Posted on 06/26/2015 2:08:52 PM PDT by maddog55
The imaginary one in which the Southern states seceded before their favored candidates lost the national elections, or the real ones in which they seceded in a fit of pique immediately after?
Look, the furor over the Confederate battle flag is hysterical and opportunistic, but spare us the ridiculous revisionism.
I'll ask the question I ask you folks every time and wait for the inevitable lack of a specific answer: what specific "state right" was the federal government violating so egregiously that the Southern states simply had to secede?
Quick constitutional lesson: commerce with other nations is regulated at a federal level and is not a state power. Even though tariffs had nothing to do with the Civil War whatsoever, they are usually adduced as a fig leaf.
The opening paragraph of the state of Georgia’s Declaration of the Causes of Secession.
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to rdeprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation.
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html
Thanks widey. The Conefderates were not Nazis, but my Unionist ancestors and the Republican party were not Communist either.
But seriously, widey . . . the liberals are pushing for CWII with the rebel flag hung around the neck of every person who believes in G-d's Commandments.
Slavery meant child to grave "supervision" for the black population which were considered like children. Sorry that the way it was.
Slavery was the the traditional "normal" situation. 'Wideawake' abolitionists were considered crazy.
Yet by paragraph two they’re all over Lincoln and the Republican party being the party of abolition. If it wasn’t about Lincoln, or slavery, then why are both mentioned so prominently and so often?
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address,Saturday, March 4, 1865
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html
Agitating again?Did Valerie train you in your tactics?
Picky, Picky, the overall intent was good and you know it!!
Starting to lose sight of exactly what’s wrong with “racism”. Does racism keep you from having your toddler assaulted in the park? Is that what’s wrong with it? Toddlers should be attacked?
I always thought it meant the fight for state’s rights!
Yep, by Jove, I think he’s got it!
The toad is waaay too smart for books.
Nor do I think the Union was morally blameless over the question of slavery. Far from it.
However, as a descendant of Union veterans, I do not buy into the fiction of the supposed "justice" of the rebellion any more than I buy into the politically correct national flash mob.
Which specific “states right” would that be?
They demand total adherence to their Lost Cause ideology and nothing less.
No sale.
The feds were charging large tariffs on all goods and raw material going into and exporting from the South.
Well if it isn't the anti-Rhett Butler.
Oh I agree his intent is good even if his article is...factually and grammatically challenged.
Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States
(unless otherwise noted, all data is as of the 1860 census)
Total number of slaves in the Lower South : 2,312,352 (47% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208758 (29% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population).
Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina it approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes). As for the number of slaves owned by each master, 88% held fewer than twenty, and nearly 50% held fewer than five. (A complete table on slave-owning percentages is given at the bottom of this page.)
For comparison’s sake, let it be noted that in the 1950’s, only 2% of American families owned corporation stocks equal in value to the 1860 value of a single slave. Thus, slave ownership was much more widespread in the South than corporate investment was in 1950’s America.
On a typical plantation (more than 20 slaves) the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements.
Slavery was profitable, although a large part of the profit was in the increased value of the slaves themselves. With only 30% of the nation’s (free) population, the South had 60% of the “wealthiest men.” The 1860 per capita wealth in the South was $3,978; in the North it was $2,040.
Slavery was an auxiliary/side issue and not the main issue.
Only 2% of the South were actual slave owners too. Unlike how it has been depicted by government schools (aka public schools) or in Hollywood movies.
The war was more about the expansion out West.
Robert E Lee was over West Point Military Academy prior to the war. He did not agree with Slavery, but was loyal to his home state Virginia.
That is what people today do not understand is loyalty to their home state. Your home State was like your country while the Feds was the weaker Union. Primarily there as servants to the State and the people. It's roll was to keep our Rights secured and from military invasion.
A good case in point today, to compare it to 1860, is the E.U. today. Most Europeans in the E.U. are loyal to their home country, especially the military, and not so much to the European Union.
The States had a lot more power too. The U.S. Senate belonged to the States while the House of Representatives belonged to the people. In the last 10 days I have seen a massive erosion of State Rights. Championed by the controlled media.
Today's generation does not understand that. They only think more of the Feds and not their States Sovereignty, individual Sovereignty where our Rights are recognized. Thanks to our Creator, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Magna Carta and the Renaissance period.
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