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On Reconsidering the Southern Cause (Flag Thing)
Catholic World Report ^ | July 11, 2015 | James V. Schall, S.J.

Posted on 08/04/2015 2:23:36 PM PDT by publius911

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To: nathanbedford
I can think of no example in which it is more dangerous to generalize then when speaking about the motivations for The Second American Revolution. To deny that slavery was a major contributing cause, probably the major contributing cause is foolish but to deny that there were other motivations is equally foolish.

Well sure there is always more than one issue on anyone's mind, but there was no issue that was going to push the south to secession rather than slavery. I think losing our vote to vote fraud is worth rebellion, but I also hate progressive taxation. If there were to be a rebellion and a new constitutional convention I would hope that we would rid ourselves of progressive taxation that takes away so much prosperity and investment, but I wouldn't want the historians 150 years from now to say the rebellion was for a flat tax, when it was actually the loss of our vote.

The Southerners saw themselves acting in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers who broke from England and created a new nation which explicitly maintained slavery or at least the slave trade until 1807. After the civil rights movement of the twentieth century, we in the twenty-first century have difficulty putting ourselves into the mindset of a mid- 19th-century man who simply did not believe that children, women or Negroes should be franchised or had human rights. Once that belief is accepted, the South was fighting for home rule, indeed for democracy.

No, I will never accept that. We knew slavery was wrong in 1776, the south insisted on inserting it in the Constitution. Paul knew slavery was wrong and obsolete after the crucifixion of Jesus since God made all people clean who accept Jesus, and Paul inserted that into the Word, under God's direction, in circa 50AD. As I said on another thread, the 49ers knew slavery was wrong when southerners would take their slave with them to pan in the streams while they sat back. 1849 gold-panners were disgusted by this. No, most Americans didn't own slaves, and would never even consider taking a bullwhip to another human to pick their harvest. Most Americans would not steal a man's daughter and force her to the farm stud to get he best slave. We've known that is wrong in all our history. Democrats were in 1861 what they are now. Those same people who throw baby parts in a bag are the same people who whipped slaves and tried to beak up the country for it. They try to make slaves of all of us today by voting themselves money and power through vote fraud, creating an elite class that is not elite at all, but will be snuffed out by God Himself in the end.

When we so self righteously define the electorate to include women and African-Americans (but not children and, in some places, not non-citizens) we are imposing an understanding that did not exist in large parts of the nation in 1861. It is important to understand that it was a general proposition that did not exist in 1776 at the time of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence or in 1787 at the time of the Constitutional convention. In other words, as pointed out in my about page, the disenfranchisement of blacks was a matter of national consensus at the time of the Declaration of Independence and at the time of the Constitution.. Harriet Beecher Stowe contributed much to changing that consensus because she personalized the victims of slavery. But we ought to understand that the Constitution created in 1787 did not create a union without slavery because it was impossible to do so and have a union.

No, there were arguments by the south to include slavery in the Constitution. It was a controversy.

So if you will accord the people of the South in 1861 their consensus concerning who is to be enfranchised and therefore whom were to be regarded as persons which had inherent rights, their quest was to maintain a democracy and home rule free of foreign invasion and domination-A cause analogous in their minds to the cause of liberty in 1776 when the same definitional understandings applied.

No, they wanted to high profits of having another race to do their work. It was all profits. Where do you think the huge plantation houses came from? It was filthy lucre from the beginning. Northern farmers lived in farm houses, southern plantation owners lived in mansions.

How much of this thinking in 1861 was rationalization of the kind referred to by myself in the next preceding reply and how much was honestly wrought, I leave to the reader.

What you say is refuted by history itself. Lost causers like to post pictures of blacks who owned slaves. Now wait a minute, you say Americans didn't consider blacks real humans(which isn't true, very few Americans owned slaves!), so why then was it legal for a black to own a slave in the south? If it was generally accepted that a black was not fully human then there's no way the law would allow a black to have this right and to compete in the economy with white slave owners. The fact that a few blacks owned slaves means that blacks were considered human and if the circumstances were right they could participate as a white, blowing your "typical 1861 man" theory out of the water!

61 posted on 08/06/2015 9:26:20 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Pelham
Is that like when the Colonials declared war on Great Britain?

There was a long train of abuses that led to the American Revolution. There was no abuse before the Secession. The south committed all the abuses when they seceded. An orgy of stealing, firing in American troops at Sumter, declaring war.

62 posted on 08/06/2015 9:46:12 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Pelham
As did King George in 1775 when faced with American rebellion. The British announced two emancipation proclamations during the Revolution, Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775 and the Philipsburg Proclamation, of 1779. Had the British defeated the American secession movement slavery would have ended 90 years earlier. So do you think that Britain should have prevailed and kept their country whole as well?

I've always said the war was answered by the North to preserve the union. The union consisted of representation, we didn't have representation under Britain. Representation is the most important thing when there is a populace with integrity, so no, it's good Britain did not prevail.

63 posted on 08/06/2015 9:50:21 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
"There was no abuse before the Secession."

None except for the decades of abuse chronicled by historian Thomas Fleming in his A Disease in the Public Mind:A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War

"By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their campaign against Southern slave owners.

"This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson.

"This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson’s cry, “We are truly to be pitied,” summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities.

"By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union. "

64 posted on 08/06/2015 9:57:25 AM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Partisan Gunslinger

“I’ve always said the war was answered by the North to preserve the union.”

As did King George. The United States began in secession from the United Kingdom. The Crown waged war to force the Colonials to remain in that Union.


65 posted on 08/06/2015 10:02:05 AM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Pelham
"There was no abuse before the Secession." None except for the decades of abuse chronicled by historian Thomas Fleming in his A Disease in the Public Mind:A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War "By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their campaign against Southern slave owners. "This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. "This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson’s cry, “We are truly to be pitied,” summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities. "By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union. "

LOL! You call that abuse? Some people don't like other people from other parts of the country. That's not civil war material.

66 posted on 08/06/2015 10:09:46 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Pelham
As did King George. The United States began in secession from the United Kingdom. The Crown waged war to force the Colonials to remain in that Union.

Yep, and so it all boils down to the moral question. Representation was the founder's cause and is a moral cause, slavery was the south's cause as stated in their Declarations of Secession and is not moral.

67 posted on 08/06/2015 10:12:36 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: central_va

Interesting.


68 posted on 08/06/2015 11:05:08 AM PDT by Jane Austen (Recall Gov. Nikki Haley, aka Nimrata Randhawa)
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To: Pelham

There was no secession from the crown - the Colonialists declared open rebellion against the authority of Great Britain.


69 posted on 08/06/2015 1:03:09 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Partisan Gunslinger

“Yep, and so it all boils down to the moral question. Representation was the founder’s cause and is a moral cause, slavery was the south’s cause as stated in their Declarations of Secession and is not moral. “

And considering that the British issued two emancipation declarations during the war and were the legitimate government they were on the moral end of that fight?


70 posted on 08/06/2015 1:05:08 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Partisan Gunslinger

“LOL! You call that abuse? Some people don’t like other people from other parts of the country. That’s not civil war material.”

Interesting that you think that reading one brief publisher’s citation provides enough information to justify dismissing a book that you have yet to read.


71 posted on 08/06/2015 1:10:04 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: rockrr

“There was no secession from the crown - the Colonialists declared open rebellion against the authority of Great Britain.”

Laughable. The colonies seceded from the United Kingdom by declaring independence. You’ve tried this word game before.


72 posted on 08/06/2015 1:11:16 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Pelham

It’s only a “word game” if you feeeeeel that the meaning of words is fluid.


73 posted on 08/06/2015 1:18:27 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Pelham
Interesting that you think that reading one brief publisher’s citation provides enough information to justify dismissing a book that you have yet to read.

If this is any indication of the "objectivity" I can expect from his screed then yes - I know that I need read no further.

As Colonel Lee sat there, trying to absorb this astounding offer, what did he think and feel? What did he remember? From what we have seen of his life in this book, almost certainly the first memory was John Brown. That madman’s rant about sin of slavery and the blood that was required to wash it away, the pikes he had been prepared to put into the hands of enraged slaves, pikes that might have been thrust into the bodies of Lee’s daughters and wife, the letters in Brown’s carpetbag linking him to wealthy northern backers. Could he invade Virginia or any southern state at the head of an army composed of men who believed John Brown was as divine as Jesus Christ?

74 posted on 08/06/2015 1:25:58 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: rockrr

“It’s only a “word game” if you feeeeeel that the meaning of words is fluid.”

Well you certainly do since you’ve been trying to sell your own personal definition of secession for some time.


75 posted on 08/06/2015 1:26:27 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: rockrr

“If this is any indication of the “objectivity” I can expect from his screed then yes - I know that I need read no further.”

It hardly surprises me to find you avoiding a book.


76 posted on 08/06/2015 1:27:42 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Pelham

My personal definition that happens to be shared by everyone except lost causers.


77 posted on 08/06/2015 1:29:45 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: rockrr

“My personal definition that happens to be shared by everyone except lost causers.”

No, it’s just your usual attempt to limit the definition of ‘secession’ in a way that you think will help you with your argument. Sources not playing your word game define the word more broadly than you want to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession

Secession theorists have described a number of ways in which a political entity (city, county, canton, state) can secede from the larger or original state:

Secession from federation or confederation versus secession from a unitary state

Colonial “wars of independence” from a “mother country” or imperial state

National (seceding entirely from the national state) versus local (seceding from one entity of the national state into another entity of the same state)

Central (seceding entity is completely surrounded by the original state) versus peripheral (along a border of the original state)

Separation or partition (although an entity secedes, the rest of the state retains its structure) versus dissolution (all political entities dissolve their ties and create several new states)

Irredentism where secession is sought in order to annex the territory to another state because of common ethnicity or prior historical links

Minority (a minority of the population or territory secedes) versus majority (a majority of the population or territory secedes)

Secession of better off regions versus secession of worse off regions


78 posted on 08/06/2015 1:53:38 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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To: Pelham

Wow, wackypedia - I stand corrected ;’)

It’s interesting that they (like everyone else I’ve found) never refer to the Revolutionary War as anything other than a rebellion.


79 posted on 08/06/2015 5:55:54 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: rockrr
"It’s interesting that they (like everyone else I’ve found) never refer to the Revolutionary War as anything other than a rebellion."

The Colonials called it 'independence'.

However rebellion is the word that Lincoln chose for describing the southern States in his Emancipation Proclamation. His thinking paralleled the Crown's view of secession in 1776. Neither bought into the idea of self-determination.

The American Revolution is an inapt phrase, being a war for independence and not an attempt to overthrow society like in France and Russia. The American colonials had no desire to rule London. They simply wanted to split off and govern themselves. Secession. In the same fashion the Deep South sought to split off and had no designs on the North.

80 posted on 08/06/2015 7:38:10 PM PDT by Pelham (Deo Vindice)
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