Lincoln and Southern Secession

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Doug1943, Aug 27, 2018.

  1. Natty Bumpo

    Natty Bumpo Well-Known Member

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    Yes, he aggressively defended the United States after it was attacked. Following his election as its President, several states, fearing they would not be allowed to persist in the practice of slavery and extend it to additional parts of the United States, issued their Declarations of Causes of Seceding States.

    The union was preserved and those who rebelled against it were not allowed to persist in the practice of slavery or spread it elsewhere.
     
  2. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Good point about Liberia. Although it was a small effort percentage-wise, it was certainly a significant one.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia#Early_colonization
    In the United States, there was a movement to resettle free-born blacks and freed slaves who faced racial discrimination in the form of political disenfranchisement, and the denial of civil, religious and social privileges in the United States.[17] Most whites and later a small cadre of black nationalists believed that blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the U.S.[8] The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 in Washington, DC, for this purpose, by a group of prominent politicians and slaveholders, but its membership grew to include mostly people who supported the abolition of slavery. Slaveholders wanted to get free people of color out of the South, where they were thought to threaten the stability of the slave societies. Some abolitionists collaborated on the relocation of free blacks, as they were discouraged by racial discrimination against them in the North and believed they would never be accepted in the larger society.[18] Most blacks, who were native-born by this time, wanted to work toward justice in the United States rather than emigrate.[8] Leading activists in the North strongly opposed the ACS, but some free blacks were ready to try a different environment.

    In 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending black volunteers to the Pepper Coast to establish a colony for freed blacks. By 1867, the ACS (and state-related chapters) had assisted in the migration of more than 13,000 blacks to Liberia.[19] These free African-Americans and their descendants married within their community and came to identify as Americo-Liberians. Many were of mixed race and educated in American culture; they did not identify with the indigenous natives of the tribes they encountered. They intermarried largely within the colonial community, developing an ethnic group that had a cultural tradition infused with American notions of political republicanism and Protestant Christianity.[20]
     
  3. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Great spin! Is that like the US defended freedom by invading Iraq?

    So Lincoln invades the South then authorizes Sherman to initiate a scorched earth strategy, now illegal under the Geneva Convention, to starve all Southerners, regardless of age or race. Great defense!
     
  4. Natty Bumpo

    Natty Bumpo Well-Known Member

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    Iraq did not attack the United States at Fort Sumter or elsewhere. Nor did it attempt to destroy the union, nor claim any part of the United States as exclusively its own and exempt from the laws of the United States.
    You can characterize it any way that fits your agenda, and I have no interest in defending any excesses of either the United States nor those who rebelled against it that occurred during the war.

    Japan can object to nuclear bombs being dropped on civilian populations in WWII, but it happened, and the United States won that war as well.

    The reality is that the union was saved and slavery abolished.

    What is it that you now hope to change?
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2018
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  5. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I've always wondered ... idly ... what went wrong in Liberia. Perhaps someone knows a good online or downloadable history of it.
     
  6. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Ummm, Iraq did attack the United States and killed 37 American heroes. It took a few years, but we paid them back in spades.

    You've used multiple examples of both goalpost moving and misconstruing American history....and, by defending Lincoln's invasion of the South, you are indeed defending "excesses" of the United States.

    I'm not hoping to change anything. The past is the past. We have no idea what the world would have looked like had Lincoln not attacked the South. Would it be better or worse? There is no way to tell. All I'm doing is correcting the false history some people on this forum keep pushing. Your "aggressively defended" defense of the War of Northern Aggression is amusing but a standard false meme pushed by over 150 years of the winners rewriting the history books to make themselves look good. Look at how many Yankees think the Civil War was over slavery.
     
  7. bendog

    bendog Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure we need a sequel. But interesting. The notion of whether the ratification of the constitution constituted an irrefutable acquiescence to federalism is an issue for the white supremacists, even though the original book pretty much said it all .... in 1959
     
  8. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm now going to try to get Jaffa's books and read them. He's not someone that many conservatives are familiar with -- don't know about liberals.

    I really only found out about him because I read a somewhat obscure publication called the Claremont Review of Books where they are concerned about things like Natural Law as the basis for the Declaration of Independence, and whether the Declaration or the Constitution is the essence of the Republic ... the arguments are not really my interest and probably above my pay grade -- then I came across Scrialabba's review at one point, liked his frankness -- "unConstitutional but necessary" -- and recalled it as relevant to a discussion in another thread.

    I didn't feel like expending the energy to find it, but didn't the South itself squelch some attempts to break away from it? That is, didn't they try to form an indissoluble union among themselves?
     
  9. Natty Bumpo

    Natty Bumpo Well-Known Member

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    If someone needs to retrospectively contrive an alternate pretext, that is what he will do. Your attempt to equate the states that attempted to secede with Iraq is odd.

    Lincoln preserved the Union after it was attacked. If the slave states had thought they had a legally valid right to secede, they had available a judicial alternative to attacking the United State. Lincoln had maintained that the federal government was prevented by the Constitution from abolishing slavery in states where it already existed. Nevertheless, when he was elected their President, the slave states rebelled and attacked the US at Fort Sumter.

    You can buy the myth of Gone With The Wind if you like. Slavery was and is immoral.

    The slave states that attempted to succeed cited their practice of slavery repeatedly as their pretext. They were hellbent upon its perpetuation, and its infliction upon new areas of westward expansion.

    GEORGIA: "...we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property..." MISSISSIPPI: "... Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world..." SOUTH CAROLINA: "... The people of the State of South Carolina,... in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States... an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery... " etc.
    The United States was attacked. It defended itself successfully. The union was preserved. Slavery was ended in the victorious United States.

    If you are claiming that the United States does not have the right to respond to an attack and defend itself anywhere on sovereign United States territory, you are wrong.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2018
  10. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Translation: My questioning your facts got my ass burnt so now I'll counterattack with words like "contrive" and "odd".

    Have a nice day, Natty.

    Liberals are all about "Freedom" as long as everyone falls into step and marches to the same song. Cross them and they resort to insults.

    [​IMG]
     
  11. bendog

    bendog Well-Known Member

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    I don't know of any southern states that tried to secede from the confederacy. Jones County Mississippi tried. There was general unhappiness with conscription in the South, as the war relentlessly reached its logical conclusion.

    I think Jaffa's first book would be a must have for large public libraries. And an interesting link. I may wait for a used book though.
     
  12. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    If you agree with this

    It’s not that the Civil War was unjustified. But it was unjustified in the terms Lincoln restricted himself to: as a police action to put down a treasonable uprising against a legitimate government. The (white) people of the South had democratically withdrawn their allegiance from the Union; it was no longer their legitimate government.​

    you would do well to rethink your agreement, as unilateral secession is illegal under the Constitution.
     
  13. Esperance

    Esperance Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Lincoln was assassinated by a Democrat. Seems to me that he may have had a plan that he wasn't able to implement.

    Seven generations removed from slavery and the Democratic Party is still finding new ways to subvert Blacks from full participation in every aspect of our society.
     
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  14. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's an arguable point, from the legal standpoint. To me, and to Scialabba, it was, and is, irrelevant.

    You start from what is right, and if the written laws contradict that, you try to change them, and/or defy them.

    Slavery was legal under the Constitution. But I'd bet good money that anyone on this forum -- well, okay, I can think of a couple of exceptions -- would have helped an escaped slave elude his pursuers.

    But of course, as old Bismarck pointed out, all the great issues of mankind are settled not by parliamentary majorities (or interpretations of a Constitutions), but by blood and iron.

    The status of slavery was settled by the 'final argument', the ultima ratio, of both kings and commoners. As those fine classical scholars of the USMC have it

    [​IMG]
     
  15. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm going to try to get it. .... Amazon where I live will sell you a lot of his books, mainly shipped from the US, but for prices that mean that you have to really really want them. I'll start saving up. The grandchildren can do without lunch money for a few weeks.
     
  16. nra37922

    nra37922 Well-Known Member

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    Mental shackles versus the use of metal ones. The Dems figured this out in the LBJ days...
     
  17. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Blacks mainly vote Democratic for the same reasons that people in the bottom half of society economically vote for left wing parties everywhere in the world. They're voting for their economic self-interest, as they see it, the same as, say, white union members. This trend began back in the 1930s, with the New Deal, long long before the Democrats nationally became pro-Civil Rights and despite the well-known New Deal bias against Black people. It was and is a rational decision, if you believe, as a wage-earner, that your interests are served more by a leftish party than by a rightish one.

    The only way that conservatives can appeal to the base of a left wing party is by showing -- in practice -- that their stewardship of the economy actually provides a better life for everyone -- that the unequal sharing of prosperity is better than the equal sharing of misery.

    Whether this can be obtained purely by laissez-faire libertarian economics is another matter.

    Conservatives need to do a lot more to appeal to people (of all colors) trapped at the bottom of society. This doesn't mean more welfare, but means thinking about ways to improve public education for the bottom half. This is something that some conservatives have thought about -- there are actually a considerable amount of ideas available for improving our relatively mediocre education system, but they tend to remain unknown.

    And although it runs against pure libertarian economic thinking, national infra-structure projects ought to be considered.

    The pre-Obamacare status quo in healthcare is also something that conservatives do not necessarily need to embrace. We ought to look at how places like fiercely capitalist Singapore deal with health care.

    Too often conservatives give the impression that they care only for the rich and the well-off. And no doubt some of them do. But it's a losing electoral strategy and unnecessary.
     
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  18. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Whose "self-determination?" What about people living in a state that wants to secede? Do they have the right to oppose the state government? What about a city in the state? Does the city have a right to oppose the state? How about individual groups? You're advancing the tired, old "state's rights" argument.

    States that sign on with this country agree to the entire Constitution, including the Supremacy Clause. They're agreeing that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that no state law supersede it.
    How can treason be right? Besides, why didn't the South try to negotiate an exit to avoid a conflict?
    He fought a war to preserve the union.

    The world is lucky he did. I don't know how the Allies could have prevailed in WW1, or expecially in WW2, if there had been no United States.

    Sprichst du Deutsch?
     
  19. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    The Gettysburg address is a recruitment speech.
    "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -"
     
  20. LiveUninhibited

    LiveUninhibited Well-Known Member

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    Generally it goes by majority rules within contiguous geographic areas. This is the only sense in which I believe in democracy, otherwise regular people shouldn't be making policy decisions. The slavery problem was going to be a conundrum either way.

    Nobody alive at the time signed on to anything.

    Rebelling against Britain would have been treason had we lost. Leaving England was exercising the same sort of right the South tried to exercise. I think they thought that with the election of Lincoln, the North would have the upper hand in any kind of negotiation. They underestimated the willingness of the North to kill them in order to keep them.


    Hard to say if anything would have been the same. Such a change in history could very well have led to a different series of events entirely. Hitler's rise to power was largely a result of Germany's treatment at the end of WWI. There's no reason to suspect that the United States and Confederacy wouldn't both have wanted to fight the Nazis anyway.
     
  21. Kenneth Erwin Engelhardt

    Kenneth Erwin Engelhardt Newly Registered

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    Not all slave states seceded: Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland were slave states and remained within the union.
     
  22. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    The Supremacy Clause does not apply to secession as the Constitution does not address it. As Madison put it, in The Federalist #39:

    the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

    I suggest you look up the definition of 'enumerated'. Also, 'inviolable', too.

    Efforts were made, and by more than just the South, to forestall a split. See the Crittenden Compromise (note that it was blocked entirely by Republicans) and the Peace Conference of 1861.

    Lincoln fought the war to, in his own words, to "collect duties and imposts" (see his Inaugural Address).
     
  23. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You're probably familiar with Gary Wills' gloss on it. With which I agree.
     
  24. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Churchill wrote a little-known essay, turning things upside down and inside out, called "If Lee had not won at the Battle of Gettysburg".

    Worth a read. (Anything by Churchill is worth a read but this is not to be found in the main collections of his writings.)

    And ... to take an enormous step down in intellectual power .. Newt Gingrich co-authored a novel with the same theme.

    But the absolute immortal unbeatable novel about Gettysburg, and also about the deeper meaning of the Civil War, and not just for the United States but for the human race, is Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. How an obscure sci-fi author could write such a book is beyond me ... he must have had fire from heaven land on him. It's not just military history, but has social and political philosophy woven subtly into it. Ought to be on the reading list of every American teenager who can read. If any.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2018
  25. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    Everything is arguable, until the truth is known.
    Given that you requoted it, bolding most of it, one can perhaps be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
    Be that as it may, Lincoln did neither by suppressing the Confederate insurrection. On the contrary, he was legally obligated to do just that.
     

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