Lincoln and Southern Secession

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

  1. nra37922

    nra37922 Well-Known Member

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    Question. Was Lincoln killed to soon or to late?
     
  2. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels was mandatory reading for officers and NCOs in our unit, as was one of the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell.
     
  3. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Great question. I don't the answer to that, but I guess he would have let the South up as easily as did Johnson. Unlike Johnson, the Congress would not dare impeach Lincoln.
     
  4. dave8383

    dave8383 Banned at Members Request Past Donor

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    "His best-known Lincoln books are “Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,” first published in 1959, and “A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War” (2000).

    In “Crisis,” he summarized what he saw as the difference between Lincoln and Douglas in their views of popular government.

    “Douglas’s doctrine of ‘popular sovereignty’ meant no more than that: in a democracy justice is the interest of the majority, which is ‘the stronger,’ ” he wrote. “Lincoln, however, insisted that the case for popular government depended upon a standard of right and wrong independent of mere opinion and one which was not justified merely by the counting of heads.”

    If I read this right: According to the author Lincoln's claim of fighting the war to protect the union was not his real motive. He's real motive was the projection of what he considered morally right, the cessation of slavery.
     
  5. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh look, the pot calls the kettle black.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2018
  6. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I hope you carry your fishing license.

    Trolling motor-ani.gif
     
  7. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Why do the people in a state have the right of self-determination? There was no such thing as a state until the boundary was set under the Constitution.
    The best you can do?
    They made a bad decision, no? Their actions weren't legitimate under the Constitution and the northern states called their bluff.
    But there's also no reason to assume there would be just two nation states in the place of this country.
     
  8. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
     
  9. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    The Constitution creates a federal system with powers granted to a federal government, to states created at the time of federation and later by Congress, and reserves the rest for individuals. The Supremacy Clause establishes the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. States only have powers granted to it by the Constitution. There is no power to secede.

    In Texas v. White, the Supreme Court made it clear there was no option for a state to secede:

    "When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States."​
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
  10. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    It is beyond ridiculous to assume that the States, having created the Constitution, would then bend a knee in subjection to their creation.

    The States existed before the Constitution. The States granted powers to the federal government in that Constitution. Those powers were enumerated in said Constitution. Inferring further powers beyond those enumerated is not one of those powers. The 9th and 10th amendments make it quite clear.
     
  11. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The state itself is a creation of the people, who began in a condition of statelessness. Of course it didn't literally happen that way, but taking part in a state means you cede some of your power to it, in return for the protection that a state affords you.

    However, regardless of the historical trajectory that any nation finds itself at the end of, surely if an overwhelming majority of its citizens, as a settled opinion, want to leave and form 'their own' state -- surely we should let them, as a logical consequence of the belief that states should rest on the 'consent of the governed'?

    However ... this was not the South's case. A large proportion of the people there did not support secession, and their legal status as non-citizens was immoral. If the slave-Southerners had also supported secession, it would be a different story.
     
  12. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    deleted
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
  13. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Churchill speculates the South ended slavery as well as winning at Gettysburg. It recognizes the impossibility of Britain aiding the South by using the Royal Navy to lift the Union blockade on CSA ports.
     
  14. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Interestingly, the Lancashire textile workers lost their jobs as a result of very little cotton getting to Britain. One might assume that they would have been lobbying for Britain to use its formidable navy to break the blockade. Not so.

    [ SOURCE ]

    It is not true that we are all moved by narrow economic self-interest. Those workers recognized the world-historic nature of the American Civil War, that it was indeed a fight over slavery and not a technical dispute about an interpretation of a document, and that victory for the Union would be their victory as well, a victory for the little guys.
     
  15. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    It was no accident the Founding Fathers omitted Article 2 of the Articles of Confederation:

    "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."​
    They were entities created by the Articles of Confederation. Before that, they were British colonies.
    The states ceased to exist as the entities created from colonies by the Articles of Confederation. The Supremacy Clause underscores the states loss of soverignty.
     
  16. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Good point.
     
  17. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Britain was a far different country in the 1860s than it was even a generation earlier. What we saw was the beginning of liberal democracy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
  18. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    The sentiment that prevailed when Ireland separated from the UK, when Scotland held a referedum with the agreement of the senior government, but has not so far held sway in Catalonia. China, of course, is unwilling to consider independence for Taiwan.
     
  19. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    The federal supremacy clause outweighs state sovereignty, period.
     
  20. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    Then why bother with ratification? And why only 9 States needed for ratification?

    The fact is that Washington was elected president with only 10 States voting. The other 3 had returned to their original state of wholly sovereign independent entities upon dissolution of the AoC.

    Rhode Island, in its vehement objections to the Constitution, felt that the other States had seceded (oops, there's that 's' word) from the original Confederation.

    And, here's a snippet on New York.

    In keeping with Article VII, steps were taken to begin organizing the first elections without the participation of New York, North Carolina and – of course — Rhode Island. By its size, its location and its port, New York was vital to the new nation but deeply anti-federalist. The first vote there was 46-19 against ratification. But once the critical number nine was passed, the anti-federalist New Yorkers had to contemplate going forward as an independent state, surrounded by members of the United States. New York City was a hotbed of support for ratification. At a crucial moment, Alexander Hamilton (the floor manager for the pro-ratification forces at the New York convention) floated the idea that if New York stayed out, New York City – with its vital port – might secede from the state and separately join the U.S. A. That panicked enough of the anti’s. New York ratified by 30-28.
     
  21. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    There is no restriction on secession enumerated in the Constitution.

    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.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
  22. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Woogs, that was settled in April 1865.

    You can argue it all you want, but that changes absolutely nothing.
     
  23. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    I'm not looking for change except for possibly honoring what the Constitution actually says.

    The Supremacy Clause argument is hogwash. You still sticking to it?
     
  24. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Your opinion is meaningless, Woogs, but it is your opinion, so stick with it.
     
  25. Woogs

    Woogs Well-Known Member

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    At least mine is substantiated by contemporaneous documentation.

    Yours is well ..... yours. Stick with it, though.
     

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