Posted on 11/19/2018 8:39:26 AM PST by EveningStar
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Gettysburg Address as recited by Jeff Daniels.
What courts? And so what. The courts said blacks were only mere property and could never be citizens.
Here’s what the Constitution says:
9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
But that doesn’t matter either. Just like the 1st and 2nd Amendments don’t matter. They simply memorialize pre-existing natural rights.
Any state joining the Union could withdraw as a matter of right; the right is the same right that allowed the state to agree to ratify.
The Constitution was NOT a suicide pact, after all.
Oh. So the Civil War was about retribution.
Lincoln really was nuts.
Whatever they wanted to without interference from do-gooders from New England who didn’t have the good sense to go west when Adams became president. (Some of whom later skipped the pioneer stuff and moved directly to California).
Nicely done.
All of it. The sovereign state of South Carolina ceded the land Fort Sumter was built on to the United States Government in perpetuity.
“the future Confederacy was all for government fiat when it came to enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act in...”
The fugitive slave clause was in the United States Constitution - an enumerated power of the federal government. Of the original 13 slave states, 13 of them voted to place the fugitive slave clause in the United States Constitution.
Look it up.
So the Southern States withdrew from the Union for absolutely no concrete reason, No rights violated by the Federal Government, but we are leaving the union to defend States Rights. Got it.
” . . . dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Lincoln states his war was fought for the purpose of equality.
I can’t help but wonder if he was telling the truth. Or was equality just a pretext; an attempt to freight all the killings with meaning.
“State’s right to do what?”
The right of state’s to determine what size mud flaps to require on large trucks. Start with that.
Hence the 14th Amendment.
Any state joining the Union could withdraw as a matter of right; the right is the same right that allowed the state to agree to ratify.
With the exception of the original 13 states, the rest of the states didn't join anything and ratified nothing. They were allowed to join and only after a majority of the other states, as expressed by a vote in both houses of Congress, agreed to let them in. Shouldn't leaving require the same thing?
So in other words they rebelled over slavery?
Well when you launch an armed rebellion over mudflaps then we can talk.
That's right. That's why Lincoln had no option but to stop the insurrectionists who attempted to destroy our union.
Amen, bro.
I’d say the immediate cause was South Carolina’s attachment to the original view of how the president was to be selected—they still were not buying into a popularly elected slate of electors already pledged to an individual, but instead the state assembly selected 8 individuals who were supposed to vote for the candidate they thought best.
That Lincoln and those of his movement could assemble various slates and a demographically superior portion of the union vote in such a way to allow someone with less than 40% of the vote (not even factoring in the absence of South Carolina’s population from popular vote totals) is completely contrary to the way things were originally designed to run.
Given that things were bad, I would say that the rest of the states decided that if it was a choice of being stuck with Massachusetts or South Carolina, they would opt for South Carolina.
Slavery was an issue, but so were tariffs and a whole raft of other things. Bottom line, for a variety of reasons sufficient members of the South Carolina legislature wanted out, and away we go!
There's that pesky God thingy again.
Here is what South Carolinians thought justified secession
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act. . . .
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” [editor’s note: this is the Fugitive Slave Clause in the original Constitution whereby the North promised to return escaped slaves to their “owners” in the South]
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens [editor’s note: this is refering to former slaves or their descendants]; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. . . .
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Adopted December 24, 1860
Don’t find anything relating to the election process for the President or on Tariffs or a whole raft of other things listed as their reasons for leaving the Union. Did find a lot references to Slaves, Slavery, Fugitive slave act, etc.
Don’t suppose that is the reason they pulled out of the Union.
seems clear to me that for 25 years or longer the southern states worried that more free states would be admitted to the union. Now with the election ofLincoln that seems t be imminent. For those who say this isn’t abut slavery seems to ignore the 25 year uproar.
That being said, i support a state being able succeed by democrat vote. and take your slaves with you. The courts however were wrong to allow slaves to be sent back as property. The rights ofthe individual for “liberty” superceed states rights.
“The courts however were wrong to allow slaves to be sent back as property.” The courts had little choice. The Constitution Article IV section 2 paragraph 3 “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” “Held to service or labor” is code for slaves.
you were wrong at “The courts have little choice.” They always have choice. Should have had revolt and made judges slaves.
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