Were the Southern States wrong to secede?

[John Jones]

And that excuses them?

Nobody is entitled to simply declaring "My country/state, right or wrong" and then hiding behind their patriotism to escape the implications of this.

It's a good thing that I never took such a position.

I'm not making excuses for anything, nor am I attempting to escape the implications of the south's secession. The Confederacy came down on the wrong side and lost.

See post #2 in this thread.

 

[John Jones]

Why?

I give up. Mid eighteenth-century culture? The same reason Northern soldiers also fought under the banners and names of their respective states?

Before anyone else misunderstands, I don't support slavery or the secession of the confederate states, and I'm not going to be put into a position of having to defend them.

This is at least the third time I've said it, so stop implying otherwise.

 

[John Jones]

well, Quebec can't just leave Canada and automatically join the USA. We have to approve it first.

That's in the consitution somewhere? Remember, you were the one originally talking about what was explicitly addressed in the US Constitution.

 

[Paulhoff]

"I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic, One nation, indivisible".

seems pretty clear to me.

no mention of Tennessee, New York, Colorado, etc etc.

I don't think they were right to secede.

Also I don't like pledging to a piece of cloth. I'll pledge to defend the ideals of the U.S. Constitution, which as a war vet I have, but no matter how you want to phrase it, I don’t like pledging to a piece of cloth.

Paul

 

[John Jones]

I don't think they were right to secede.

Also I don't like pledging to a piece of cloth. I'll pledge to defend the ideals of the U.S. Constitution, which as a war vet I have, but no matter how you want to phrase it, I don’t like pledging to a piece of cloth.

Paul

I agree, but it is a moot point since that pledge wasn't written until 27 years after the end of the civil war.

 

[kedo1981]

Can we the have just the hot Quebec girls and leave the rest?
BOT
The Southern states had vowed to secede if Lincoln (as a proclaimed abolitionist) was elected, so the North didn’t need to invade, just elect a pres. the South no-likey.
Sound a bit like the rhetoric of today

 

[John Jones]

This is anecdotal. I have no evidence to back it up:

I took an honors history course, and the professor told us that after their secessions, and before the first shot on Ft Sumpter by the confederates, the confederate states complained because the north cut-off mail sevice to the south.

I don't know if it's true, but it symbolizes the utter lack of a sense of proportion on the part of the rebel states.

 

[John Jones]

Can we the have just the hot Quebec girls and leave the rest?
BOT
The Southern states had vowed to secede if Lincoln (as a proclaimed abolitionist) was elected, so the North didn’t need to invade, just elect a pres. the South no-likey.
Sound a bit like the rhetoric of today

Some of the US congress were indeed in favor of 'letting our errant sisters go their own way'.

Going from memory here: Robert E. Lee decided to invade the north and bring the war home to the yankees - to disabuse them of the notion that the south could only fight a defensive war, and could indeed go on the offensive.

Gettysburg was the result - a tremendous defeat from which the south never recovered.

 

[Cleon]

Men were called to protect their state from the invading north.

That little bit of fiction was shot down at Ft. Sumpter.

 

[John Jones]

That little bit of fiction was shot down at Ft. Sumpter.

I'll give you that. South Carolina fired first against the US at Ft Sumpter. The south started the war. It was ultimately about the states' rights to defend and extend slavery into the western territories.

Are we on the same page?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

This is largely revisionist history. The issue of slavery became more of a rallying point during the war, not prior to it. It was in issue prior to the war, but it was not the reason for the war. The primary reason was the desire for Southern independence from perceived Northern control.

Well, not really. The Articles of Secession of nearly every Confederate State clearly proclaim that slavery was indeed a very large part of the decision to secede. Looked it up for you :


South Carolina Articles of Secession, p24:

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 assumed 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.

Pretty black and white

I wager that if the Civil War had not happened, slavery would have continued much longer. Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in Confederate states that refused to rejoin the Union. Lincoln enacted this under war powers granted him as Commander in Chief. It was an act largely intended to further weaken Southern states and increase support for the war in Northern states among those that opposed slavery.

Without the war, it would have taken legislation to free slaves. That would have been a slow process with Southern states resisting and Northern states not being the idealized anti-slavery saints that popular culture makes them out to be.

So, yes, the war did accomplish something, but at a very high price.

This much I agree with.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Well, not really. The Articles of Secession of nearly every Confederate State clearly proclaim that slavery was indeed a very large part of the decision to secede. Looked it up for you :


South Carolina Articles of Secession, p24:


Pretty black and white

I agree with you. I probably over-stated it. What I intended was to make the point that slaver was "an" issue, but it was not "the" issue that it's often made out to be. Slavery was just one issue among many that fell under the umbrella of perceived Northern control of Southern states.

 

[Loss Leader]

and I would like to know if any Southern State legislatures have rescinded their declaration to leave the Union and join the Confederacy?

All of the seceding states had to petition to rejoin the union. South Carolina, the first state to leave, was the last to be readmitted.

The North was not "invading" the South. We ARE all one nation.

You have it completely backwards. The concept that we are all one nation comes from the Civil War. Before then, most people's first allegiance was to their state and not their nation.

Robert E. Lee was a US Army officer at the start of the Civil War. He had taken oaths to defend both the US and the state of Virginia. He was activated by the Federal government and Virginia at the same time and had to decide which oath meant more to him. And this isn't a guy who took oaths lightly. He surrendered and was paroled by Grant before the war ended. When the Confederacy surrendered a few weeks later, Lee was already home in Richmond with his family. He gave his word to stop fighting and he actually did.

Probably the starkest example of how important the concept of state was back then, though, came when Lee ordered his army to move north out of Virginia. Men deserted rather than follow that order. They had joined the Confederate army to defend Virginia and they had absolutely no intention of invading another state. They risked execution over their love of state above country.

It was Ken Burns who put it best. He said that before the war, people said "The United States are ..." After the war, they said, "The United States is ..."

You're applying the most important lesson of the Civil War to people's actions before the Civil War. That's like saying the US shouldn't have fought in Vietnam because they knew it would be another Vietnam.

 

[Thunder]

The decision came from what seemed to many white Virginians the unavoidable logic of the situation: Virginia was a slave state; the Republicans had announced their intention of limiting slavery; slavery was protected by the sovereignty of the state; an attack on that sovereignty by military force was an assault on the freedom of property and political representation that sovereignty embodied. When the federal government protected the freedom and future of slavery by recognizing the sovereignty of the states, Virginia's Unionists could tolerate the insult the Republicans represented; when the federal government rejected that sovereignty, the threat could no longer be denied even by those who loved the Union.[28]

the Federal government dared to impede on the rights of Southerners, to own and enslave human beings. how dare they!!

 

[themusicteacher]

Southern states:

"I don't like your rules or the way you play the game I agreed to participate in so I'm taking my ball and going home!"

They had no right to secede and they did so for the "right" to own other human beings (oh, but that's okay because it was the 19th century and that was the regional custom, right?). They were wrong and their apologists are wrong.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

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.

Unless the constitution specifically says that once states join the union they may never leave, then the right to leave the union is reserved to the states. In legal terms, that seems pretty clear. In practice, we let them form a separate nation, then conquered that nation and added it to our territory. I still don't see anything that specifically bans states from leaving, but the expectation of being reconquered puts a damper on that. Sometimes diplomacy is about who has the bigger stick, or who thinks their stick is bigger.

A

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Also I don't like pledging to a piece of cloth. I'll pledge to defend the ideals of the U.S. Constitution, which as a war vet I have, but no matter how you want to phrase it, I don’t like pledging to a piece of cloth.

Good for you.

The pledge as I say it.

I pledge allegiance to (pause pause pause) the United States of America (pause pause pause pause pause pause), one nation (pause pause) indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Only a few of the sheeple have ever noticed that I don't join them in every word of their rote recitals: they're too busy remembering all the words and trying to remember what feelings are supposed to be evoked by a once meaningful oath made meaningless through mindless repetition and editing.


The first part I disagree with, because the original definition of fascism was veneration of the fasces, the symbol of imperial rome. Cords to bind, rods to beat, and an ax to execute, in a convenient bundle; an appropriate symbol for a city-state where only a few were free.

Veneration of the flag over the nation is the first sign of american fascism. Patriotism in the form of veneration of the SYMBOLS of your nation rather than the nation itself is pathetic, and people who do so are opening themselves to being led by those who can most cleverly manipulate words and symbols.

The second part I disagre with because it was added in the 50s and is antithetical to the purpose of the pledge. This nation was never intended by its founders to be subjagated to the service of god, gods, or any metaphysical force, and to imply otherwise is to ignore everything we know about american history and the principles on which this nation was built.

A

 

[John Jones]

It was Ken Burns who put it best. He said that before the war, people said "The United States are ..." After the war, they said, "The United States is

..."

That was actually Shelby Foote, quoted in Ken Burn's documentary.

 

[John Jones]

The decision came from what seemed to many white Virginians the unavoidable logic of the situation: Virginia was a slave state; the Republicans had announced their intention of limiting slavery; slavery was protected by the sovereignty of the state; an attack on that sovereignty by military force was an assault on the freedom of property and political representation that sovereignty embodied. When the federal government protected the freedom and future of slavery by recognizing the sovereignty of the states, Virginia's Unionists could tolerate the insult the Republicans represented; when the federal government rejected that sovereignty, the threat could no longer be denied even by those who loved the Union.[28]

the Federal government dared to impede on the rights of Southerners, to own and enslave human beings. how dare they!!

Do you have some other, less obvious point?

 

[John Jones]

Southern states:

"I don't like your rules or the way you play the game I agreed to participate in so I'm taking my ball and going home!"

Yes. South Carolina did this. They listed the election of a 'regional' presidentential candidate as one of their reasons for secession - even though the majority of presidents up to that time were southerners, and they were fine with that.

This was acknowledged in the second post on this thread.