While on my way to a separation of church and state rally at the capitol, I happened to pass by the monument on the left. It’s a monument to the Confederate dead. There are many similar monuments throughout Texas.
I paused to read the inscription:
DIED
FOR STATES RIGHTS GUARANTEED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION
THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH, ANIMATED BY THE SPIRIT OF 1776, TO PRESERVE THEIR RIGHTS, WITHDREW FROM THE FEDERAL COMPACT IN 1861. THE NORTH RESORTED TO COERCION.
THE SOUTH, AGAINST OVERWHELMING NUMBERS AND RESOURCES,
FOUGHT UNTIL EXHAUSTED.
DURING THE WAR THERE WERE TWENTY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN ENGAGEMENTS.
IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO OF THESE, AT LEAST ONE REGIMENT TOOK PART.
NUMBER OF MEN ENLISTED:
CONFEDERATE ARMIES 600,000; FEDERAL ARMIES 2,859,132
LOSSES FROM ALL CAUSES:
CONFEDERATE, 437,000; FEDERAL, 485,216
“FOR STATES RIGHTS GUARANTEED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION?” That sentence made me laugh out loud. Is there a state’s right to slavery in the Constitution that I am unaware of?
Whom do they think they’re kidding? Only themselves.
-David Drumm (Nal)
“Most everything. It’s just not worth the effort.”
Ahhhh yes, that’s the same thing my brother said to me when I challenged him to a debate on Lincoln. He gave the old Archie Bunker excuse.
The Archie Bunker excuse:
That’s from the episode of All in the Family where Archie challenges his neighbor Irene to game of pool. Later when Archie finds out that Irene is a pro at shooting pool [she even won a poolstick encased in a nice box as a prize for winning a pool match] Archie fakes a back ache to get out of playing Irene for fear that he will be humiliated.
Mespo is using the tired old “it’s not worth the effort” crapola to “fake his back ache” to get out of debating and refuting me. Typical of those who panic when confronted with facts they cant dispute.
Larry:
“I take it you couldnt refute anything I said in my previous posts either?”
****************
Most everything. It’s just not worth the effort.
Mespo, the war was lost with Nal’s story. It makes no sense for Lincoln to have wanted to “save the Union” because HE is the one who dissolved it by losing his power. Let me explain:
The Declaration of Independence says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
Well, the South did NOT consent what Lincoln had done [force high tariffs on the South] so when Southerners began their lack of consent, that’s when Lincoln lost his power because his power ONLY comes “from the consent of the governed”——that means essentially that it was LINCOLN, NOT the South who dissolved the Union FIRST. Where am I wrong on this?
The New Englanders did not consent Jefferson’s trade embargo either in the early 1800’s and they simply nullified it by refusing to do it. They even referred to Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolve of 1798 whih states that secession is permitted. The New Englanders were going to secede, but the embargo was nullified. Did Jefferson wage total war on the New Englanders and say to the, “You WILL accept this embargo and you will NOT secede or you will be shot when I invade you with my armies?” NO. He did NOT. Do you know why???? Because SECESSION IS PERMITTED, and since Jefferson was a REAL president [and the best we ever had] he did NOTHING when they threatened to secede, because it is ALLOWED.
I find it funny that Lincoln mentions in the Gettysburg address the line taken from the excerpt above “all men are created equal” [which Lincoln didnt even believe anyway because of the dozens of comments he made about whites being superior to blacks] but he completely IGNORES the part that says “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Hmmmm, I wonder why he skipped that part. Hmmmm.
I take it you couldnt refute anything I said in my previous posts either?
Larry:
I love guys who keep on fighting after the war is lost. You’d have made a fine confederate general after Gettysburg. As for your comment that “I guess God was a racist, warmongering, bloodthirsty dictator,” that’s easy enough to prove with only a slight perusal of the Old Testament.
Mike said:
“My response was that they were motivated by lies, in the same manner the invasion of Iraq was motivated by lies. Idealism is the most powerful force in the lives of most young people, and it is routinely abused by the cynical. Poor farm boys in 1860 were not told that they were needed to fight for the right to own slaves. Young men and women in 2002 were not told that they were needed to fight to carry out a vendetta in Iraq.”
Oh and Northerners weren’t lied to either? They were first told that the Civil War was to “save the union”, yet when the Emancipation Proc. was issued, they learned that it was to “free slaves”—and that’s why enlistment dropped heavily after the EP and many who were currently serving went off to Canada. The South was NOT fighting for the right to own slaves—they ALREADY KNEW they could keep them because the Dred Scott decision made slavery constitutional in 1857 and Lincoln even said in his first inaugural that he had NO INTENTION of interfering with southern slavery—–christ almighty, how many times do I have to repeat that??????
Why would they fight and DIE for a right they ALREADY HAD under the constitution?? And why would they care what Lincoln thought ANYWAY? They didnt even acknowledge him as their president! Ever heard of Jefferson Davis? They had already seceeded over high tariffs and because Lincoln had dissolved the Union before [you claim] the south did, by ignoring the constitution by denying the states their rights not to pay the high tariffs.
Yeah, you’re right, no one was told in 2002 that they were fighting for Bush’s personal vendetta against Iraq—-but the dipshits keep enlisting dont they? Even 8 year after the lie!
What’s your point??
Mike A.,
BTW, my husband and I went out to New Mexico a few years ago for a family wedding. We decided to vacation there for several days and do a little sightseeing. We stayed at the Hyatt Tamaya–where the wedding and reception were held. I really liked it out there. I loved the dry air. It can get quite humid around here in the summer.
Mike A.,
Did you ever get to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich? Have you seen Marblehead Harbor in the summer? There are so many boats! Newburyport is lovely too.
I love the mid-coast of Maine the best. My husband and I vacation there every summer. Vermont is a beautiful state. I love the Stowe area–and Burlington is a great city.
Listen to your wife. She sounds like a wise woman.
😉
“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”
I guess God was a racist, warmongering, bloodthirsty dictator. Lincoln is referring to the slave when he mentions “the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil…”, yet Lincoln loved slavery and even admitted on several occasions that he had no intention of interfering with it. AND he hated black people—that’s why he wantd all blacks out of the country and sent off the Liberia. If Lincoln was a Christian, then I’m Santa Claus.
Mike,
I dont ever remember mentioning anything about what would motivate Southerners to fight the war but regardless of whether youre right or wrong about the whole religion aspect, the facts remain that Lincoln went to war to eliminate secession. Ive said in post after post that slavery was NOT the issue and even used Lincoln’s OWN WORDS where I quoted him. Lincoln said that his goal was to “…save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery”—those are HIS words. He did NOT care about slavery—at all. He didnt want BLACK MEN…PERIOD to come North so he wanted slavery to continue. The EP was ONLY a political stunt to gain the abolitionist vote in 1864—–NOT to free a single slave. The EP only applied in the areas where Lincoln had no authority. Lincoln’s own Secretary of State, William Seward said:
“We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”
If slavery was the issue and Lincoln hated slavery, why was there a Fugitive Slave Law, and why did Lincoln support that law???
What makes you think Lincoln himself could end slavery? Congress themselves couldnt do it without a constitutional amendment. Slavery was constitutional as a result of the Dred Scott decision and in my last post I pointed out that the House and senate passed a bill saying:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere,within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of the state.”
Get it now? I think even Nal knows Im right considering he keeps having meaningless arguments with another guy about citizenship and ignoring my posts.
The average Confederate soldier knew that slave-owners in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky – and in other union states – were allowed to keep their slaves when the war began. When Fort Sumter was fired upon there were more slave states (and more slaves) in the union (eight) than there were out of it (seven). Consequently, “in virtually every major battle of the Civil War, Confederate soldiers who did not own slaves were fighting against a proportion of Union Army soldiers who had not been asked to give theirs up”.
The Confederate soldier also knew that the Emancipation Proclamation “exempted all the slaves in the North,” and in all the areas of the South that were under federal army control at the time. He also understood that the union was voluntary, and that Abraham Lincoln was lying through his teeth when he said it was not in his first inaugural address. They understood, in other words, that the Constitution was on their side. “The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reserved to the states all rights not specifically granted to the federal government, and in their view the states had thus retained their right to dissolve the federal relationship”.
Lincoln “saved” the Union in the same sense that a man who has been abusing his wife “saves” his marital union by violently forcing his wife back into the home and threatening to shoot her if she leaves again. The union might be saved, but it is not the same union that existed on their wedding day. That union no longer exists. Similarly, the union that the founders created ceased to exist in April of 1865
Saw these words carved in stone at Lincoln’s Memorial, they burned into my mind.
“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”
Thanks, Elaine. We did spend a couple of days in Salem, Gloucester and Rockport before heading down to the Cape. As a young Catholic kid in New Mexico I spent many Friday evenings chewing on fish sticks. I wanted to tour the Gorton’s plant in Gloucester to see those machines that create rectangular cod, but my wife didn’t share my fascination. However, she is ready to move to New England, even though I keep reminding her that I am not licensed to practice up there and I still remember Boston winters.
Mike A.,
The next time you and your wife travel to Massachusetts, visit the North Shore area. We have some great restaurants, beautiful coastal scenery, and lots of historical places/houses.
Mespo:
Great quote from Twain, BTW. I wasn’t familiar with it.
Chris:
Thanks. I tend to get opaque with my rhetoric at times.
Mespo:
Good to be back, I think. My wife and I spent a week on Cape Cod, returning to Florida just in time for me to cast fruitless ballots for Alex Sink and Alan Grayson. After watching the election results, slogging through cranberry bogs somehow seems preferable to living under Gov. Rick “I take the Fifth” Scott for the next few years.
Mike,
Im sorry that I misunderstood you. Thank you for clearing that up.
MIke A:
Good to see you back by the way. Your point is a good one that men will typically not go to a war of choice unless convinced their way of life is threatened. Unscrupulous leaders have known this since we dwelt in caves, and use it every chance they get to dupe good, patriotic folks into wars that only benefit leaders. Note the absence of political leadership on any battlefield –Churchill & FDR standing as stark counter-examples.
“The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: ‘It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war.’ Then the few will shout even louder…Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it…Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
~ Mark Twain
Chris, you completely misunderstood my point. It has nothing to do with the honor and good faith of anyone who serves in the military.
An earlier post raised the question of what would motivate poor southern whites who would never own slaves to fight to defend the institution of slavery. My response was that they were motivated by lies, in the same manner the invasion of Iraq was motivated by lies. Idealism is the most powerful force in the lives of most young people, and it is routinely abused by the cynical. Poor farm boys in 1860 were not told that they were needed to fight for the right to own slaves. Young men and women in 2002 were not told that they were needed to fight to carry out a vendetta in Iraq. Whenever the motives behind a war are questioned, the inevitable response is that somehow the questioning reflects disrespect for those who have answered their country’s call. To the contrary, the disrespect is on the part of those who are willing to sacrifice idealism in the pursuit of dishonorable goals.
Mike,
“But they reacted to the same calls that produced volunteers to serve in Iraq, the need to protect the homeland and to protect Christianity. Men of wealth and power are always able to manipulate the ignorant, particularly with appeals to patriotism.”
Sounds to me like you are saying that anyone who served in the armed forces once America went to war with Iraq is ignorant and was manipulated into service. Please tell me that you think higher of the men and women who serve our country Mike, and that I’m not understanding you correctly.
Larry:
I enjoy discussing controversial issues, but you pretty much shredded your credibility with your assertion concerning the distribution of slaves in this country. I was struck by the absurdity of your statement as soon as I saw it, but in the interests of absolute accuracy, I checked the U.S. Census figures for 1860. They show a total of 3,950,528 slaves, approximately 13% of the total population. Of that number, 3,521,110 resided in the South. An additional 429,401 lived in Missouri, Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky, states which did not secede, but which harbored strong southern sentiments. Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama had the highest percentage of slave-owning families. In short, you haven’t done your homework on a pretty basic point, which makes it more likely that you haven’t done your homework on anything else you have to say.
With regard to the question of what would motivate poor southern whites to go to war, the answer is simple: religion and propaganda (which some people regard as one and the same). Most of the men who fought and died for the South didn’t own slaves and never would. But they reacted to the same calls that produced volunteers to serve in Iraq, the need to protect the homeland and to protect Christianity. Men of wealth and power are always able to manipulate the ignorant, particularly with appeals to patriotism. Southern pastors wrote books and preached incessant sermons insisting that slavery was not only biblically justified, but biblically mandated. Southern newspapers (as did their northern counterparts) celebrated each victory as the work of God and lamented each loss as a sign of the need for repentance.
I have an old book at home given to me some years ago which puts much of the Civil War in perspective. It is a collection of essays, speeches and adoring tributes to Jefferson Davis published a year or so after his death. It provides invaluable insight into the views of his southern contemporaries. It is filled with emotional, often bitter, descriptions of a way of life destroyed by northern aggression and treachery, a way of life in which blacks and whites understood their positions and their roles, as though the North had taken upon itself the task of undoing natural law. I am reminded of it whenever I see any of the romantic nonsense put out by the League of the South.
Pres. Lincoln’s goal was to save the Union. That was not possible without the abolition of slavery. The war was virtually inevitable. So, nourish your fantasies as you see fit, but don’t expect anyone with a lick of sense to buy into them.
Nal,
Story’s commentaries; “Every citizen of a state is ipso facto a citizen of the United States”.
Nebraska v Thayer (1892) would be a good case to review.
“Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, says: ‘Every citizen of a state is ipso facto a citizen of the United States.’ Section 1693. And this is the view expressed by Mr. Rawle in his work on the Constitution. Chapter 9, pp. 85, 86. Mr. Justice CURTIS, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 576, expressed the opinion that under the constitution of the United States ‘every free person, born on the soil of a state, who is a citizen of that state by force of its constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States.’ And Mr. Justice SWAYNE, in The Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 126, declared that ‘a citizen of a state is ipso facto a citizen of the United States.’ But in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 404, Mr. Chief Justice TENEY, delivering the opinion of the court, said: ‘The words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens,’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the ‘sovereign people,’ and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. * * * In discussing this question, we must not confound the rights of citizenship which a state may confer within its own limits and the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union. It does not by any means follow, because he has all the rights and privileges of a citizen of a state, that he must be a citizen of the United States…”
http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/143/143.US.135.html