Red Horse, thanks for the professional exchange, its really healthy for all of us. Take a look at this when you have a few moments and get back to us. Please if you will try to distinguish the intent of Abe Lincoln, his TRUE feelings about slavery, and the political forces that was driving his ever changing positions on slavery. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm
Yes sir you are cherry picking. The fact that you stated the South was all about the slavery issue and then you propose only documents that support that stance is nothing more than posting select information to support this stance. Now I put this point to you again – The Crittenden Resolution offered the seceded states a chance to return to the Union and keep their slaves. Surely if slavery was the only issue, the states would have taken the offer, return to the Union and saved all of those lives. This is your source not mine.
“put forward by their representatives for averting secession and for subsequent reunification (made prior to the war breaking out) are entirely those concerning the expansion and preservation of slavery” I would suggest you read the Secession Resolutions posted at http://www.civilwar.org/historyclassroom/hc_decofcauses.htm & http://www.civilwarhome.com/cherokeecauses.htm A person can make quite a list of causes that is not related to expanding the institution of slavery.
In regards to Fort Sumter, Major Anderson violated a treaty that prohibited the movement of his men from Moultrie to Sumter. This was a clear aggressive act by a military force. The men were not starving as they were drawing rations from Charleston. Lincoln refused to negotiate peace and his response to the crisis in South Carolina was to send an armed armada to Sumter. This was not simply a supply mission and the action brought on war.
My current version, (I cannot speak for most) of why the South seceded is found in the Declaration of Causes and the Secession resolutions. In these documents slavery is listed as an issue, so is taxes, the enforcement of the constitution and taxes. The war for Southern Independence and secession are two different events, you are trying to combine them into one event. The war had nothing to do with slavery. Slavery is an issue that is being pushed as the cause to justify the invasion of the South.
Now what is the current version among most Yankees as to why the south seceded or the war was fought? Are you here to tell me that it was nothing more than to free the slaves?
Red Horse, thanks for the professional exchange, its really healthy for all of us. Take a look at this when you have a few moments and get back to us. Please if you will try to distinguish the intent of Abe Lincoln, his TRUE feelings about slavery, and the political forces that was driving his ever changing positions on slavery. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm
Well said Mark. An exchange without insults and snide remarks is indeed scarce item these days. Let's hope it continues.
Your argument - while it seems good - is false and disingenuous. You make claims without proof and then present them as "reasons" for the North to act as it did.
First, the South wanted to protect its people. Your vaunted abolitionists did not want what you seem to believe that they wanted. Indeed, they certainly did not want the Negroes among them. Like modern liberals, their sympathy was to a concept, not to people. Most Northern states had "black codes" which forbid Negroes from immigrating into those states, among them Lincoln's Illinois. In fact, the State of Massachusetts had the office of Negro Whipper; when a Negro did not leave the state after a period of time, he or she was flogged until he did. So the belief that somehow the North "cared" for the Negro is preposterous. Furthermore, even if that had been the case, what excuse can you give for trying to bring about a bloodbath that would kill innocent children and end in the deaths of the very people that you are supposed to be "helping"? Suppose agitators from the South had come among the Northern "wage slaves" and tried to entice them to rise up against their "masters" and the civil authority as happened in the infamous New York draft riots? What would you say about such people, that they "cared" for the downtrodden poor of the North? Hardly! Yet, this is what happened in the South. Again, I have sent - or if I failed to include the information, will send information about the South's own efforts to end slavery. It is also a fact that the efforts of radical abolitionists in the North destroyed the South's own abolition movement and forced many who were against slavery to join with those who defended the institution for the purpose of self preservation.
Secondly, though there could be legitimate disagreement about the constitutionality of secession, the simple fact is this: there is NOTHING in the Constitution which gives the Federal Government or the President the right to wage war on the sovereign states and the People of the United States!Abraham Lincoln was a war criminal. He desired and initiated war against the people of this country without reason and certainly with no constitutional right to do so. He suspended the right of habeas corpus which had existed since the Magna Carta. He arrested thousands of NORTHERN citizens who disagreed with his unjust and unconstitutional war and kept them in prison, some never to return to their families. He destroyed the First Amendment freedoms of speech, expression and the press. He used the typical tyrant's tool of getting people to inform against their neighbors and then forced people to sign an unconstitutional "oath" or be imprisoned without any charge save "disloyalty". He oversaw the deliberate murder of tens of thousands of Confederate prisoners of war in such hell holes as Forts Douglas and Merton, Point Lookout and Elmira to name a few. Unlike Andersonville where prisoners and guards ate the same food and where the efforts of the Commandant Henry Wirtz to get food and medicine from the North for his suffering charges was denied by Ulysses Grant, men starved to death in the above Northern Dachaus able to see fruit trees laden with their bounty and food a plenty which was denied to them because they were "rebels". Lincoln perverted the elections in the North in 1864, in one instance sending "Beast" Butler to New York to assure his "victory" in that state. This perversion of the election process by Lincoln and the Republicans is well documented.
You sir, know nothing at all about the cause you espouse. You speak about the "glorious Union". First, a "union" by its very nature is voluntary! "Union" at the point of a gun is called "conquest". And what was "glorious" about a corrupt government involved with supporting with Southern tax monies Northern commercial interests to the benefit of the politicians - like Lincoln - who bestowed their stolen largesse? What is "glorious" about a nation that wages war in so barbaric a manner that the nations of Europe - no strangers to war - were appalled? Think of Sherman the genocide who wanted to murder every man, woman and child who would not bow down at the altar of the Federal Government or a man like Sheridan who burned the farming implements of the civilians in Virginia at war's end so that they would continue to starve even after "peace" was established? In a better world sir, Lincoln, Sherman, Sheridan, Butler and a lot more "Yankees" would have been hanged for the criminals and monsters that they were. I spare Grant because he was a good man who kept his word - but fought for the wrong side. In fact, as far as slavery goes, Grant is quoted as saying that if he had thought that the war was to free the slaves, he would have offered his sword to the South! So much for the argument that most of the men of the North fought to free the slaves!
The States of the South did not want to "conquer" the nation - they wanted to leave a nation that they considered no longer protective of the interests of their people and becoming increasingly hostile to their culture; the South was right and that fact is proven time and again right to today. In fact, Virginia three times rejected the call for secession and only left the Union when Lincoln demanded troops from the Old Dominion to assail the Carolinas and told the Governor that the Federal armies would go through his state to invade the states that had seceded. When faced with a choice of honor or tyranny, Virginia chose to leave what was no longer a Republic, but a tyrannous Empire. But the "Yankees" still aren't satisfied - and won't be - until every last vestige of Southern heritage and history have been exterminated and replaced by a spurious version of history that is better suited to fiction than fact. I rather believe that your understanding of the matter can be found in their fantasies as posited by Lincoln's false claim to some sort of "eternal Union" that predated the Constitution - which was plain nonsense.
It is the South, sir, that maintained the principles of the Founders while the North became poisoned by foreign ideologies brought from Europe especially in the 1840s. Fascism, socialism and even communism - were rife in "the Union" while Lincoln was a Hamilton-Clay mercantilist who wanted a supreme central power from which the States and the People would be granted such crumbs of freedom as Washington saw fit to bestow (and those crumbs grow ever smaller with each passing year!). If you are looking for the heroes of 1776, you are looking in the wrong place.
I, too, used to be proud of "my" country but I have come to see that it is not "my" country. Washington is in the hands of the special interests and an ideology that is diametric not only to all that I hold dear but that the Founders of the Republic also believed and promulgated. Indeed, after a great deal of study, I realize that the Republic died when the Union died - in 1861 - and what has transpired since that time merely utilized our history and patriotic rhetoric to hide this fact. The Constitution sir, is dead. It died when Abraham Lincoln and those in the North for reasons of "patriotism" or "profit" or "power" determined that they could not have their fascist-socialist Empire while republican tenets held sway. They won their "war" at a cost that all our other wars put together have not exceeded. But even that wasn't enough. A dispassionate and objective study of history will show that most of the wars fought by "The Union" since the War of Secession were wars of empire, often initiated by mendacious deceits like Fort Sumter which were used to bring an ignorant public into line with the desire of the Federal beast to make war. Believe me, at 67, I have found these truths to be very disheartening, but they are still truths for all of that.
Finally, let me say this. I was born in the borough of Queens, in the City of New York and have lived within 35 miles of New York City my whole life save for two years when I lived in Hartford, Connecticut after my marriage; my husband is a second generation Greek from Astoria, Queens. My family has as its ancestors such men as John Adams and John Glover (whose lobstermen ferried Washington across the Delaware on Christmas Eve). I don't believe that I have one Southerner in my family tree, so it's no use talking about "my people and their culture". "My people" are of the North and so, alas, "my culture" is a part of the crime against the People of the South. southerners_righting_slavery.doc
Are we reading from the same historical script?
"I realized that the Republic died when the Union died - in 1861..." (?)
The Union may have "died" in 1861 - but I assure you, it was revived at great sacrifice, and it has remained alive and well since the centennial of Appomattox. In 1965 our Union was restored by the authority of President Lyndon Johnson who revived the 15th amendment with the Voting Rights Act and reaffirmed the constitutional rights of dignity and liberty for all men - by sending federal troops to the state of Alabama to protect the civil rights activists who had been demanding their rights for 100 years after the surrender of the South.
The same words that you use to describe Abraham Lincoln, are the same accusations that have been leveled against our last President who was, like Lincoln, made to wage war against the forces of tyranny and in support of democracy and western freedoms. The Iraq war and the war for Afghanistan have each been costly in blood and treasure - but they have both been waged against existential threats to the civilized world, and furthermore - they were both inevitable. What struck me the most about September 11th - was not only the scale of death and destruction, but the arrogance of the unprovoked aggressions against my country. Americans (yes, Yankees included) are on the whole - a peace-loving people. In both world wars we tended toward isolationism - until, we were attacked - at which point we spared no expense to exterminate and humble the perpetrators. I make no apologies for Nagasaki or Hiroshima, I feel no guilt whatsoever for Dresden, nor Berlin, nor do I have any regrets about General Sherman's scorched earth campaigns or the properties that the federal army confiscated and liberated from the confederate states. Such is war, a war which the South started - upon its own countrymen. The arrogance of it. Then, as now; we were stronger, the North had the Industry and the man-power; the United-States had the war-machine, and still, the South not only seceded from it - they attacked it. I will not apologize to the Japanese, to the Germans, to the Arab or Afghan mujihadeen, nor to the Southerners - for the consequences of their reckless hubris against our noble republic. They attacked the virtues and values of freedom with the very institution that they seceded over - and then they attacked the Republic itself, the arrogance. Peace is neither desirable nor possible with such backwards aggressors, and all of recorded history is my witness.
Yes sir you are cherry picking. The fact that you stated the South was all about the slavery issue and then you propose only documents that support that stance is nothing more than posting select information to support this stance. Now I put this point to you again – The Crittenden Resolution offered the seceded states a chance to return to the Union and keep their slaves. Surely if slavery was the only issue, the states would have taken the offer, return to the Union and saved all of those lives. This is your source not mine.
“put forward by their representatives for averting secession and for subsequent reunification (made prior to the war breaking out) are entirely those concerning the expansion and preservation of slavery” I would suggest you read the Secession Resolutions posted at http://www.civilwar.org/historyclassroom/hc_decofcauses.htm & http://www.civilwarhome.com/cherokeecauses.htm A person can make quite a list of causes that is not related to expanding the institution of slavery.
In regards to Fort Sumter, Major Anderson violated a treaty that prohibited the movement of his men from Moultrie to Sumter. This was a clear aggressive act by a military force. The men were not starving as they were drawing rations from Charleston. Lincoln refused to negotiate peace and his response to the crisis in South Carolina was to send an armed armada to Sumter. This was not simply a supply mission and the action brought on war.
My current version, (I cannot speak for most) of why the South seceded is found in the Declaration of Causes and the Secession resolutions. In these documents slavery is listed as an issue, so is taxes, the enforcement of the constitution and taxes. The war for Southern Independence and secession are two different events, you are trying to combine them into one event. The war had nothing to do with slavery. Slavery is an issue that is being pushed as the cause to justify the invasion of the South.
Now what is the current version among most Yankees as to why the south seceded or the war was fought? Are you here to tell me that it was nothing more than to free the slaves?
GP
The Crittenden Compromise was submitted on behalf of the South. It was rejected because the Republicans were unwilling to compromise on the expansion of slavery - both westward and into the District of Columbia. In accordance with the settlers wishes, the state of California was admitted as a free state, and in accordance with the Compromise of 1850 - the slave-trade was abolished forever from the nation's capital. The South demanded that all states and territories south of the 36°30' parallel and westward to the Pacific be made slave-states - regardless of the wishes of the settlers of states themselves, and furthermore - they dictated that the District of Columbia must relegalize the slave-trade as well for them to reconsider secession. Lincoln and the congress rejected their demands, and then five months later the South fired four-thousand shells on the federal troops in Fort Sumter, and the civil discord became a Civil War.
Alas sir, you cannot be reached. That's too bad. I, too, believed as you do but now I know better. The UNION died and the Republic and the Constitution or we certainly would not now have the monstrosity that continues to hide itself under the name of the United States. This didn't happen in a day or a week or a year or a decade. The "War of Secession" destroyed the Constitution, made the 10th Amendment a "dead letter", made the Supreme Court into an adjunct of the Presidency, ended the concept of sovereign states and inalienable rights of the People bestowed by God. Now our rights are what the government in Washington says they are or have you not heard of laws regarding "hate speech"?
Lincoln was a war criminal. Killing by presidential dictum with the cooperation of an unconstitutional military over a million Americans North and South (a whole lot more people died than soldiers) seems to indicate a departure from the Constitution that cannot be ignored, excused or explained. As for Johnson, he was just one more socialist Hamiltonian despot who championed the federal government as the only game in town and trampled any pretense of legitimacy guided by the belief that the ends justify the means. Johnson, like Lincoln, also fought a war that further entrenched Washington's tyranny. Johnson's war was supposedly against poverty whereas Lincoln's was against the remnants of the Republic on this continent. Unlike Lincoln, however, in Johnson's case, poverty won. But in the end, the strategy paid off since the unconstitutional concept of using the People's money to buy politicians their place in office in perpetuity which had been warned of by Franklin, was enshrined as public policy. Yessir, we have the best government money can buy.
Frankly, it won't matter what historical facts and proofs I present to you. You are wedded to the Yankee version of history and, unlike the government you worship, I believe that you have a right to your viewpoint however erroneous. I just wish that you and your government extended that same courtesy to those with whom you disagree. But it is obvious as this present and perhaps final tyranny continues, those who don't "toe the Washington line" are about to discover just how dead the Constitution really is.
THE PROBLEMS THAT LED TO THE CIVIL WAR are the same problems today ---- big, intrusive government. The reason we don't face the specter of another Civil War is because today's Americans don't have yesteryear's spirit of liberty and constitutional respect, and political statesmanship is in short supply.
Actually, the war of 1861 was not a civil war. A civil war is a conflict between two or more factions trying to take over a government. In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was no more interested in taking over Washington than George Washington was interested in taking over England in 1776. Like Washington, Davis was seeking independence. Therefore, the war of 1861 should be called "The War Between the States" or the "War for Southern Independence." The more bitter southerner might call it the "War of Northern Aggression."
History books have misled today's Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves.
Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so."
During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." A recent article by Baltimore's Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled "The Great Centralizer," in The Independent Review (Fall 1998), cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment about slavery.
Lincoln's intentions, as well as that of many northern politicians, were summarized by Stephen Douglas during the presidential debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government" that "place at defiance the intentions of the republic's founders." SOUND FAMILIAR TODAY? Douglas was right, and Lincoln's vision for our nation has now been accomplished beyond anything he could have possibly dreamed.
A precursor for a War Between the States came in 1832, when South Carolina called a convention to nullify tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, referred to as the "Tariffs of Abominations." A compromise lowering the tariff was reached, averting secession and possibly war. The North favored protective tariffs for their manufacturing industry. The South, which exported agricultural products to and imported manufactured goods from Europe, favored free trade and was hurt by the tariffs. Plus, a northern-dominated Congress enacted laws similar to Britain's Navigation Acts to protect northern shipping interests.
Shortly after Lincoln's election, Congress passed the highly protectionist Morrill tariffs.
That's when the South seceded, setting up a new government. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for all spending measures.
The only good coming from the War Between the States was the abolition of slavery. The great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" was overturned by force of arms. By destroying the states' right to secession, Abraham Lincoln opened the door to the kind of unconstrained, despotic, arrogant government we have today, something the framers of the Constitution could not have possibly imagined.
States should again challenge Washington's unconstitutional acts through nullification. But you tell me where we can find leaders with the love, courage and respect for our Constitution like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun.
Alas sir, you cannot be reached. That's too bad. I, too, believed as you do but now I know better. The UNION died and the Republic and the Constitution or we certainly would not now have the monstrosity that continues to hide itself under the name of the United States. This didn't happen in a day or a week or a year or a decade. The "War of Secession" destroyed the Constitution, made the 10th Amendment a "dead letter", made the Supreme Court into an adjunct of the Presidency, ended the concept of sovereign states and inalienable rights of the People bestowed by God. Now our rights are what the government in Washington says they are or have you not heard of laws regarding "hate speech"?
Lincoln was a war criminal. Killing by presidential dictum with the cooperation of an unconstitutional military over a million Americans North and South (a whole lot more people died than soldiers) seems to indicate a departure from the Constitution that cannot be ignored, excused or explained. As for Johnson, he was just one more socialist Hamiltonian despot who championed the federal government as the only game in town and trampled any pretense of legitimacy guided by the belief that the ends justify the means. Johnson, like Lincoln, also fought a war that further entrenched Washington's tyranny. Johnson's war was supposedly against poverty whereas Lincoln's was against the remnants of the Republic on this continent. Unlike Lincoln, however, in Johnson's case, poverty won. But in the end, the strategy paid off since the unconstitutional concept of using the People's money to buy politicians their place in office in perpetuity which had been warned of by Franklin, was enshrined as public policy. Yessir, we have the best government money can buy.
Frankly, it won't matter what historical facts and proofs I present to you. You are wedded to the Yankee version of history and, unlike the government you worship, I believe that you have a right to your viewpoint however erroneous. I just wish that you and your government extended that same courtesy to those with whom you disagree. But it is obvious as this present and perhaps final tyranny continues, those who don't "toe the Washington line" are about to discover just how dead the Constitution really is.
I'm sorry, but I really don't know where you're coming from. At least we can both agree that America is an empire. Yes, of course it is the last remaining super-power on earth, and I believe that the free-world is a better and safer place because of that fact. But I simply don't understand how anyone could believe that the slave-states and the free states could ever co-exist. It was the failure of the free-states to comply with the fugitive slave act that brought the secession crisis to a head, and whether there were two nations—one free, one slave; or one nation—half-free, half-slave—there would always have been Abolitionist agitators provoking one of them, and there would always be bounty hunters intruding upon the other. And if the South had seceded peacefully and confined itself to the 13 stars of its confederate flag - instead of expanding westward, can you even begin to fathom the consequences of that? Do you know what became of the French in Haiti? Do you know what would have become of the South - had the slave population continued to expand within the 13 Southern states already reserved for the institution? Two words: Ethnic. Cleansing. In another generation or two there would have been killing fields that would have rivaled Rwanda and Cambodia combined. You think Harper Ferry was ugly? If you think Harpers Ferry was madness or think the Southampton Insurrection was unpleasant: take a look at some of the engravings of what took place on the island of Saint-Domingue. Nat Turner was only the beginning: the South should thank God that the Northern Armies liberated them before a Toussaint L'Overture did. General Sherman's men behaved as model citizens and gentlemen compared to the alternative of what could-have-been. Did you know that in the final month of the war - that the South was actually considering arming some its slave population? Up to that point slaves had mainly served only as cooks and orderlies, and they were about to issue them weapons... my God ??
The North not only saved the Republic, they saved the South - from the very institution that they revolted over.
And LadyVal: What is this talk of "hate speech"? America is the only nation on earth where we have absolute freedom of speech. There are no "hate speech" laws here. Unlike Canada, europe and the UK - our freedoms of expression are fully protected by the First Amendment - or at the very least they have been since 1967 - the year in which that right was last challenged by a government authority.
In his new book, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, black American author, Lerone Bennett, presents historic evidence supporting the theory that Abraham Lincoln was, in fact, a devoted racist harboring a life-long desire to see all black Americans deported to Africa, citing Lincolns comments about former slaves not being able to assimilate in a civilized society
Bennett writes (non fiction) that as a young politician in Illinois, Lincoln regularly used racial slurs in speeches, told racial jokes to his black servants, and vocally opposed any new laws that would have bettered the lives of black Americans.
Key to Bennett's thesis is the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation which, Bennett argues, Lincoln was forced into issuing by the powerful abolitionist wing of his own party. Bennett asserts that Lincoln carefully worded the document to apply only to the rebel Southern states, which were not under Union control at the time, thus resulting in an Emancipation Proclamation that did not in itself free a single slave.
At one point, Bennett quotes William Henry Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, who referred to the proclamation as a hollow, meaningless document showing no more than, "our sympathy with the slaves by emancipating the slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
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Henry Clay Whitney, a close friend of Lincoln, is quoted by Bennett as saying the proclamation was "not the end designed by him (Lincoln), but only the means to the end, the end being the deportation of the slaves and the payment for them to their masters - at least to those who were loyal."
Bennett asserts that Lincoln often put forth plans for deporting the slaves to Africa both before and during his presidency.
The tone of Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream is decidedly angry, as if Bennett feels betrayed by what he calls the "myth" of Abraham Lincoln.
"No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false." -- Lerone Bennett, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.
THE PROBLEMS THAT LED TO THE CIVIL WAR are the same problems today ---- big, intrusive government. The reason we don't face the specter of another Civil War is because today's Americans don't have yesteryear's spirit of liberty and constitutional respect, and political statesmanship is in short supply.
Actually, the war of 1861 was not a civil war. A civil war is a conflict between two or more factions trying to take over a government. In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was no more interested in taking over Washington than George Washington was interested in taking over England in 1776. Like Washington, Davis was seeking independence. Therefore, the war of 1861 should be called "The War Between the States" or the "War for Southern Independence." The more bitter southerner might call it the "War of Northern Aggression."
History books have misled today's Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves.
Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so."
During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." A recent article by Baltimore's Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled "The Great Centralizer," in The Independent Review (Fall 1998), cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment about slavery.
Lincoln's intentions, as well as that of many northern politicians, were summarized by Stephen Douglas during the presidential debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government" that "place at defiance the intentions of the republic's founders." SOUND FAMILIAR TODAY? Douglas was right, and Lincoln's vision for our nation has now been accomplished beyond anything he could have possibly dreamed.
A precursor for a War Between the States came in 1832, when South Carolina called a convention to nullify tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, referred to as the "Tariffs of Abominations." A compromise lowering the tariff was reached, averting secession and possibly war. The North favored protective tariffs for their manufacturing industry. The South, which exported agricultural products to and imported manufactured goods from Europe, favored free trade and was hurt by the tariffs. Plus, a northern-dominated Congress enacted laws similar to Britain's Navigation Acts to protect northern shipping interests.
Shortly after Lincoln's election, Congress passed the highly protectionist Morrill tariffs.
That's when the South seceded, setting up a new government. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for all spending measures.
The only good coming from the War Between the States was the abolition of slavery. The great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" was overturned by force of arms. By destroying the states' right to secession, Abraham Lincoln opened the door to the kind of unconstrained, despotic, arrogant government we have today, something the framers of the Constitution could not have possibly imagined.
States should again challenge Washington's unconstitutional acts through nullification. But you tell me where we can find leaders with the love, courage and respect for our Constitution like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun.
Yes, the theory put forward by the libertarian economics professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo regarding the Morrill Tariff - is interesting from the point of view of what may have motivated Lincoln, but the fact that this tariff was not mentioned in any of the secession documents is more interesting still - and the fact that nothing was mentioned of taxes or tariffs in the demands of every one of the compromise proposals put forward by the South just prior and in the months following secession, leaves no doubts as to what motivated them to secede in the first place. It is worth noting also that the Morrill Tariff did not approach the largesse of the "Tax of Abominations" (which had led to the Nullification Crisis 30 years previous) - until after the war had started as a necessary means to fund the war effort, at which point it was only applicable to the goods imported by the North (naturally).
However I would never contend that the war was prosecuted for the sole purposes of freeing the slaves. Lincoln was obviously opposed to the institution, however his commitment to keeping the Republic intact outweighed any considerations of preemptive emancipation or abolitionist demands of mandatory manumission. In fact, he never once threatened to do this until after the war had begun - at which point it became clear that not only was emancipation vital to the war effort - but that there would always be the risk of secession if the institution was allowed to persist if and when the South was defeated. Lincoln was clearly not an abolitionist in the literal sense, he was only militantly opposed to slavery's expansion - but not its existence per se. As the South's compromise proposals make clear, he could have averted the secession and achieved reunification prior to the outbreak of war - had he acquiesced to the South's demands that slavery be allowed to expand westward to the Pacific and southward from the line of the missouri-compromise (at the 36th parallel).
My dear sir, I don't know what country you are living in, but we certainly do NOT have freedom of speech or expression or even the press (the "Fairness Doctrine" has been revived which intends to shut down the only avenues for conservative thought - talk radio and the internet). You cannot mention "God" in schools or show any of our founding principles that mention Him in the public square. Political correctness is a way of life and there are "hate crimes" and "hate speech" laws on the books that are being prosecuted by the government. Yes, YOU have "freedom of speech" because you agree with the Empire. On the other hand, I do not, because I disagree. I cannot speak out against abortion (hate speech). I cannot defend traditional marriage (hate speech). I cannot criticize "black leaders" (hate speech) - and so on.
Again, I am not going to do this dance with you. You believe what is not true and that's your right. You are, however, in error; the facts do not agree with you. Sherman was no different than Adolf Eichmann except in degree and target group and I sincerely hope that he and Eichmann are sharing the same place in eternity along with Lincoln and all those who believed that they had the right to do evil in order to bring about "good" or "change" or whatever they (and you) wish to call it.
As for me, I'm 67 and I haven't the time or the desire to continue to produce facts that are ignored or responded to with the same old tired and false "history". Enjoy what is left of your vaunted "free country" while it lasts - which given the present state of affairs will not be very long unless, perhaps, some states decide the their only hope is in secession - just as thirteen other states did long ago.
The Crittenden Compromise was submitted on behalf of the South. It was rejected because the Republicans were unwilling to compromise on the expansion of slavery - both westward and into the District of Columbia. In accordance with the settlers wishes, the state of California was admitted as a free state, and in accordance with the Compromise of 1850 - the slave-trade was abolished forever from the nation's capital. The South demanded that all states and territories south of the 36°30' parallel and westward to the Pacific be made slave-states - regardless of the wishes of the settlers of states themselves, and furthermore - they dictated that the District of Columbia must relegalize the slave-trade as well for them to reconsider secession. Lincoln and the congress rejected their demands, and then five months later the South fired four-thousand shells on the federal troops in Fort Sumter, and the civil discord became a Civil War. [/quote1235417279]
The Crittenden Compromise was submitted as a compromise not on behalf of the South but as compromise to avoid secession. I know the compromise was rejected by both the house and senate which tells me that either the North had the majority of votes cast against this compromise or at least some of the Southern representatives voted against the compromise. The compromise would have also have kept the balance of power between the Free states and slaves states equal. It can also be said that with the Black codes that existed in the North, the whole idea of these “free’ states was also not to keep out slaves but to keep at both slave and free black.
At any rate the bill did not pass, the south seceded giving up all of the new land to be had, and you still want to tell me this was all about expanding slavery. How is the south supposed to expand slavery when they set the boundaries themselves? To my way of thinking this is more a constitutional right than the issue of slavery -- if we can regulate your property what else can we regulate?
The same words that you use to describe Abraham Lincoln, are the same accusations that have been leveled against our last President who was, like Lincoln, made to wage war against the forces of tyranny and in support of democracy and western freedoms. [/quote1235418406]
Red House you have your facts all wrong. Lincoln was the tyrant. He provoked a war that cost the lives of more Americans that any man in history. He is the one who had anyone who spoke out against him arrested and place in jail. Lincoln, Sherman and Buttler should have been tried for war crimes against unarmed citizens of another country.
I'm sorry, but I really don't know where you're coming from. At least we can both agree that America is an empire. Yes, of course it is the last remaining super-power on earth, and I believe that the free-world is a better and safer place because of that fact. But I simply don't understand how anyone could believe that the slave-states and the free states could ever co-exist. It was the failure of the free-states to comply with the fugitive slave act that brought the secession crisis to a head, and whether there were two nations—one free, one slave; or one nation—half-free, half-slave—there would always have been Abolitionist agitators provoking one of them, and there would always be bounty hunters intruding upon the other. And if the South had seceded peacefully and confined itself to the 13 stars of its confederate flag - instead of expanding westward, can you even begin to fathom the consequences of that? Do you know what became of the French in Haiti? Do you know what would have become of the South - had the slave population continued to expand within the 13 Southern states already reserved for the institution? Two words: Ethnic. Cleansing. In another generation or two there would have been killing fields that would have rivaled Rwanda and Cambodia combined. You think Harper Ferry was ugly? If you think Harpers Ferry was madness or think the Southampton Insurrection was unpleasant: take a look at some of the engravings of what took place on the island of Saint-Domingue. Nat Turner was only the beginning: the South should thank God that the Northern Armies liberated them before a Toussaint L'Overture did. General Sherman's men behaved as model citizens and gentlemen compared to the alternative of what could-have-been. Did you know that in the final month of the war - that the South was actually considering arming some its slave population? Up to that point slaves had mainly served only as cooks and orderlies, and they were about to issue them weapons... my God ??
The North not only saved the Republic, they saved the South - from the very institution that they revolted over.
And LadyVal: What is this talk of "hate speech"? America is the only nation on earth where we have absolute freedom of speech. There are no "hate speech" laws here. Unlike Canada, europe and the UK - our freedoms of expression are fully protected by the First Amendment - or at the very least they have been since 1967 - the year in which that right was last challenged by a government authority. [/quote1235418997]
Red House,
WE are not a nation of free speech. Kids here in the south are banned from schools, dances and other events for displaying the Confederate flag, bands can no longer play Dixie, teachers are monitored as to what they can teach, prayer is being banned so is the 10 commandments, right now today talk radio and religious programs are coming under attack, newspapers are biased in their reporting and in their opinions. With all of this and more going on you tell us about free speech?
At the time of the War for Southern Independence there was no such thing as a free state. Slavery was legal in the United States – all states. The real problem was the failure to enforce the laws regarding the fugitives. Another fact you seem to overlook is Southern states since the beginning of this nation was against slavery, the northern slave traders refuse to give up this profitable trade and fought to maintain the institution of slavery. Something else you may not be ware of is abolitionist groups and members were greater in the South than in the North in 1860. Now you go on about these rights and ethic cleansing so for and so on, that is just smoke and mirrors, you have no proof that any of these things would have taken place. In fact I believe riots as you described have happened mostly in the border states and the north or Union states rather than in the South. I am correct?
Slavery in itself would have died a natural death with the new inventions such as the tractor, baler and so forth. It would not have been profitable to have slaves and all of the care and maintenance that goes along with them with these new machines.
So you are telling us that rape, murder and pillaging, torture is better done by a white man than a black man? What is the difference you have been violated just the same? What kind of thinking is this? I simply cannot comprehend it. Yes it is proven that many blacks did fight for the South! Do you doubt that fact? I can give you the address of a man who is an expert on minorities fighting for the South should you wish to learn more. The South did not have to buy slaves and demand they fight for us. They fought under their own free will right beside men of other race, creeds and color. To say otherwise is an out right distortion of the truth. It is also well known that Jews, Mexicans, Native Americans and Asians fought for the South also --- My gosh!!!!
BTW you should know by now the south did not revolt over the institution of slavery, in fact the war had nothing to do with slavery. Nothing at all.
GP, I've got to disagree with you here. It certainly did have to do with slavery, but not as is depicted by the Yankee historians. Let's take it a bit at a time:
1. Slaves (like your horse or your WIFE) were property; they had been bought and paid for which is why the Fugitive Slave Act was the law of the land. If your horse ran off, your neighbor or the guy two counties away couldn't keep it; it was YOUR horse.
2. Private property was a seminal condition of a free society. If the government or certain classes of people own everything, then who is free? Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that men had the right to life, liberty and PROPERTY which was later changed to the "pursuit (not the capture) of happiness".
3. Radical abolitionists (and there were abolitionists in the South as well) decided upon a course of encouraging servile insurrection among the slaves in the manner of Nat Turner's murderous revolt. When Southern representatives in Congress demanded that Northern states act against people who were advocating murder, the majority in the Congress either did not act or, in fact, supported the abolitionists. Needless to say, this got the Southern representatives more than a bit angry and made the issue of slavery into a very important one in the Congress.
4. Most people agreed that the institution of black slavery was dying despite the need for slaves in the deep South for the production of the South's cash crops, cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. However, as the federal government wanted the tax monies from the tariffs imposed upon the South's importation of goods from Europe (which were superior and cheaper than similar goods from the North), the government promised to keep slavery legal so as to entice the South to remain in the Union. Needless to say, it didn't work. The South could see the handwriting on the wall. The states coming into the Union were for the most part voting to forbid slavery within their borders. Of course, they also for the most part forbid blacks from moving into those states as well! Many such votes were the result of New England states sending men into states like Kansas to act as "citizens" and to vote for the state to be a "free state". Most of those "change agents" from New England settled in a town named Lawrence. If you remember, Confederate partisan William Quantrill in response to atrocities committed against Southern sympathizers in Missouri and Kansas, struck Lawrence in retaliation. Unlike the Yankees, however, he limited his killing to men old enough to take up arms. Women, children and the old were spared. Can't say the same for what the redlegs and jayhawkers did to peaceful Southern farmers.
No, slavery was very much at the heart of the controversy that led to war, but certainly the matter could have been settled without war and absolutely the federal government had no right - constitutional, ethical or moral - to wage war on the people who wished to be freed from the old Union. Anyone who says differently is obviously one who holds no belief in a government of laws, but gives allegiance to a government of men.
Slavery was one issue of secession. Secession only led to the war as disputes rose over the ownership of Federal property and the breaking of an existing treaty. I am speaking of the actual beginning of the war at Fort Sumter. Major Anderson's move did not free any slave, Genl. Beauregard's action did not imprison any slave since he was only protecting Charleston from and aggressive force. Slavery was not an issue until Lincoln issued the EP. It has been said that a person could go back to the magna carter or the birth of Christ and connect any event to the war they chose to. I would suppose that is correct since our nation was formed partly on the Magna Carter and the bible.
Ah, you were speaking of the "first shot" scenario which was orchestrated by Lincoln and, actually, before him by Winfield Scott while Buchanan was still in office.
I was speaking of the general causes of secession of which slavery was but one - but an important one for all of that.
Ah, you were speaking of the "first shot" scenario which was orchestrated by Lincoln and, actually, before him by Winfield Scott while Buchanan was still in office.
I was speaking of the general causes of secession of which slavery was but one - but an important one for all of that.
Now we are on the same page. LOL LOL LOL
Everyone wants to say slavery was the cause and try to connect all of the little dots to make it so. Few realize the answer is right in front of their face.
BTW someplace I have other documents that verify what you posted as attachments. Also to be noted is Genl. Alexendar Porters "Fighting For The Confederacy" in which he states Anderson and crew were drawing supplies from Charleston. I did not see that in your notes, did I over look it?
I'm not too sure. I remember that in one place on SOME piece I had it mentioned that Lincoln's lie about the men in Sumter "starving" was nonsense since they were regularly supplied by the merchants of Charleston, but I don't know if it was in either of the pieces I gave you. It was a piece of propaganda, of course, used to drum up support for the war the Lincoln would have no matter what.
