Posted on 06/25/2002 10:40:23 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
I am not being sarcastic. I am not defending slavery. And no, I am not white. I simply want to know where and when slavery truly started. Ultimately, aren't the people who captured these individuals the ones who began the cycle of American slavery?
"The life-giving principle and the death-doing stroke must proceed from the same hand." Not hands. A state convention gave it's assent to the Constitution. A state convention rescinded it's assent to the Constitution.
Oh please! What swill. June 19th came and went last week and there wasn't even a line in the papers about any kind of celebration. Black people do not celebrate Lincoln and in fact they wouldn't even vote for him if he was running for office today because as a rule, they vote only for liberal, wealth-redistributing Democrats. And Lincoln was a Republican.
As for the Emancipation Declaration, it all but ended slavery whether some Lincoln enemies want to nitpick at the wording or not. Lincoln could not free the slaves in the Union at that time because he needed the border states to win the war. And freeing the slaves in the border states at that time would have sent those states into the arms of the Confederacy, which almost certainly would have made it impossible for the Union to win the war.
So why issue the Emancipation Proclamation at all? Believe it or not, the Union was afraid that the South would free their slaves first. This would have given the CSA not only the moral superiority over the Union, but would have brought in the support of Europe as well, which could have very well have tipped the balance. The Emancipation Proclamation, while toothless, pulled the carpet out from under the Confederates and kept them from seizing the moral high ground for themselves.
Lincoln was also hoping that by hanging freedom in front of the Southern slaves, that they would desert their masters and come to the North. Without slave labor, the ability of the Confederate Army to fight would have been significantly reduced. For it was slave labor that allowed virtually every able-bodied white man to go into battle.
At that point in time, it was more important to save the Union then is was to end slavery. Lincoln was not a hypocrite. He said himself that saving the Union was paramount. If it took keeping slavery in place to save the Union, he would have done it. If it took repealing slavery, he would have done it. Or a combination of the two, he would have done it, as he ended up doing. For Lincoln, it was first save the Union, then the slavery question would resolve itself. But the Union must be saved first! And Lincoln turned out to be right for in the end, it was the Confederates who ended up setting their own slaves free when they finally decided to allow blacks to serve in the Confederate Army. All the top Confederate leaders knew that once they allowed blacks to fight side by side with white soldiers, that slavery was essentially over.
Same old southron song-and-dance, I see. Any decision you disagree with is suspect, any decision you agree with comes from a burning bush. So answer me this, would you expect the court to issue a decision BEFORE the fact?
The Southern States insisted they could secede legally. The Northern States said they could not. They fought a war about it, if I recall.
It's a little silly for someone to reason from a premise that is not agreed upon by the opposing side. That's called "begging the question." It's a common logical fallacy.
It won't be a convincing argument to those who believe that court has no authority over them, because their state does not belong to that government. As a matter of law, you are of course correct. But as a matter of debate, this is an endlessly circular argument.
I realize you were only responding to the existing argument with the counter position. I'm just pointing out that the argument isn't going to sway anyone on the opposing side, since the premises are not common.
And a special amount of weight when the SCOTUS Chief Justice was the same man as Secretary of Treasury that urged lincoln to start the war in the first place. Isn't that right, Non?
We both know the facts, whether you care to admit them or not. States north of the Confederacy had been threatening secession for decades. If the War of 1812 had not finished when it did, I sincerely believe that last paragraph of the Hartford Convention would have been carried out. Even the 'moderates' at the Convention while petitioning the government, and not listening to their more ardent members at the time, knew this would be a possibility, hence the arranging of the second meeting. Would it have happened then? Possibly but it was coming of that there can be no doubt. This of course is ignoring Massachusetts secession in 1803 among others. But ol' Sal answered the question once and for all in '69 didn't he?
We do know the facts, bill. There was no Massachussetts secession of '03 or Connecticut secession of '14 or anything else. Not a single state actually tried to carry out a threat to secede. Not a single indication that the federal government would have stood still for the actions. Presidents such as Jackson making it clear that individual states were not above the Constitution, regardless of how they felt.
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