Today's American History lesson.

[The Sage of Main Street]

And the south had slavery until 1865, regardless of what they called themselves. The Federal government wanted it removed...

And the USA also had slavery until 1865, including New Jersey. But that is not taught anymore. Makes the US Federal Gov look like hypocrites. Thanks for proving my point. Erasing history makes some feel better.

What IS you point? Slavery ended as did the Confederacy. I am all about preserving history.

Class-Biased Indentured Servitude

College, too, is work without pay. Are we required to believe that intelligent people deserve to be punished before they are rewarded?

 

[JoeB131]

We miss them more than we realize

Wages and worker protections haven't been the same

As I said, I have mixed feelings.

One one end, yes, you have the problem like my former boss who screwed me over and then said, "I'm so glad I don't have to deal with a union."

But the other extreme is people who just plain old shouldn't be working in that field due to laziness or incompetence, but the Union makes them impossible to fire.

 

[rightwinger]

We miss them more than we realize

Wages and worker protections haven't been the same

As I said, I have mixed feelings.

One one end, yes, you have the problem like my former boss who screwed me over and then said, "I'm so glad I don't have to deal with a union."

But the other extreme is people who just plain old shouldn't be working in that field due to laziness or incompetence, but the Union makes them impossible to fire.

My dad was union and we had to endure occaisonal strikes. One lasting seven months But he supported a family of six on one income, bought a house, sent four kids to college and retired at 60.
Can't find many jobs like that today
Union workers didn't get rich. But they earned a decent living

 

[Unkotare]

You can argue about the northern states (colonies) dependence on cotton and their 200 hundred years of enriching northern industrial conglomerates with slave trade or you can argue that the alleged greatest politician in American history couldn't compromise and hold the Union together for another 30 years until the industrial revolution. Lincoln didn't save the union. His incompetence and arrogance caused the Union to fall apart.

That is ignorant on several levels.

 

[Slash]

You can argue about the northern states (colonies) dependence on cotton and their 200 hundred years of enriching northern industrial conglomerates with slave trade or you can argue that the alleged greatest politician in American history couldn't compromise and hold the Union together for another 30 years until the industrial revolution. Lincoln didn't save the union. His incompetence and arrogance caused the Union to fall apart.

Seeing as no ship or person in the US was legally allowed to participate in the slave trade since 1794 (during Washington's presidency), and the only states allowing the buying of slaves were in the slave states, that doesn't hold up.

Also Lincoln did save the union. Secession occurred before he even entered office. And while MAYBE the industrial revolution would have changed things, it very well may have made slavery or some form of it even more integral to the economy.

 

[Slash]

And the USA also had slavery until 1865, including New Jersey. But that is not taught anymore. Makes the US Federal Gov look like hypocrites. Thanks for proving my point. Erasing history makes some feel better.

WHat do you mean it makes it look like hypocrites? The state of New Jersey was in the process of ending slavery, the South was in the process of turning traitor to ensure it survived. The Republican party which was the first party to base itself on an anti-slavery stance had JUST taken power and as soon as the Union was restored got slavery repealed.

Again, if your point is that the people that BUILT this country were flawed, NOBODY is disagreeing. If your point is that they were as flawed as a rebellion that went to war against the US and tried to overthrow the government of the United States of America for the perpetuation of slavery, I would disagree.

 

[Boss]

Here's the thing about that. The guys who died in Vietnam were trying to protect a people from communist tyranny. Maybe it was misguided, but they fought for a good cause.

The guys who died for the Confederacy were fighting to defend slavery.

They don't deserve rememberance. They don't deserve honor.

Here's the thing about that... you're full of shit.
It is your ignorant and inaccurate opinion they were fighting to defend slavery. As I pointed out, they didn't even own slaves. It's not up to you to decide what deserves remembrance and remembrance doesn't necessarily mean honor. There are many reasons to remember something, honor is only one.

More to the point, what we don't have are statues of Westmoreland or MacNamara or the other idiots who blundered us into Vietnam. We don't put a statue of them in the middle of a Vietnamese community to remind them of "Their place".

Well, we don't have Vietnamese communities because we don't segregate people anymore. We threw the Democrats who liked to do that sort of thing out of office. And look... I am not opposed to a community voting to remove a Confederate statue! If that's what the people want to do, I'm fine with that! I object to it being done because YOU decided it didn't need to be there, you virtue signaling moron.

It was a thing that happened, as I said, my grandmother worked for a sharecropper.

YOu do realize that Sharecropping was just a way that white folks fucked the freed slaves, right. Read a ******* history book.

No, I realize you are once again presenting your bigoted ignorant opinion. I guarantee I've read more history books than you on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Sharecropping and tenant farming is how we resolved the situation of freeing the slaves. Freedmen had no way of supporting their families and land owners had no labor. I didn't argue that it was some great and glorious thing that benefited all. I simply countered your idiotic argument that it didn't happen.

You claim it was a way to **** over the freed slaves but by 1930, most sharecroppers were white. Again, you present an ignorant and bigoted opinion without any basis in fact.

Doesn't mean that abolition wasn't a Christian worldview.

Except it wasn't. Some Christians thought - belatedly- that slavery was bad after supporting it for 1800 years. And some Christians supported it because the bible said so right up until the day it was abolished. And those same Christians then supported segregation and Jim Crow and Miscegenation laws and putting up statues of Klan Murderers to put those people in their place.

It was in fact a Catholic Churchman, Bartolome de la Casas, who advocated dragging Africans over here to start with because the Europeans were killing off the Natives too quickly.

Except FACTS! The abolition movement began with Quaker ministers. Furthermore, it was a Baptist minister (MLK) who championed Civil Rights in the 1960s. It is a Christian worldview that people are equal in the eyes of God. It is a Darwinian worldview they are not equal because of evolution. I'm sorry that's not penetrating your bigoted head.

Doesn't change what something IS.

Except Fetuses aren't capable of breating, eating, or even surviving on their own. So granting a fetus human rights makes the woman it is in a slave to the fetus.

And as a practical matter, a woman who doesn't want to be pregnant will find a way to not be pregnant.

What some humans are capable of doing doesn't change what they are. Look at yourself, for instance. You are incapable of reasoned and rational thought. Your views are ignorant and bigoted. Yet, you are still a human being.

 

[pinqy]

Here's the thing about that. The guys who died in Vietnam were trying to protect a people from communist tyranny. Maybe it was misguided, but they fought for a good cause.

The guys who died for the Confederacy were fighting to defend slavery.

They don't deserve rememberance. They don't deserve honor.

Here's the thing about that... you're full of shit.
It is your ignorant and inaccurate opinion they were fighting to defend slavery. As I pointed out, they didn't even own slaves. It's not up to you to decide what deserves remembrance and remembrance doesn't necessarily mean honor. There are many reasons to remember something, honor is only one.

Regardless of individual reasons for taking up arms, what was the officially stated cause for secession? I can quote the declarations if you'd like.

 

[Boss]

Regardless of individual reasons for taking up arms, what was the officially stated cause for secession? I can quote the declarations if you'd like.

I've addressed this argument at least 100 times on this forum. I think I addressed it earlier in this thread. The state official declarations of secession prominently mention slavery because slavery was the issue. It wasn't the principle. That is VERY important. We have to remember that slavery had not been outlawed, it wasn't illegal to own slaves, and the US's own Supreme Court had repeatedly defended the right to own slaves as property. So you are literally arguing the South declared secession over something that did not yet exist.

Yes, slavery was the prominent issue at hand, but it was NOT the principle on which secession resided. That was Federalism! Whether the US Federal government had authority under the Constitution to take the property (or in this case, render it worthless) of state citizens. MANY people (then and now) believe such issues are a STATE matter and the Constitution clearly states it as such.

Congress had 89 years and countless opportunities to condemn slavery and outlaw it. The SCOTUS also had ample opportunities to condemn slavery and render it unconstitutional. These things did not happen in America. That's NOT the fault of the South or Southerners. Are they complicit? Do they share a part of the burden? Of course! But to attempt to revise history so as to lay the entire blame at their feet is deplorable and dishonest. Furthermore, I believe it is done in order to scapegoat the South and absolve the North from any and all culpability. This is bigotry at it's finest.

The "reason" was not slavery! The "reason" for secession was in order to form a new nation. A Confederation of states who determined their own parameters and laws as opposed to a Union of states with a central Federal authority ruling over them. Slavery was the issue of the time and NOT the principle.

More importantly-- Me, speaking this TRUTH is not an endorsement of slavery or even the idea of Confederacy. It's simply an acknowledgment of the truth, whether we like to hear it or not. We get nowhere by rejecting the truth and adopting an idiotic notion that doesn't comport with reality. You cannot absolve the North of the guilt for upholding slavery for 89 years by scapegoating the South. You cannot turn the Union into a bunch of Civil Rights Warriors who were fighting for equality against a racist South. That's a false picture of reality and I can't allow that to go unchallenged.

 

[Slash]

I've addressed this argument at least 100 times on this forum. I think I addressed it earlier in this thread. The state official declarations of secession prominently mention slavery because slavery was the issue. It wasn't the principle. That is VERY important. We have to remember that slavery had not been outlawed, it wasn't illegal to own slaves, and the US's own Supreme Court had repeatedly defended the right to own slaves as property. So you are literally arguing the South declared secession over something that did not yet exist.

Yes, slavery was the prominent issue at hand, but it was NOT the principle on which secession resided. That was Federalism! Whether the US Federal government had authority under the Constitution to take the property (or in this case, render it worthless) of state citizens. MANY people (then and now) believe such issues are a STATE matter and the Constitution clearly states it as such.

Congress had 89 years and countless opportunities to condemn slavery and outlaw it. The SCOTUS also had ample opportunities to condemn slavery and render it unconstitutional. These things did not happen in America. That's NOT the fault of the South or Southerners. Are they complicit? Do they share a part of the burden? Of course! But to attempt to revise history so as to lay the entire blame at their feet is deplorable and dishonest. Furthermore, I believe it is done in order to scapegoat the South and absolve the North from any and all culpability. This is bigotry at it's finest.

More importantly-- Me, speaking this TRUTH is not an endorsement of slavery or even the idea of Confederacy. It's simply an acknowledgment of the truth, whether we like to hear it or not. We get nowhere by rejecting the truth and adopting an idiotic notion that doesn't comport with reality. You cannot absolve the North of the guilt for upholding slavery for 89 years by scapegoating the South. You cannot turn the Union into a bunch of Civil Rights Warriors who were fighting for equality against a racist South. That's a false picture of reality and I can't allow that to go unchallenged.

Actually it was the principal. You can read the articles of secession. It was that the abolitionist movement had gotten to the white house. That the federal government was no longer enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. That the Government had passed law that new states could not have slavery in them. That the Federal Government outlawed the slave trade. Bit by bit they felt the noose slipping around them.

There's two things that show up in every state's Article of Secession. Lincoln being elected (and his abolitionist leanings), and Slavery.

You are right. Slavery was legal, but for how long. They seceded to form a nation that ensured the future of slavery in a Federal government they felt was about to drop the hammer on it. That's what they wrote about. To say "slavery was legal, all is fine" you need to get a really big fire going because you've got a lot of historical writings by those that seceded to burn to make that case.

To attempt to revise that, to take those black markers and cross out all the proof right there in their state congress meeting minutes, articles of secession and speeches about their cause is wrong.

To say it was federalism, when you had people like Joseph E Brown, governor of Georgia who truly felt he was leaving to join a new less Federally dominated Government and end up opposing Jefferson Davis later in the war because the Confederacy was every bit as Federally dominated just doesn't ring true with those that actually lived it.


When we try to say the truth is the principal was something other than slavery, and in their own articles of secession the states said "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery" that's a lie

When the Vice President of the Country kicks it off with a speech saying "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science." saying it's something else requires you to revise history.


SO you are right. We get nowhere when we reject the truth.

 

[Boss]

Actually it was the principal. You can read the articles of secession. It was that the abolitionist movement had gotten to the white house. That the federal government was no longer enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. That the Government had passed law that new states could not have slavery in them. That the Federal Government outlawed the slave trade. Bit by bit they felt the noose slipping around them.

No, actually it wasn't the principle. It was an issue pertaining to an overarching principle of Federalism or "State's Rights."

Lincoln vehemently rejected the abolitionist label. You can read his numerous speeches of the time. The government did not pass any law prohibiting new states from slavery, as a matter of fact, West Virginia was adopted as a slave state in 1862, in the middle of a Civil War you claim the US was fighting against slavery.

And let's get this clear... Upon the founding of the nation in 1776, the US (both North and South) banned slave trade.

What Southerners felt was Federal encroachment on their rights as determined by the US's own SCOTUS.

You are right. Slavery was legal, but for how long. They seceded to form a nation that ensured the future of slavery in a Federal government they felt was about to drop the hammer on it. That's what they wrote about. To say "slavery was legal, all is fine" you need to get a really big fire going because you've got a lot of historical writings by those that seceded to burn to make that case.

I never said "slavery is legal, all is fine!" Slavery was legal, slaves were deemed property, not by the CSA or CSA courts, but by US courts and the US government. To pretend that was not the case is intellectual dishonesty. To pretend the US government had outlawed slavery and the South was refusing to comply, is a flat out lie. Even after the Civil War began, Lincoln stated that if he could preserve the union without freeing any slaves, he would do so. As a state senator, Lincoln actually proposed a bill that would've preserved slavery until 1911. Bet you didn't know that about the Great Emancipator. I bet you also didn't know his "plans" for how to deal with freed slaves was to ship them away to foreign lands because he did not believe they could ever hold equal station in white society.

When we OBJECTIVELY look at history, we find racism and racist viewpoints were prevalent on both sides. I would argue that probably 96% of the nation, at that time, was vehemently racist by today's standard. There were VERY few people who honestly believed the negro slave was equal in station to whites. That's just a FACT! This revisionist fantasy that the North were somehow virtuous crusaders for equality is just asinine and factually inaccurate. Nothing is further from the TRUTH!

 

[Soupnazi630]

Wrong. The CSA killed over 300,000 Union soldiers because their land was invaded by a Tyrant warmonger who got his in the end also. Sic Semper Tyrannis

Yes he did invade, after the Confederacy spent about a day bombing a US fort. I would hope that if North Korea nuked Guam, we would fight back as well.

Wrong. Secession was legal. Fort Sumter was therefore the property of the State of SC.

How was it legal? No provision in the constitution allows for it. When the states agreed to ratify the constitution the agreed to abide by the terms of the constitution.

 

[pinqy]

Regardless of individual reasons for taking up arms, what was the officially stated cause for secession? I can quote the declarations if you'd like.

I've addressed this argument at least 100 times on this forum. I think I addressed it earlier in this thread. The state official declarations of secession prominently mention slavery because slavery was the issue. It wasn't the principle. That is VERY important.

No, it's not. It's a distinction without a difference. When a proposed principle only has one issue, one concern, then you can't claim a separation of the two.

We have to remember that slavery had not been outlawed, it wasn't illegal to own slaves, and the US's own Supreme Court had repeatedly defended the right to own slaves as property. So you are literally arguing the South declared secession over something that did not yet exist.

No, I'm not. I said it was about slavery, not abolition of slavery. Let's look at what Georgia had to say:
"For the last ten years 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, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war"

Mississipi, South Carolina, and Texas also state that their cause for secession was hostility by the North towards slavery, lack of enforcement of Article IV section 2, and the election of Lincoln, a Republican, which party they viewed as abolitionist.

Yes, slavery was the prominent issue at hand, but it was NOT the principle on which secession resided. That was Federalism! Whether the US Federal government had authority under the Constitution to take the property (or in this case, render it worthless) of state citizens. MANY people (then and now) believe such issues are a STATE matter and the Constitution clearly states it as such.

Federalism? No. While there were some complaints about the Federal government encroaching, most of the complaints were actually against the Northern States. I'll cite again part of the same passage from Georgia: "numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States" That's not a complaint about Federalism.

Congress had 89 years and countless opportunities to condemn slavery and outlaw it. The SCOTUS also had ample opportunities to condemn slavery and render it unconstitutional. These things did not happen in America. That's NOT the fault of the South or Southerners. Are they complicit? Do they share a part of the burden? Of course! But to attempt to revise history so as to lay the entire blame at their feet is deplorable and dishonest.

When you're addressing me, please respond to MY arguments and what I've actually written, instead of a generalized rant. Oh, and please use my full title of Lord High Grand Exalted One. Thanks.

But in any case....many states had abolished slavery and did not return escaped slaves. Restrictions on new slave states was also a concern. So that the Federal Government did not abolish slavery (and I remind you that in the 72 years before Lincoln, 49 of them were under slave-owning Presidents, and none of the others would have supported abolition). Oh, and where are you getting 89 years of Congress from?

The "reason" was not slavery! The "reason" for secession was in order to form a new nation.

And why did they want a new nation? To continue slavery unmolested.

You cannot absolve the North of the guilt for upholding slavery for 89 years by scapegoating the South. You cannot turn the Union into a bunch of Civil Rights Warriors who were fighting for equality against a racist South. That's a false picture of reality and I can't allow that to go unchallenged.

Then go challenging those who are doing that. I have not. The War was about slavery for the Confederacy...the Union didn't fight the war because of slavery.

 

[Boss]

No, it's not. It's a distinction without a difference. When a proposed principle only has one issue, one concern, then you can't claim a separation of the two.

Well of course you can. I can think of dozens of examples where an issue is secondary to the principle. Abortion, gay marriage, corporate personhood... the list goes on and on. Almost every issue has an overarching principle and the principle is important. In order to make objective evaluations we must separate the two. Otherwise, you are making a subjective evaluation based on the issue and ignoring the principle.

I'll cite again part of the same passage from Georgia:

You are parsing out the ISSUE without regard or acknowledgement of the PRINCIPLE! To repeatedly cite the timely statements issued in support of secession without also recognizing the overarching principles is unfair and not objective.

Again... I have not claimed that slavery wasn't an issue. Indeed, it was the premier issue of the day. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. But it was not the principle. That's what seems to always be lost in this debate. The South was certainly not arguing it was morally right to enslave human beings. The principle of enslaving other humans is wrong and always was wrong. The principle was state sovereignty over the Federal government, pursuant to the Constitution. It took this nation another 100 years after the Civil War to recognize Civil Rights.

 

[Scamp]

How was it legal? No provision in the constitution allows for it. When the states agreed to ratify the constitution the agreed to abide by the terms of the constitution.[/QUOTE]

Wrong. The CSA killed over 300,000 Union soldiers because their land was invaded by a Tyrant warmonger who got his in the end also. Sic Semper Tyrannis

Yes he did invade, after the Confederacy spent about a day bombing a US fort. I would hope that if North Korea nuked Guam, we would fight back as well.

Wrong. Secession was legal. Fort Sumter was therefore the

Wrong. The CSA killed over 300,000 Union soldiers because their land was invaded by a Tyrant warmonger who got his in the end also. Sic Semper Tyrannis

Yes he did invade, after the Confederacy spent about a day bombing a US fort. I would hope that if North Korea nuked Guam, we would fight back as well.

Wrong. Secession was legal. Fort Sumter was therefore the property of the State of SC.

How was it legal? No provision in the constitution allows for it. When the states agreed to ratify the constitution the agreed to abide by the terms of the constitution.

Very good question.
10th Amendment.
"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."

 

[Slash]

No, actually it wasn't the principle. It was an issue pertaining to an overarching principle of Federalism or "State's Rights."

If you don't think it was the principle, then take it up with those that seceded by saying it was. Tell them they didn't know what they were talking about. They even said slavery not federal rights was the cornerstone of their nation.

"The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the PRINCIPLE of prohibition to the last extremity" is one of the articles of secession.

"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
With these PRINCIPLES on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal PRINCIPLE of this organization." is what they said they were fighting against.

You can say it was the "principle of the Federal Governments power", but they spelled out where that overstep was happening and that was it's desire to get rid of slavery.

And let's get this clear... Upon the founding of the nation in 1776, the US (both North and South) banned slave trade.

Actually no. Article 1 section 9 actually prevented that. "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."


While most Northern states banned the slave trade during the Revolutionary war the South did not, and at the Federal level it was legal. In fact Southern delegates asked for a moratorium on the vote to banish slave trade which was put in the Constitution as you see there. Northern delegates got around it slightly in one way with the slave trade act of... 1794 maybe (can't remember the year off the top of my head)? The one George Washington signed that US ships and sailors couldn't participate in it. But banning slave trade overall had to wait until that moratorium, at which point it passed. A group of Secessionists known as the fire eaters were ones that believed owning black people was a "God given right" and that the slave trade would be re-opened. The creator of the confederate battle flag was one of these.

What Southerners felt was Federal encroachment on their rights as determined by the US's own SCOTUS.

And they listed the rights they felt THIS federal government took too far. Slavery. And Slavery. And Slavery. Which is why instead of allowing states the right to form their own pro or anti slave government in the CSA, they took that right away and made it a federal mandate that any new state had to be a slave state. The lack of this hope for states rights was why Jospeh E Brown, governor of Georgia stood up to Jefferson Davis.

I never said "slavery is legal, all is fine!" Slavery was legal, slaves were deemed property, not by the CSA or CSA courts, but by US courts and the US government. To pretend that was not the case is intellectual dishonesty.

Nobody is pretending that is the case. You were insinuating since slavery was legal at the time the legality of it wasn't being challenged. That is EXACTLY why the states said they were seceding was the Republican party and Lincoln wanting to get rid of slavery.


To pretend the US government had outlawed slavery and the South was refusing to comply, is a flat out lie.

Nobody is pretending that is the case. What the South said was that Lincoln trying to end slavery in the south was a foregone conclusion


Even after the Civil War began, Lincoln stated that if he could preserve the union without freeing any slaves, he would do so.

Again, he brought that up in two places.. On the campaign trail when he was being described as a warmongerer for the black man by his opposition and was trying to show himself as a moderate for votes, and when making the war a war on slavery before the battle lines had been completely drawn would have been suicide for America seeing as he lived between two slave states. Of course we saw what his actions were the minute they Union had a decisive victory and pushed the Confederates away from DC. When the lines were drawn in blood for that war. He put out the Emancipation Proclamation.

As a state senator, Lincoln actually proposed a bill that would've preserved slavery until 1911. Bet you didn't know that about the Great Emancipator.

Yes he did. It was his first attempt at ending slavery to find a way that would be acceptable and get through congress. He was attempting to find ways to end slavery even before being president. He also wrote one to ban slavery in land won from Mexico. And one to ban slavery in DC. And actually was the person to ban Slavery in DC.


I bet you also didn't know his "plans" for how to deal with freed slaves was to ship them away to foreign lands because he did not believe they could ever hold equal station in white society.

I did. He wrote about it. He also wrote that it would be a voluntary for those who wanted to leave. I can see why after the letter he received from the governor of Alabama, basically telling him he didnt even want slavery, but if you had free blacks running around the south, they might start to think they were human and equals. Then his white constitutents would of course have to kill them all off and live with that on their conscience.

Granted his action instead was to fight for complete freedom. His emancipation Proclamation even, which made all slaves free in rebelling states made their forcible removal null and void. The 13th Amendment as well. When it came to action, Lincoln made them free AMERICANS, not colonists of some other land. But we like to pretend his other plan was what happened.

When we OBJECTIVELY look at history, we find racism and racist viewpoints were prevalent on both sides. I would argue that probably 96% of the nation, at that time, was vehemently racist by today's standard. There were VERY few people who honestly believed the negro slave was equal in station to whites. That's just a FACT! This revisionist fantasy that the North were somehow virtuous crusaders for equality is just asinine and factually inaccurate. Nothing is further from the TRUTH!

I agree. But when we try and black out all the writings from the South that slavery was the issue at hand. That it was even more prevalent in their articles of secession by far than federal power, and that the federal power they feared and disliked was almost entirely the anti-slavery stance they felt the federal government had, that's just erasing history to tell a revised version.


[/QUOTE]

 

[Boss]

But in any case....many states had abolished slavery and did not return escaped slaves. Restrictions on new slave states was also a concern. So that the Federal Government did not abolish slavery (and I remind you that in the 72 years before Lincoln, 49 of them were under slave-owning Presidents, and none of the others would have supported abolition). Oh, and where are you getting 89 years of Congress from?

89 years... from 1776 to 1865. Do the maths!

Excuses for why previous presidents didn't support abolition is pointless and irrelevant. The fact is, they didn't and neither did congress... Neither did the courts! States were free to abolish slavery and the CSA didn't have any problem with that. Indeed, the principle of secession was so that states had every right to make this determination on their own.

Ironically, the Constitution of the Confederacy granted voting rights to free blacks and Native Americans... 100 years before the US government passed the Civil Rights Act.

 

[Slash]

How was it legal? No provision in the constitution allows for it. When the states agreed to ratify the constitution the agreed to abide by the terms of the constitution.
Very good question.
10th Amendment.
"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."

Actually the Supreme court said it does. They said the secession was illegal based on their interpretation of what the US Constitution said about it. That's what matters. Unless you want to ball up the Constitution and flush it down the toilet, that's how America works. You don't have to like the ruling. You don't have to agree with it or how they came to it. But it doesn't change the fact that it was illegal.

As long as the Constitution rules the USA, that's what the judgement was on the legality of Secession. You disagreeing with it doesn't matter.

 

[Boss]

I agree. But when we try and black out all the writings from the South that slavery was the issue at hand. That it was even more prevalent in their articles of secession by far than federal power, and that the federal power they feared and disliked was almost entirely the anti-slavery stance they felt the federal government had, that's just erasing history to tell a revised version.

No... It's erasing history to ignore the context and PRINCIPLE in favor of the prevailing popular opinion on an issue of the times. That's what you are doing. I am pointing out that, while slavery was very much an important issue of the times, it was NOT the overarching principle or reason behind secession from the Union.

 

[Boss]

How was it legal? No provision in the constitution allows for it. When the states agreed to ratify the constitution the agreed to abide by the terms of the constitution.
Very good question.
10th Amendment.
"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."

Actually the Supreme court said it does. They said the secession was illegal based on their interpretation of what the US Constitution said about it. That's what matters. Unless you want to ball up the Constitution and flush it down the toilet, that's how America works. You don't have to like the ruling. You don't have to agree with it or how they came to it. But it doesn't change the fact that it was illegal.

As long as the Constitution rules the USA, that's what the judgement was on the legality of Secession. You disagreeing with it doesn't matter.

But that is incorrect on TWO fronts. First, SCOTUS did NOT rule secession was "illegal." It simply ruled it wasn't constitutionally supported. There are LOTS of things the Constitution doesn't support that aren't illegal. Secondly, and more importantly, you cannot apply a ruling from 1869 to 1861 actions. We cannot retroactively apply constitutionality to history. If SCOTUS rules tomorrow that aborting a human fetus is unconstitutional, that doesn't mean it was unconstitutional today.

If someone were trying to argue that slavery is Constitutional today, then you can cite the 13th Amendment and prove them incorrect. But you cannot apply the 13th Amendment to a time in history before it existed. In 1860, it was a Constitutional right to own slaves as property. Like it or not, that was the law... not according to the CSA but according to the highest US court in the land.