Doctor Fate wrote:It's this antiquated notion called "following the law." I know it's "unloving" and the most "kind" thing we can do is allow our elected officials to set the law aside in whatever manner they deem necessary . . . unless we disagree with them, in which case they are whatever you called them.

This issue demonstrates the chasm between liberal thought and the law. A liberal doesn't care what the law is, they just inherently "know" what is right and will impose their views on everyone else. A conservative will try to change laws they see as wrong or unjust. That's why liberals have no problem at all with courts "finding rights" in the Constitution and side-stepping democratic processes.

When you get right down to it, a liberal is more comfortable with setting aside the law than bothering with the whole "amendment" process.

Slavery was the law of the land. Consider how the deep south viewed the election of Lincoln (the radical) who said in his famous 1858 speech a 'House Divided':

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

see here for the rest of the speech

Lincoln basically point blank said he'd end the slave economy come hell or high water. And that's why the deep south seceded when he was elected, despite slavery being the law of the land. They were alienated and saw Lincoln coming by force.

slavery's wrong

$. Palin wrote:slavery's wrong

What about wage slavery?

I think the Archduke has done a masterful job of demonstrating that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War. My mom is from the South (Louisiana) so I am not totally insensitive to the problem Southerners have who want to be proud of their culture, their values, their history while having to deal with he fact that their history involved slavery and an additional hundred years of institutional discrimination against African-Americans. Clearly, one solution is simply to deny that that the Civil War was not mainly about slavery.

Let me add these points about this issue

a. NATION ON COLLISION COURSE FROM 1820-1860

(1) Missouri Compromise in 1820, nullification crisis in 1828,
(2) Nat Turner slave rebellion in 1830
(3) Wilmot provision of 1846, prohibiting slavery in any territory seized from Mexico
(4) Compromise of 1850,
(5) Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (as a result of the popular sovereignty idea of Douglas allowing territories to decide whether they would have slavery or not, effectively getting rid of the Missouri Compromise where slavery was not allowed north of a set line,,
(6) founding of the Republican Party in 1856 as a party that came into being to stop the spread of slavery,
(7) Dred Scott decision of 1857 whereby the Supreme Court opinion indicated that a slave had no standing to sue because they had no rights a white man had cause to respect and in dicta said that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because the Congress had no power to outlaw slavery in territories
(8) John Brown raid in 1858
(9) bleeding Kansas where pro-slavery and abolitioniss fought it out after Kansas became a territory in 1854,
(10) Election of 1860 where Lincoln did not get a single vote in something like 9 Southern states, and the fact that the south seceded due to the election of a president who wanted to limit slavery.
(11) Secession started in deep South where slavery was most entrenched
(12) Slavery explicitly stated in Confederate Constitiution which was basically copied from the U.S. Constitution except for the explicit approval of slavery

b. STATES RIGHT DOCTRINE JUSTIFICATION NOT CAUSE OF SECESSION

States rights is not an explanation of why the South seceded; it was a justification for the right to secede, not the reason for secession. In fact, this was a doctrine that was not limited to the South. There was similar talk in the North in the War of 1812 and after the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln believed that secession was an idea fatal to the idea that a democracy could survive.

c. TARIFF LINKED TO SLAVERY ISSUE

I found Archduke’s statements about the tariffs being low to be interesting (I did not know that). I can’t imagine poor whites being affected by tariffs. This would seem only relevant to wealthy landowners in the South who wanted to purchase cheaper goods from England.

d. SLAVERY AND THE NEED TO MAINTAIN POLITICAL POWER TO PREVENT ITS REPRESSION WAS ONLY CAUSE OF CIVIL WAR

Ultimately, the South seceded over a long-term concern about political control. They were faced with the reality that most of the states that were going to be created were not going to be states amenable to large-scale use of slaves. That is why you hear all these Southern fantasies about buying Cuba or states from Mexico or even going to Central America.

If I recall correctly one of the reasons that the issue of slavery start to become such a critical one was that after the invention of the cotton gin in 1797 cotton became a very profitable crop. Up until the 1820s it was thought even in the South that eventually the institution might die out. But by the 1820s slavery based plantation was too profitable to give up and Southern ideology hardened.

I think the immediate cause of the Civil War was that the South wanted to be able to keep its proportionate share of political power.--for every slave state there should be one free slate. And they had a Northern politician, Stephen Douglas, who aided them in accomplishing this goal and getting around the Missouri Compromise by his doctrine of allowing territories decide whether they would have slavery. The whole idea of slavery eventually dying out is going, now the South wanted to keep expanding it. And this caused opposition in the North not just from abolitionists but also from moderates like Lincoln And when Lincoln got elected that signaled to the South they were eventually going to lose their political power.

e. FACT THAT LINCOLN FOCUSED SOLELY ON UNION AND NOT ON SLAVERY DOES NOT MEAN THAT SOUTH DID NOT SECEDE OVER SLAVERY

1. Lincoln focused on the union because he needed a broad coalition to put down the rebellion. A focus on ending slavery would have divided the north and made it impossible to put down the rebellion

2. Fact that many Northern soldiers at the start of the war fought solely to uphold the Union and perhaps some Southern soldiers fought mostly because the North was invading does not mean the war was not about slavery. Just because many Northern soldiers might have said they are not fighting this war for slaves does not affect why the South decided to secede. The fact that poor whites in the South might not have fought to save slavery but for Southern pride does not mean that slavery was not the motivating factor for secession, since it was the economic and political elites in the South who decided to secede

3. As the war progressed ending slavery and more and more blood was spilled the moral justification of ending the evil institution became more pronounced. The Emancipation Proclamation was announced in late 1862 and by late 1864 the Thirteenth Amendment was being passed to end slavery.

f. LINCOLN SAW SECESSION AS A FATAL DOCTRINE TO A FREE SOCIETY
a. The South probably had better odds than the colonists had in the Revolutionary War. Well why did the South lose then. Well, the North had more to fight for than the British did. Lincoln saw the United States as being this experiment in popular rule, but that if the idea that you could secede caught on then free people could not rule themselves and that autocratic rule was a necessity. Thus, the refusal to let the South secede and the willingness to use every last resource of the North to win.

Neal Anderth wrote:

$. Palin wrote:slavery's wrong

What about wage slavery?

Have you been reading Marx lately?

Only very brief summaries

Groucho Marx? Here's what he had to say about wage slavery (from The Cocoanuts):

Groucho : Wages? Do you want to be wage slaves? Answer me that!
Bellhops : No.
Groucho : No, of course not. But what makes wage slaves? Wages!

Randy, can you at least spell 'secede' correctly? I'm pretty sure that Russell has already dealt with most of the other facts and questions you raise, so there's not much left to correct.

Secession was not legal. Of course you are going to claim the 10th Amendment and the reserved rights clause. Unfortunately, your argument is flawed based on the decision of McCullough v. Madison. In that case the state of Maryland tried to levy a tax against an agency of the Federal Govermnent, specifically the Bank of the US. Their argument was that nothing in the Constitution said the states could not tax Federal Government; therefore, the 10th reserved that right to the state.

The Court said that was a misunderstanding of the reserved rights clause of the 10th amendment. The 10th only referred to rights the states had prior to the establishment of the Federal Government. So the Court asked if the states were able to tax the gov't prior to the Constitution. The answer was no. Therefore, the 10th did not give them the ability to tax.

Using that same test on secession we get the same answer. Was a state allow to secede from the Federal Government prior to the Constitution? The Article of Confederation was a "perpetual Union". Perpetual means for all time. Since the state was not allowed to secede prior to the Constitution, a state is not allowed to secede after the Constitution. Therefore secession is illegal
and treason. Abraham Lincoln was only upholding his oath to uphold the Constitution and protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic.


And you are correct Randy, the illegal actions of secession are the cause of the war. And Secession was entirely caused by slavery. Again let us point the to words of the Article of Secession that all say the reason they are seceding is to protect slavery and the words of the VP of the Confederacy that Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy and the reason for secession.


You Randy are the only accepting the revisionist view of history. The revision started as early as 1866.

It is still spelled 'secession'. 'Succession' means following on (such as in the royal succession, which is the order in which the crown will go at the death of the monarch).

And sorry, but if slavery was not the main reason for secession, why did several states mention it in the documents when they did it? (I posted this and then saw Russell's but hey, perhaps you'll notice the question and answer it if you have to read it twice)

We've already accepted that Lincoln didn't go to war with the intention of freeing the slaves. But the South did in order to keep them. And sorry, Sumter was an act of war. I'm no expert on the US Constitution and the right to secession, but where you give us a tortured analogy, Russell just gives us tort.

I made several points on this already. But you just ignore everyone else's points and rather than respond, try and pretend they haven't been made.

Your opinions differ, but where Russell offers documents and quotes and citations of legal cases, you give us rants and analogies. Whoever is 'wrong' or 'right' I'm afraid his case is far more compelling than yours. Adding another rant isn't helping. Try some 'evidence'.

And my spelling thing annoyed you? Well, your incorrect spelling of a word that is pretty key to the whole debate is annoying. How can I take your argument seriously and not assume you've bashed it out in 30 seconds without thinking if you can't get the name of the key cause of the Civil war right? My point was that this was about the only incorrect thing in your posts that hadn't already been addressed by Russell or Ricky or anyone else.

Ummm, Russ also admitted the slavery ONLY issue (I still do not agree with Randy here, it was indeed MAINLY about slavery) is his position. I had shown many experts on the subject who suggest other factors, but Russ supposedly did a "masterful" job in telling us how the experts are all wrong and his (albeit very knowledgeable) opinion trumps theirs. Arguing such logic simply can not be done. Myself, I will stick with the experts and their opinions.

(dismissing experts was kind of overlooked by those who already had their own set of opinions)

Tom,

Let me ask you as question? What was the last book you read on the Civil War in it's entirity? I am not talking about googling Causes of the Civil War and skimming the article. I am talking about actually taking a book and read it from beginning to end?

Seriously, just about any Historian that has written about the Civil War in the last 30 years, upon review of the evidence, as come to the conclusion that Slavery was the underlying cause of just about every "issue" pertaining to the early Republic. In your one example you pull Bruce Catton. Well, he was writing for his times, the 1960's. However, let us look at the likes of William Davis or James McPherson. These are historians that have written on the subject recently.


Also, the court case should be McCullough v. Maryland (not Madison)

Well see Randy, I accept the historical premise that this is a nation of laws and that the Court is the body of the government that interprets the Constitution. Therefore, when said Court explains how to interpret a particular portion of the Constitution, I accept that as binding. Futher that interpretation is then valid for most arguments using that same portion of the Constitution as a defense. Therefore, the test established in McCullough for interpreting what is defined as a reserved right in regards to taxing powers is just as valid in the arguments in regards to secession. You many not like it but that is the way the law and Constitutional interpretation work.

However, if you want more arguments from the Constitution the Preamble says "In order to form a more perfect union". More perfect then what?

As for the revisionism starting in 1866, yes. You know how we know that. Southerners, you know the guys who lost, changed their arguments between 1861 and 1866.

Oh, and like I said to Tom, I didn't get the quotes from google searching and skimming, like you and he are doing. I have been reading about the American Civil War since I was 16. I have read numerous sources both primary and secondary. I have read all 11 states Articles of Secession. I have read the entire text of Stephen's Cornerstone speech. I have read the Memiors of many people both famous, i.e. Grant, Lee etc, and not famous, i.e. private soilder diaries.

In other words. GO POUND SAND!!!!!

as I stated earlier:

sorry that doesn't mean a heckuva lot. Osama Bin Laden has read the Koran a lot more than I have, I have only skimmed a little on the internet. But guess what, just because he read it more doesn't mean his position must be correct. Nor does yours, besides every book I have read always mentioned other issues, you disregard those by labeling them and/or linking them in a roundabout way to slavery, you label them and refuse to accept any other position.

and if I find someone who has read more than yourself, must you accept his position?
I did post one of your own sources who stated other issues contributed to the war, you dismissed those. That's ok, it really is, however, you simply have no leg to stand on to then insist your position must be right and tell us to pound sand because you are the end-all regarding the subject.

Doesn't quite work that way.