The Padelas Empire wrote:That's funny I remember there being more than just 4 states in the confederacy....
The CSA constitution also explicitly protected the institution of black slavery.
Perhaps you'd best reread it all instead of cherry picking words from it, Dy. It doesn't institutionalize slavery. It prohibits the ability of the Confederate government from intervening directly beyond declaring any state seeking entry into the Confederacy possess a slave based economy. That isn't protection of the institution. That's protection of the Constitution which, conveniently enough, defines the national government. It was a caveat to prevent any future debates within the Confederacy at the national level about the character of the national economy. Which means that the economy would lie beyond intervention (to a greater or lesser extent via slavery and, later, via subsequent expansion of Confederate authority) by the Confederate government.
Note that I'm not defending the choice in words or intent. I'm merely stating that if we actually read the document as the attempt to create a government at the national level then we find quite a different message. What you're articulating here is exactly what the nutbag Protestants claim when they say that the Bible is anti-homosexuality. If one reads the whole Bible then we find a very different message (although not necessarily one of the endorsement of homosexuality).
I don't, however, disagree with the southern leaders that the writing was on the wall. I understand their haste to get the mess over with. After all, the debate on slavery and economic dominance within the Union had been raging for more than 50 years at that point (arguably since the very ratification of the Constitution - which created the Union as such). We must recall that it was the southern leadership that resented most fervently the rise of Jacksonian Democracy after 1830. They knew that a populist national polity democratically enfranchised would eventually usurp the interests of the South with or without a southern President and southern controlled judiciary. Especially when states rights advocates were so ardently opposed to national interventions favoring slavery.
But, as you say, they acted too brashly and too prematurely. The debate on secession had only been forestalled in 1850 by leaders such as Alexander Stephens (so often inappropriately trumpeted by modern anti-confederates as the paragon of Confederate politics when he was, in fact, a paragon of Union politics - albeit a Union including the southern states). The southern state legislatures were traitors to the Union, it's true. But, if we are to disregard Lincoln and Union hostility to a domestic black population (including slaves and freedmen) as realities of the times then we must acknowledge that treason against the Union pre-14th Amendment could not, and did not, exist. One could only betray the individual state of ones citizenship. There were no citizens of the Union pre-1865.
Here I disagree. Rules are very clearly stated in the Constitution for citizens of the United States, not citizens of these United States, nor the Citizen of any particular state within the United States. While a sense of national identity was significantly weaker pre-1865, the legal reality was that there were citizens of the Union even if personal loyalties were generally with states rather than the country as a whole.
Where the Colonist rebels were traitors against the Crown in 1776, the southern states were not. This reality, however, was repudiated once they created the Confederacy (which never seceded from the Union as it did not exist - which, ironically, substantiates Lincoln's claims that it never existed). Upon unilaterally abandoning the Union the southern states violated the Constitution, yes, but they did not commit treason.
Until they levied war against the Federal Government, at which point a legal issue became a criminal one.
True enough. Although I'd argue that the secession was nonviolent. It was the pro-activity of the states militias individually that created violence. Had the state legislatures ordered the forts seized then I'd capitulate on this topic. You cannot, however, deny that the Confederacy did not initiate hostilities as it did not exist when the violence began.
This is objectively not true. Several representatives of the Confederate Government, including Jefferson Davis, approved the attack on the fort, assuming they did not surrender. The Confederate Constitution was also drafted and passed about a month before the attack, and before that, the Confederacy operated under a provisional constitution.
Lincoln's notification had been made to the governor of South Carolina, not the new Confederate government, which Lincoln did not recognize. Pickens consulted with Beauregard, the local Confederate commander. Soon Jefferson Davis ordered Beauregard to repeat the demand for Sumter's surrender, and if it did not, to reduce the fort before the relief expedition arrived. The Confederate cabinet, meeting in Montgomery, endorsed Davis's order on April 9. Only Secretary of State Robert Toombs opposed this decision: he reportedly told Jefferson Davis the attack "will lose us every friend at the North. You will only strike a hornet's nest. ... Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal."[22]
Beauregard dispatched aides—Col. James Chesnut, Col. James A. Chisholm, and Capt. Stephen D. Lee—to Fort Sumter on April 11 to issue the ultimatum.
On April 12, 1861, General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command of the Confederate forces around Charleston Harbor, opened fire on the Union garrison holding Fort Sumter. At 2:30pm on April 13 Major Robert Anderson, garrison commander, surrendered the fort and was evacuated the next day.
Turning down a colonel's commission from Bragg, Beauregard schemed with Slidell and newly-elected President Jefferson Davis for a high post in the new Confederate Army. These efforts bore fruit when he was commissioned a brigadier general on March 1, 1861, becoming the Confederate Army's first general officer.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 1:43 pm
by Tekania
Conserative Morality wrote:This is objectively not true. Several representatives of the Confederate Government, including Jefferson Davis, approved the attack on the fort, assuming they did not surrender. The Confederate Constitution was also drafted and passed about a month before the attack, and before that, the Confederacy operated under a provisional constitution.
It should be noted that while the events at Fort Sumter seem to be quite popular and studied, the actual military conflict between state militia units and Federal forces started before Fort Sumter...... Fort Pulaski, for example, was taken over by Georgia Militia under order by the Georgia Governor more than three months before the fighting started at Fort Sumter and more than a month before the CSA existed as a body even provisionally.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 1:56 pm
by Conserative Morality
Tekania wrote:It should be noted that while the events at Fort Sumter seem to be quite popular and studied, the actual military conflict between state militia units and Federal forces started before Fort Sumter...... Fort Pulaski, for example, was taken over by Georgia Militia under order by the Georgia Governor more than three months before the fighting started at Fort Sumter and more than a month before the CSA existed as a body even provisionally.
The initiation of force is a much more serious matter than the seizure of government property - see: this year's events in Crimea.
Tekania wrote:It should be noted that while the events at Fort Sumter seem to be quite popular and studied, the actual military conflict between state militia units and Federal forces started before Fort Sumter...... Fort Pulaski, for example, was taken over by Georgia Militia under order by the Georgia Governor more than three months before the fighting started at Fort Sumter and more than a month before the CSA existed as a body even provisionally.
The initiation of force is a much more serious matter than the seizure of government property - see: this year's events in Crimea.
Both were initiations of force, the only real difference is that Fort Pulaski at the time merely had a couple of administrative assets there and no means to mount a resistance against an armed military force. While there were no gunfights involved in the seizure, it was without any doubt a show of force by Georgia military asset under order by Georgia's executive.
I'm just providing this for clarification. None of this itself alters CSA culpability which it would inherit from member states in this. As scuh the CSA would be culpable for these seizures even if it did not exist yet, because Georgia is culpable for it; much like how the US Federal Gov't became culpable for pre-existing state actions and liabilities even before it existed as a body.
Conserative Morality wrote:The initiation of force is a much more serious matter than the seizure of government property - see: this year's events in Crimea.
Both were initiations of force, the only real difference is that Fort Pulaski at the time merely had a couple of administrative assets there and no means to mount a resistance against an armed military force. While there were no gunfights involved in the seizure, it was without any doubt a show of force by Georgia military asset under order by Georgia's executive.
I'm just providing this for clarification. None of this itself alters CSA culpability which it would inherit from member states in this. As scuh the CSA would be culpable for these seizures even if it did not exist yet, because Georgia is culpable for it; much like how the US Federal Gov't became culpable for pre-existing state actions and liabilities even before it existed as a body.
Before the War started, before CSA even started, CSA tried provocations in the hope that Han would shoot first. If the Union shoots first, CSA can claim to be the Good guys.
An excellent plan with only 2 minor flaws: flaw # 1) you are evil Slave-drivers you ain't the Good guys; flaw # 2) you are evil Slave-drivers you ain't the Good guys. I know it is the same flaw, but I thought it was important enough to deserve repetition
Tekania wrote: Both were initiations of force, the only real difference is that Fort Pulaski at the time merely had a couple of administrative assets there and no means to mount a resistance against an armed military force. While there were no gunfights involved in the seizure, it was without any doubt a show of force by Georgia military asset under order by Georgia's executive.
I'm just providing this for clarification. None of this itself alters CSA culpability which it would inherit from member states in this. As scuh the CSA would be culpable for these seizures even if it did not exist yet, because Georgia is culpable for it; much like how the US Federal Gov't became culpable for pre-existing state actions and liabilities even before it existed as a body.
Before the War started, before CSA even started, CSA tried provocations in the hope that Han would shoot first. If the Union shoots first, CSA can claim to be the Good guys.
An excellent plan with only 2 minor flaws: flaw # 1) you are evil Slave-drivers you ain't the Good guys; flaw # 2) you are evil Slave-drivers you ain't the Good guys. I know it is the same flaw, but I thought it was important enough to deserve repetition
Indeed,the whole thing was merely a delay of an internal conflict that began during the Revolution. Just comes to a head. But conflict was destined really. While slavery had vanished mostly from the North, and was faltering in many of the border states (I seriously doubt slavery would have existed in Virginia or Maryland, for example, by 1890-1900 with or without a war).... there was little chance of it coming to a close in the entrenched deep-south without it being "pried from their cold dead fingers" to borrow a phrase. War and fighting was inevitable on this.
Dyakovo wrote:The CSA constitution also explicitly protected the institution of black slavery.
Perhaps you'd best reread it all instead of cherry picking words from it, Dy. It doesn't institutionalize slavery. It prohibits the ability of the Confederate government from intervening directly beyond declaring any state seeking entry into the Confederacy possess a slave based economy. That isn't protection of the institution. That's protection of the Constitution which, conveniently enough, defines the national government. It was a caveat to prevent any future debates within the Confederacy at the national level about the character of the national economy. Which means that the economy would lie beyond intervention (to a greater or lesser extent via slavery and, later, via subsequent expansion of Confederate authority) by the Confederate government.
Note that I'm not defending the choice in words or intent. I'm merely stating that if we actually read the document as the attempt to create a government at the national level then we find quite a different message. What you're articulating here is exactly what the nutbag Protestants claim when they say that the Bible is anti-homosexuality. If one reads the whole Bible then we find a very different message (although not necessarily one of the endorsement of homosexuality).
What you're articulating here is exactly what the nutbag Protestants claim when they say that the Bible is anti-homosexuality.
Actually, Bible is more pro-Slavery than it is anti- Gay. Moses and Paul are pro-Slavery and anti- Gay. Rest of Old and New Testanents don#t really bother with either slavery or gaiety as an issue.
Moses has lots of rules versus slaves and a couple of rules versus gays. Paul has lots of rules versus gays and a few rules versus slaves.
Genivaria wrote:Waving a Confederate flag basically means "I support an organization which committed high treason against a democratically elected government resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans all in order to maintain the vile institution of slavery. Go me!" But, ya know that's just me.
Not all southerners supported slavery. Part of it was that they felt crushed because of the north's strength over them in politics, and with tariffs and other grievances, they felt like they deserved independence. Slavery was a reason, and a major one, but then again, only 1 out of 20 southerners owned slaves.
Just the majority who benefited from it.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:33 pm
by Islamic republiq of Julundar
Not all southerners supported slavery.
CSA conscription Act specifically exempted Slave-owners from the Draft. Only people who did NOT own Slaves were called up.
Islamic republiq of Julundar wrote:CSA conscription Act specifically exempted Slave-owners from the Draft. Only people who did NOT own Slaves were called up.
True, and despicable, but more of a class thing then in support of slavery.
I should point out that not all slave owners were exempted from the draft into military services. So it may have been a class issue but it didn't take long to realize it cannot work like that.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:59 pm
by Page
The Confederate flag represents the cause of the Confederate States, which was primarily preservation of the institution of slavery, which is a racist goal; ergo the flag is a racist symbol.
Sun Wukong wrote:True, and despicable, but more of a class thing then in support of slavery.
I should point out that not all slave owners were exempted from the draft into military services. So it may have been a class issue but it didn't take long to realize it cannot work like that.
Yes, draft law changed in the CSA over time. At first it exempted people in certain core professions and anyone with more than 50 slave but also allowed for people to hire someone to take their place (or send a slave in their place)..... the later practice was put to an end later on (in late 1863), after that point any slave owner not in a certain expempted profession who had less than 50 slaves could be drafted.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 7:12 pm
by United Dependencies
as one of my favorite posters on this website use to say:
God hates glags.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 7:23 pm
by Ponderosa
The flag itself isn't racist - it is, after all, a piece of fabric that has no feelings. But it is a symbol that is often displayed by racists, and would not exist if Southern racists had stopped keeping human beings as pets.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:13 pm
by The Germania Alliance
The flag just represented the Confederacy, and had no symbolism beyond that. Legally, it isn't considered a racist symbol (unless you live in the most liberal state in the world), and I say that only because I'm a Marine, and as a Marine, I'm not allowed to hang a poster of a half-naked woman on my wall but I'm allowed to hang up that flag (I'm NOT saying I do either of those, the only thing I've got on my wall is a Panthers Cheerleaders poster and a POW flag).
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:18 pm
by Dyakovo
[quote="The Germania Alliance";p="19799194"]The flag just represented the Confederacy/quote] Which is what makes it a symbol of racism.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:15 pm
(I'm NOT saying I do either of those, the only thing I've got on my wall is a Panthers Cheerleaders poster and a POW flag).