view, though, those forts and courthouses were still your "property" and ours, because you were in fact still a part of the union. So even if guns were pointed at you, they were still your guns.
Your representatives in Congress have a say in what's done with them, so long as they get their *sses back to Washington, and your soldiers can use the guns so long as they serve in the national ranks. Happy now?
Is that a yes or a no?
You can argue that the South was misguided, but you cannot argue they did not have the authority, as free men and free people, to do what they did attempt.
It is a God given right to rebel for any reason, or no reason at all as the case may be. But having taken that path don't blame anyone but yourself if you lose.
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