The Confederacy And A Pope

[CatholicMax]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1500562' date='Apr 15 2008, 11:37 PM']hmm... sounds like Lincoln was talking about Slavery before the war started. Heres part of his 'House divided' speech in 1858[/quote]

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything." -Abraham Lincoln


Sounds like he really thought they were people. yup loved them "negroes".

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, and I have no inclination to do so.--Abraham Lincoln-First Inaugural Address

The objection to slave states in the North was not a moral one, it was about one thing power.

[quote]I guess slavery wasn't really the issue when Dred Scott was decided just 3 years before the war.[/quote]
My argument is not that slavery had 0 to do with the war, but that 1 it didnt have as much as is reported. and 2 it was not the reason for the war in the way it is popularly proposed. Lee himself was no fan of slavery.

[quote]I guess the slavery wasn't really the issue when South Carolina left the union first, claiming specifically 5 reasons:[/quote]

May i see sources?

[rkwright]

The full text of the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" here...

[url="http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm"]http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm[/url]

Note the following paragraphs..
[quote]In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."[/quote]
[quote]The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.[/quote]

Regarding Lincoln, its interesting that South Carolina actually mentions him as a reason for leaving the union..
[quote]A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.[/quote]

Again slavery not the real issue here? The document speaks for itself.

[rkwright]

Georgia's secession document...
[quote]These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

These are the same men who say the Union shall be preserved.

Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.[/quote]

Mississippi's (an easy read, this is the whole document, emp. mine)
[quote]In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

[b]Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery[/b]-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.[/quote]

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1499049' date='Apr 14 2008, 09:17 AM']Yep. The Confederacy was incorrect about slavery, but everything else made them completely justified in their actions. Moreover, slavery was able to be abolished everywhere else in the civilized world voluntarily and without bloodshed, and as the African slave trade had already been shut down it was only a matter of time before the confederacy would have made that peaceful transition.[/quote]
So what was Lincoln supposed to do, ignore his Oath of Office? The Southern states seceded after Lincoln was elected president, a [i]constitutional[/i] process in which they participated. Things didn't go their way, and so they decided to take their ball and go home. In addition, the Civil War was preceded by a dialog, i.e. the debate about states' rights, nullification, etc. Again, this was a [i]constitutional[/i] process that the Southern states felt wasn't going their way, and so decided to take their ball and go home. No one forced them to either ratify the Constitution in 1789 or join the Union afterwards.

As for the end of the slave trade, that was based on a clause in the US Constitution. I daresay that you hold a rather sanguine view of what you posit as the probable peaceful end of slavery in the South given the continuation of virulent racial discrimination there at least through the 60's.

[CatholicMax]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1500635' date='Apr 16 2008, 07:35 AM']So what was Lincoln supposed to do, ignore his Oath of Office? The Southern states seceded after Lincoln was elected president, a [i]constitutional[/i] process in which they participated. Things didn't go their way, and so they decided to take their ball and go home. In addition, the Civil War was preceded by a dialog, i.e. the debate about states' rights, nullification, etc. Again, this was a [i]constitutional[/i] process that the Southern states felt wasn't going their way, and so decided to take their ball and go home. No one forced them to either ratify the Constitution in 1789 or join the Union afterwards.[/quote]
It was always understood that the Union was always understood to be optional. in fact the founding fathers did not expect the union to last, what made the union the union was that it was understood to be optional. no state would have entered the union without the understood agreement that they could leave at any time.



[quote]As for the end of the slave trade, that was based on a clause in the US Constitution. I daresay that you hold a rather sanguine view of what you posit as the probable peaceful end of slavery in the South given the continuation of virulent racial discrimination there at least through the 60's.[/quote]

You don't fix peoples rights being violated by creating new ones (which is what affirmative action did).

look people there is a thread on racism this is NOT that thread.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500769' date='Apr 16 2008, 10:33 AM']It was always understood that the Union was always understood to be optional. in fact the founding fathers did not expect the union to last, what made the union the union was that it was understood to be optional. no state would have entered the union without the understood agreement that they could leave at any time.[/quote].
Whatever about what was "understood," what was the [i]constitutional[/i] basis for leaving the Union? A gentleman's agreement? The fact of the matter is, the South didn't care for the results of a free, fair, legal, and legitimate presidential election, and so decided to take their ball and go home.

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500769' date='Apr 16 2008, 10:33 AM']You don't fix peoples rights being violated by creating new ones (which is what affirmative action did).[/quote]
Actually, you do: they're called the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

[CatholicMax]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1500781' date='Apr 16 2008, 10:46 AM'].
Whatever about what was "understood," what was the [i]constitutional[/i] basis for leaving the Union? A gentleman's agreement?[/quote]
The constitution applied to the federal government it did not apply to the states. The States did not need a constitutional basis for leaving the union. as a matter of fact leaving the union is really the only defense a state has against an imposing federal government which is why it was understood that a state could do so.
[quote]The fact of the matter is, the South didn't care for the results of a free, fair, legal, and legitimate presidential election, and so decided to take their ball and go home.[/quote]
Actually the South did, that is how we got Jefferson Davis. The south did not vote for Lincoln they refrained from participating in the Union elections, and most states had recalled their congressmen and senators by then too. Lincoln was a tyrant by every definition of the word.

[quote]Actually, you do: they're called the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.[/quote]

Actually you don't. See the constitution in reality is suppose to reflect Rights God has given to man. where as affirmative action is Rights the government (the secular god) has given to man. (I am speaking particularly of the first 10). All of these amendments including the 19th amendments were all nightmares and the founding fathers would kill over them. they are a violation of States rights, it is the right of a State to determine who can and cannot vote.

I do hold that not allowing someone to vote because of the color of their skin is immoral. However you fix it on a state level not a federal.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500816' date='Apr 16 2008, 11:26 AM']The constitution applied to the federal government it did not apply to the states. The States did not need a constitutional basis for leaving the union. as a matter of fact leaving the union is really the only defense a state has against an imposing federal government which is why it was understood that a state could do so.[/quote]
We'll have to agree to differ. The word "union" has no meaning other than a composite of two or more things. From a linguistic perspective, only "composite of states" = "union" makes any sense.

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500816' date='Apr 16 2008, 11:26 AM']Actually the South did, that is how we got Jefferson Davis. The south did not vote for Lincoln they refrained from participating in the Union elections, and most states had recalled their congressmen and senators by then too. Lincoln was a tyrant by every definition of the word.[/quote]
I didn't vote for George Bush. Indeed, I am from NJ, which voted for Kerry in the last presidential election. Guess what? George Bush is our president.

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500816' date='Apr 16 2008, 11:26 AM']Actually you don't. See the constitution in reality is suppose to reflect Rights God has given to man. where as affirmative action is Rights the government (the secular god) has given to man. (I am speaking particularly of the first 10). All of these amendments including the 19th amendments were all nightmares and the founding fathers would kill over them. they are a violation of States rights, it is the right of a State to determine who can and cannot vote.

I do hold that not allowing someone to vote because of the color of their skin is immoral. However you fix it on a state level not a federal.[/quote]
Well, all I can say is that the Constitution itself, along with all the amendments, were agreed and implemented via a process to which everyone assented. My main beef with the Southern states seceding is that, as I've already said, they didn't like the outcome of a process to which they agreed and in which they participated, and when it didn't go their way they took their ball and went home.

[rkwright]

[quote name='CatholicMax' post='1500816' date='Apr 16 2008, 11:26 AM']Actually you don't. See the constitution in reality is suppose to reflect Rights God has given to man. where as affirmative action is Rights the government (the secular god) has given to man. (I am speaking particularly of the first 10). All of these amendments including the 19th amendments were all nightmares and the founding fathers would kill over them. they are a violation of States rights, it is the right of a State to determine who can and cannot vote.

I do hold that not allowing someone to vote because of the color of their skin is immoral. However you fix it on a state level not a federal.[/quote]

Who cares what the founding fathers wanted? They gave us a document, and ways to change it. We have chosen to amendment and recognize Blacks as more than 3/5ths of a person (note it was 3/5ths not 1/5).

The purpose of the Constitution was to protect the people from the government; recognizing God given rights. It takes the federal government to step in and protect these rights when they are not recognized by the state including when Blacks are not recognized as persons by the states.