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Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
Many | November 19, 1863 | Abraham Lincoln

Posted on 11/19/2018 8:39:26 AM PST by EveningStar

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To: morphing libertarian

No choice if they are to follow the Constitution instead of legislating from the bench.


41 posted on 11/19/2018 12:31:48 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

They identify 16 states as having violated their obligations (14 are listed as a group, and Ohio and New Jersey get mentioned elsewhere). These states had 176 electoral votes. Lincoln received 180 electoral votes, 173 from these states (3 of New Jersey’s went to Douglas), and 7 from California and Oregon.

The votes had not yet been officially counted when South Carolina pulled out, but the writing was on the wall and memories of what had happened very fresh.

Is it a union under a constitution or a union under something else?


42 posted on 11/19/2018 1:10:16 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: Hieronymus

So Lincoln won the way Trump won, and a lot of people were dissatisfied with that result, even though it was in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. The electoral college chooses the president, like or dislike the results. that is the law of the Land. So the Southern States were dissatisfied that the Nation followed the Constitution in electing Lincoln, instead of their man.


43 posted on 11/19/2018 1:14:44 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

Trump was a heck of a lot closer to a majority than Lincoln was, and is pushing towards the Union fulfilling the things it was purportedly established for in the way that it was established.

Other than all those important things, the situations are identical.

I don’t think the North East and California would have as good a case for pulling out as South Carolina did, but in my judgment, you don’t need a case, and if they want to go, Sionara.


44 posted on 11/19/2018 1:21:07 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: Hieronymus

Lincoln won 59.4% of the Electoral College Vote.
Trump won 56.5% of the Electoral College Vote.

So your view is any state can leave the Union anytime the state chooses for any reason the State dreams up.


45 posted on 11/19/2018 1:45:31 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe
You quoted an opinion document, not the South Carolina Secession Declaration.

Here is another opinion document for you to ponder:

Message to the US Congress December 3, 1860 from President James Buchanan:

“Why is it...that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the Union of the States...is threatened with destruction?

“The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographic parties have been formed.

“I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed soley from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law.

“All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union (as others have been) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy.

“The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable.

“Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest purpose; and no political union, however fraught with blessings and benefits in all other respects, can long continue if the necessary consequence be to render the homes and firesides of nearly half the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure. Sooner or later the bonds of such a union must be severed. It is my conviction that this fatal period has not yet arrived, and my prayer to God is that He would preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations.

“But let us take warning in time and remove the cause of danger. It can not be denied that for five and twenty years the agitation at the North against slavery has been incessant. In 1835 pictorial handbills and inflammatory appeals were circulated extensively throughout the South of a character to excite the passions of the slaves, and, in the language of General Jackson, “to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war.” This agitation has ever since been continued by the public press, by the proceedings of State and county conventions and by abolition sermons and lectures. The time of Congress has been occupied in violent speeches on this never-ending subject, and appeals, in pamphlet and other forms, indorsed by distinguished names, have been sent forth from this central point and spread broadcast over the Union.

“How easy it would be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for slavery existing among them.

46 posted on 11/19/2018 1:59:32 PM PST by PeaRidge
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To: PeaRidge

Those opinions were the basis for South Carolina’s decision to secede. Georgia, Mississippi and Texas also produced supporting documents to their Secession conventions. Slavery is the main, though not only, concern in these documents. Later the state of Arkansas also produced writhing to support the secession discussion in it’s legislature.


47 posted on 11/19/2018 2:12:22 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

Lincoln won 59.4% of the Electoral College Vote.
Trump won 56.5% of the Electoral College Vote.


Impressive vote efficiency.

So your view is any state can leave the Union anytime the state chooses for any reason the State dreams up.


Yep. That’s what a voluntary union is. The United States aren’t bound together by a sacrament. Those who opt to leave are answerable to God and their constituents, but not the other states. There should be justice in the way the severance occurs, but the union is a voluntary union of sovereign states, together, within the bounds of the constitution, signing over certain enumerated powers so long as they are part of the union.


48 posted on 11/19/2018 2:31:50 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: PeaRidge

A good read. A parallel would be all the first world liberals deciding that the colonial powers needed to make Africa better now by doing whatever the first world liberals thought best.

Solving other peoples problems when one doesn’t need to face the consequences of stupidity is always a fun game unless one has a conscience coupled with humility.


49 posted on 11/19/2018 2:37:40 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: Hieronymus

Ok


50 posted on 11/19/2018 2:44:16 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: DoodleDawg

“Well when you launch an armed rebellion over mudflaps then we can talk.”

Why wait? Why can’t we talk now, resolve the matter peacefully, and avoid all the killings. You can start the discussion by identifying the enumerated mud flap power granted to the federal government.

But whether you are talking federally mandated mud flap sizes, or federal mandated firearm restrictions, the federal government always has one response: do it our way or we will use violence against you.

As recently as last week, one federal representative threatened to use nuclear weapons against American civilians.

After the disaster at Appomattox, I am not surprised at anything the feral government does.


51 posted on 11/19/2018 2:55:09 PM PST by jeffersondem
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To: PeaRidge

How dare the abolitionists give those slave a sense of hope towards freedom. What do they think those slaves are? Human?


52 posted on 11/19/2018 3:19:21 PM PST by OIFVeteran
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To: jeffersondem; DoodleDawg; rockrr
The right of state’s to determine what size mud flaps to require on large trucks. Start with that.

So far as I've been able to figure out, there are currently no federal regulation concerning the size mud flaps.

There was talk of imposing such regulations in the Nineties, but apparently it didn't go through.

States decide those regulations.

So all that secession and civil war were unnecessary.

* sigh *

53 posted on 11/19/2018 3:26:45 PM PST by x
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To: PeaRidge
Here is another opinion document for you to ponder:

Ponder this, from the same document:

"In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties... Such a principle is wholly inconsistent with the history as well as the character of the Federal Constitution. After it was framed with the greatest deliberation and care it was submitted to conventions of the people of the several States for ratification. Its provisions were discussed at length in these bodies, composed of the first men of the country...In that mighty struggle between the first intellects of this or any other country it never occurred to any individual, either among its opponents or advocates, to assert or even to intimate that their efforts were all vain labor, because the moment that any State felt herself aggrieved she might secede from the Union. What a crushing argument would this have proved against those who dreaded that the rights of the States would be endangered by the Constitution! The truth is that it was not until many years after the origin of the Federal Government that such a proposition was first advanced. It was then met and refuted by the conclusive arguments of General Jackson, who in his message of the 16th of January, 1833, transmitting the nullifying ordinance of South Carolina to Congress, employs the following language:"The right of the people of a single State to absolve themselves at will and without the consent of the other States from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, can not be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted and to the objects which it is expressly formed to attain.""

54 posted on 11/19/2018 3:49:14 PM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: Hieronymus

If it is a voluntary union of sovereign states then don’t those same sovereign states have the right to decide who they want to unite with? Can’t the 49 states turn the 50th out of the union at any time they want, regardless of the wishes of that state?


55 posted on 11/19/2018 3:52:56 PM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: DoodleDawg

New England was making noise about secession during Jefferson’s Presidency, and continued making it until near the end of the war of 1812.


56 posted on 11/19/2018 3:55:13 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: DoodleDawg

Can’t the 49 states turn the 50th out of the union at any time they want, regardless of the wishes of that state?


I’d argue no, my logic doesn’t seem capable of getting that out of the Constitution, but the electoral map of 1868 seems to refute my argument. Take a look. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas weren’t allowed to vote for president. The governing principle of the time seems to have been not logic but what was convenient for the Republican party.


57 posted on 11/19/2018 3:59:11 PM PST by Hieronymus ((It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G. K. Chesterton))
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To: morphing libertarian
“Should have had revolt and made judges slaves.”

Many people believe that actually did happen four years later.

After the election of a regional president with 39 percent of the popular vote, history records the North fought a war against the South “to free the slaves.”

Before the war the North did not have the votes for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, but after 300,000 southerners were safely buried “magic happened” and the North had the votes to overthrow the pro-slavery provisions of the United States Constitution.

The violent “revolt” you spoke of was a success.

58 posted on 11/19/2018 4:00:24 PM PST by jeffersondem
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To: Hieronymus
New England was making noise about secession during Jefferson’s Presidency, and continued making it until near the end of the war of 1812.

But they didn't, did they?

59 posted on 11/19/2018 4:04:31 PM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: Bull Snipe

The states rights were the right of the states to have slaves.


60 posted on 11/19/2018 4:05:17 PM PST by Vermont Lt
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