Posted on 03/26/2002 10:38:41 PM PST by kattracks
He did?
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ... That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ...
But wait - I'm sure you mean the phrase "all men are created equal" don't you? What did Lincoln say?
"What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we know that those of the great mass of white people will not."
Abraham Lincoln, Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas, (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co., 1897), "First Joint Debate at Ottawa", 21 Aug 1858, p. 138.
"But even when you cease to be slaves you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours."
Abraham Lincoln, New York Daily Tribune, “The Colonization of People of African Descent" (a speech to a delegation of blacks at the White House given 14 Aug 1862), 15 Aug 1962, p. 1.
Sorry. Lincoln did NOT fight for the Union to preserve the true ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
I guess my own personal opinion is as follows. It is clear to me that the slavery issue was of KEY importance. But it wasn't the only cause. I think tariffs were of importance as well. Aristocratic slave owners and some southern politicians left the union because of slavery. This is wrong and Lincoln's cause was just in this respect.
However, many other southern citizens and politicians left because of taxation (the tariff). In this case, the southern case has more merit.
Personally, I do not agree with Libertarians on every issue. I am a conservative and thus I believe in the rule of law and a strong but not overbearing federal government.
I do however symphatize with libertarian arguements over the right to succession. I disagree that it should be absolute. If Oregon left the union because they wanted to leagalize property theft, then the fed's have a moral obligation to step in a prevent people from getting hurt. However, the reverse can be true and if the Federal government is seizing property from Oregon, then they have a right to leave the union.
PS-I dont hate Lincoln. But I do think that the civil war needs a lot more discussion and debate
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends
And on your second point, you might trouble yourself to read Lincoln for yourself, instead of the cut and paste of those interested only in attacking him. He defined his understanding of equality with clarity, as in the following passage from the last Lincoln Douglas debate:
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects . They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity.
They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal---equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
There again are the sentiments I have expressed in regard to the Declaration of Independence upon a former occasion---sentiments which have been put in print and read wherever anybody cared to know what so humble an individual as myself chose to say in regard to it.
Deprivation of the People of a State of their status as a People with sovereignty isn't neutral at all. It deprecates their rights and depreciates their humanity by making them fit only to be thralls of your majoritarian and imperial system.
And I had thought that your argument in # 306 was meant to be universal, not grounded in specific American history. If I am wrong, we can return to American Principle, and leave abstract speculation aside.
False dichotomy. It's both. I speak in generalities of such basic ideas as that of a Sovereign.......and so you say that I am not speaking to American history, that I am vaporing and off-topic. And yet I very much have American history in mind, which you are at pains to show that my comments must not address, since they are "abstract speculation" and are therefore surd when in fact they are germane. I raised a powerful argument, and you reply with distractions.
I insist that Locke and the founders thought rebellion just, not "at will," but when reasonably shown to be in accord with the laws of nature and of nature's God.
I don't doubt that they did. It remains then for you to show that the Civil War was a trifling affair, over a piffling argument, for you to say that you own all the right, and that so many Southerners must have been wrong -- they disagreed with you. But you will have trouble selling me, or any Southerner, that argument. Half a million dead isn't a trifling affair, and the gravity of the South's commitment to her freedom shows your Unionist apologists to be liars on this point, when they say the South seceded for a slight cause.
Princes, or governments, rightly resist rebellion when it is not just, and a rebellion to perpetuate and extend human slavery is plainly not just.
There you go again, laying hands on Sovereignty and the right to say what is just, and what is not. Who do you think you are?
The fact of the matter is, that it was for the sovereign People of each State -- and not you -- to make that determination. You cannot gainsay them, even after the fact, no more than you can go out into the street, shoot someone dead, and make him the wrongdoer after the fact by wickedly overcoming him. That is what Lincoln did. The formal name, of course, is teleology.
Though we had a mixed regime, with residual state sovereignty, there was, in fact, a compact to make a national government, in a limited sense. That government was, in its sphere, supreme.
And the core of your Unionist argument is that its sphere was illimitable, untouchable, and wholly owned by you. That its sphere extended to telling the Peoples of the several States what their sphere was, or wasn't. Not so -- that is what the Constitution mapped out.
1. The Constitution was amended by the Bill of Rights.
2. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments explicitly reserved to the States, the People, and to individual all powers not granted the federal government, and all liberties not enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And that included the right of revolution, which the Southerners exercised upon a dire provocation of over 30 years' standing -- a series of provocations that called to their attention, however belatedly, that the United States comprised not one nation, but two. Which they corrected, in order to avoid being abused by the anticonstitutional, revolutionary Unionist faction, whose champion sought to rewrite the Constitution without the Tenth Amendment.
Your use of the word "residual" to describe State sovereignty is a weasel-word. Their sovereignty was basic, it was foundational, it was fundamental. Of course you deprecate it, because your entire theory of government depends on it. Control of a central government versus a limited one, a great prize of politics, and beyond it the sunny uplands of illimitable power -- the power of a central government that had slipped its traces by weasel-wording a few key phrases in the American political vocabulary, like Orwell's Squealer with his paint-pot and ladder, in the middle of the night. All of that was at stake, and for the sake of being able to set the policies that would develop that wealth and power, and to get the power he would need to go back on his false promises to the South and extinguish slavery as the blot on America's escutcheon that he always deemed it to be, Lincoln was willing to rewrite the Constitution the way Squealer rewrote his.
But let's get down to it. You made yourselves kings over us by might of arms -- what need have you of argument? Just do what you want. You'll do it anyway. Just don't ask us to be your suckers, your fools, as well as your playthings.
Why you think you need someone's permission before you stick a gun in his face and rob him is beyond me, and generally an otiose exercise. Maybe someone will take the time to explain it to me sometime -- why you think you need the consent of the conquered.
That government was, in its sphere, supreme. In fact, it enjoyed all the principal marks of sovereignty, much more than did the states included in it.
Still denying us our Rights? Still denying the States their sovereignty? You don't need weasel words to do it if you have the national arsenal. Just assert that you are right by victorious acts of war, and that you claim the rights of the conqueror. We'll believe you.
Robert E. Lee Jan. 23, 1861
Nice try. Notice the date....Lee was still in U.S. Army service when he said that, and Virginia's own secession was still three months of arduous politicking and discussion removed.
First, Lee erred -- didn't you notice? -- when he used the phrase "perpetual union", which doesn't appear in the Preamble. Rather, the phrase is "a more perfect Union".
Lee certainly got it right when he equated secession with revolution, but later on he shows he doesn't get it yet when he a) acknowledges that the government can be dissolved by revolution (or by convention), and yet b) doesn't connect the dots, that would lead him to the conclusion that the Confederate States' going out was the revolution of which he spoke, which would justify dissolving the Union.
IF, I repeat IF, the intent of Lincoln and the Republicans was to end slavery - A LEGAL right (albeit not a moral right) - then the proper method to end it was via Constitutional Amendment. As it was, Lincoln and the Republican Party substituted their own interpretation of the Constitution, ignoring that of 7 justices in the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln et al wanted the new states to be free from blacks (not just slaves), and insisted that blacks could not enter the new territories, exactly the opposite of DS.
Personally, I do not agree with Libertarians on every issue. I am a conservative and thus I believe in the rule of law and a strong but not overbearing federal government.
I am a conservative. I do not consider myself to be libertarian. I advocate LIMITED government at ALL levels. Especially a federal government hat adheres to the Constitution and the separation of powers.
However, many other southern citizens and politicians left because of taxation (the tariff). In this case, the southern case has more merit.
I would agree. What many on the other side fail to understand is who PAID the tariffs mattered - NOT who collected them. The corner grocery store might remit $10K a month in sales taxes to their state government, but they are not paying the tax - their CUSTOMERS are. Same with tariffs, the large collection points might be Northern, but the goods were sold (tariffs passed on in the price) to Southerners primarily.
I do however symphatize with libertarian arguements over the right to succession. I disagree that it should be absolute. If Oregon left the union because they wanted to leagalize property theft, then the fed's have a moral obligation to step in a prevent people from getting hurt. However, the reverse can be true and if the Federal government is seizing property from Oregon, then they have a right to leave the union.
The Constitution nowhere specifies that the states must remain in the union (a voluntary union at that) or upon what conditions they might leave. It is absolutely silent on that issue. What it is not silent about, is that the states possess ALL powers not delegated to the federal government (the federal government cannot force a state out), and the powers not prohibited to them (again, no prohibition against leaving).
PS-I dont hate Lincoln. But I do think that the civil war needs a lot more discussion and debate.
I don't hate Lincoln either. But I don't consider him a member of the Holy Trinity either.
Sir, I am not attacking him. I provided two QUOTES from Lincoln himself - the 1st from their debates in 1858 - the 2nd from a speech Lincoln gave to a groups of blacks assembled at the White House.
With all due respect sir, you might trouble yourself to read Lincoln for yourself, instead of the cut and paste of those interested only in glorifying him.
From your post you seem to agree that secession at will was not then constitutional. You better let DiLorenzo know that. No one that I know of denies the right to revolution when faced with intolerable oppression. So for the South to have been justified, they had to show they were being oppressed. Can you point me to their documents that claim oppression? Without oppression, secession at will is nothing but a violation of a faith solemnly pledged --- or in common terms, treason.
Here's another quote from a son of the south for you to wrap your mind around.
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.James Madison to Daniel Webster, March 15, 1833
Now if the neo-confederates and propagandists like DiLorenzo would stop intentionally “confounding” the claim to secede at will with the Natural Law right to revolution to resist oppression, the neo confederate movement would evaporate. Secession at will was not, and is not Constitutional and that is based on no less an authority than the Father of the Constitution.
I showed you in the quote from Robert E. Lee which you threw up how his quote supports the contention that secession was revolution. That isn't enough for you, because it can never be enough for you, until we arrive at "you're right, we're all wrong, sorry to have bothered you", I'm afraid. Well, sorry.
My point about your Lincoln quotation is that it is one of several easily explained "greatest hits of Lincoln's inconsistency" on equality, that he answered this silly charge with careful explanation in the 1850's, and it is a bit much to face it continually now, and that raising the quotation as though it shows he was uncommitted to the Declaration shows that you have not read much Lincoln.
One way to respond to this would be to actually take notice of the extended explanatory quotation from Lincoln which I offered.
"What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we know that those of the great mass of white people will not."
Abraham Lincoln, Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas, First Debate.
Lincoln is actually reading a long excerpt from his Peoria speech, and it might be worthwhile to cite the whole of what he chose to read. The next three sentences are most interesting: Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgement, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals.
We discuss the issue at some length in our book, America's Declaration Principles in Thought and Action.
Why has so much anger developed on this thread and its cousin overnight?
Regards,
Richard F.
At that point if we want to push the question further, it would return to whether the grounds were adequate, assuming you think anyone has the right to judge the question, save those in the seceeding states.
Does this seem fair?
Regards,
Richard F.
What would a 'just cause' be, and did the Confederacy have one?
FReegards,
4CJ
Does this seem fair?
Too fair, perhaps, but unlikely in any event.
Having read a few of these threads now, it seems pretty clear to me that there has been a failure thus far to even agree as to exactly what "grounds" are to be weighed for adequacy. Slavery? Oppressive tariffs? Economic strangulation? That's the first problem, and not a small one.
Should you ever reach agreement or compromise on the "grounds" to be weighed, you will face the problem of selecting an appropriate scale for measurement and that determination is hopelessly bound up with the ultimate question of who, in our complicated and intricate federal system, is legitimately empowered to decide.
In his last speech before the Senate, Jefferson Davis claimed that, under our federal system, a "sovereign" state retained the right as a "sovereign" to unilaterally secede from the Union at its pleasure and without regard to the adequacy of "grounds":
It is known to senators who have served with me here that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of state sovereignty, the right of a state to secede from the Union. . . .
Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each state is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.
When all is said and done, Richard, that, in a nutshell, is the case for the right of secession. There is no other.
Among the rights contained within the BoR - the people have the right to speak out against governemnt (freedom of speech and of the press - which precludes shutting them down), to assemble in protest, to use arms against the government (as Madison wote in the Federalist Papers that was the reason for the 2nd). The only right granted to the state (since the state ratified and not individuals) was the abilty to withdraw from the union - another check against a federal behemouth. There are no conditions to exercising that right. When the states decided that the federal government was not abiding by the Constitution they could - and by themselves - rescind their voluntary ratification.
I'm not acusing. I'm stating fact. Jefferson Davis said as much in is Senate Opus. He said he didn't need a good reason to secede, just wanting to so was enough for him, and he falsly claimed that 'in the past' everyone acknowledged the right to secede at will. That was never the case.
The issue was slavery --- the expansion of slavery, and the south could not make a moral case for revolution on that basis. So they simply claimed a right that never existed to begin their revolution.
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