Seceeding from the Union

[Marc_Anthony]

I do. I think Lincoln failed to preserve the Union without the death of hundreds of thousands. By any objective measure, his presidency was a terrible failure, the worst in history. Could anyone have done better? I can’t say. Lincoln ran for the job, got it, and the country devolved into war.

Wow, what a loaded statement. What you mean is, Lincoln ran for the job, got it, and a country that was devolving into war beforehand finished “devolving” after he was elected. Then his job became the extraordinarily difficult one of trying to pick up the pieces. It is nowhere near his fault that the Civil War began.

Not only that, you made a self-contradiction. You say Lincoln’s Presidency was a terrible failure…then you say that it’s possible nobody could have done better! In other words, it is completely possible that Lincoln handled terrible circumstances as good or better than anybody else would have…and yet he was the worst President in history.

Sorry, but I really disagree with what seems to be the prevailing opinion of the board. Lincoln did some bad things, but talk about being dealt a bad hand. Imagine if you were in his place. We can look at it in hindsight and say all of the things that could have been done differently or better, but Lincoln didn’t have that benefit. He was the leader of a country that was fragmented in two and at war with itself. Was he the right man for the job? I think so.

There are always two ends to the spectrum (I’m not saying you’re part of either, pnewton, this is just a general comment) when discussing the Civil War, the Union sympathizers and the Southern sympathizers.The war wasn’t that black and white. Honestly, I think very few wars were totally just or totally unjust. This was one of those wars that was neither. It was just horrible.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

And did not free any slaves in the North at all. It only applied to the seceded states.

Technically true, but I always thought this was a bit unfair to the Proclamation. It basically made the passing of the 13th amendment a foregone conclusion and transformed the war into one to end slavery.

I would say more of a diplomatic tactic. In Britain it had the effect of making any diplomatic support for the Confederacy tantamount to supporting slavery. It effectively ended the chances of any foreign intervention, leaving North and South to fight it out.

True. I think it was a combination of both.

I think you malign Lincoln. Since the Confederate states were no longer part of the US, they had forfeited any protections they may have had under the US constitution. Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate states:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. (emphasis added)

Slavery was made illegal in the USA by the Thirteenth Amendment, not the Emancipation Proclamation.

rossum

Correct.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Thank you for that Ana v.

Please look at post #133 and post #143 in this thread. Post #143 in this thread shows that both South Carolina and Michigan have joined the list I made in post #133 last night, so that makes 17 so far.

Here are South Carolina and Michigan:
we petition the obama administration to: The State of South Carolina to Secede from the Union and form it’s own Government as a Sovereign State

we petition the obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Michigan to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

When trying to keep up with this secession business, you might as well go straight to the link provided in post #143, because that’s where the latest petitions past the 150 mark signature threshold are.

And now Tennessee and Missouri . . .

we petition the obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Tennessee to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

we petition the obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Missouri to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

So that makes 19.

 

[pnewton]

Not only that, you made a self-contradiction. You say Lincoln’s Presidency was a terrible failure…then you say that it’s possible nobody could have done better! In other words, it is completely possible that Lincoln handled terrible circumstances as good or better than anybody else would have…and yet he was the worst President in history.

I commented on his presidency, not him as president. About the latter, I think he is a mixed bag. I do not mean to overly nuance the difference between his presidency and him as president, but it is not a contradiction. To give an opposite example as an analogy, I consider the first term of Nixon to be a successful presidency, though I do not consider him a good president.

I do not know if anyone could have done better. That is most assuredly speculative. I do not think there was a legitimate attempt to negotiate either peaceful secession or an assurance of state’s rights.

There are always two ends to the spectrum (I’m not saying you’re part of either, pnewton, this is just a general comment) when discussing the Civil War, the Union sympathizers and the Southern sympathizers.

The Civil War is in the past. For me, this discussion is academic. Secession, if it is ever attempted, is still decades in the future, at the very least. This too makes it largely academic to me.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I commented on his presidency, not him as president. About the latter, I think he is a mixed bag. I do not mean to overly nuance the difference between his presidency and him as president, but it is not a contradiction. To give an opposite example as an analogy, I consider the first term of Nixon to be a successful presidency, though I do not consider him a good president.

I do not know if anyone could have done better. That is most assuredly speculative. I do not think there was a legitimate attempt to negotiate either peaceful secession or an assurance of state’s rights.

Ohhhh, okay. I’m sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying.

 

[Reep]

The Texan Second Republic would be far poorer than the American State of TX, once you factored in the costs of building a navy and garrisoning 2,000 miles of borders, and the new trade barriers that would exist between it and the USA.

I suspect the defense of Texas would be much simplified if they did not have to pay to protect the 20,000 miles of land and sea borders we all now pay to protect, especially if Texans had no interest in conducting wars overseas. If they did not, security needs would be very modest, especially if they had enough brains to end the drug war.

The best argument that they would need enormous armies/navies is a rather sad one; that is to say that the United States would attack Texas with all its heart, militarily and economically. There is no necessity for either trade or actual war, but I suspect the US would find an excuse to launch them both.

The new Texas Peso would also at once go into free fall relative to the US$.

Not if Texans had the sense to use real money, i.e. gold and silver.

 

[jediliz]

the first tine it was about mostly state’s rights, and of course slavery. Now it would be about forcing the purchase of insurance (with a few exceptions), violating religious freedom of businesses and charities and…whatever else.

The thing is…the red states support the military. Do the “blue states”?

I can’t see hollywood actors in uniform saying “Charge!”

I already told one of my uncle’s that if Texas secedes…I am immigrating.

 

[april32010]

The South liked to pretend they were the proverbial white knights in the war. They weren’t.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Seceding Could Perhaps Be Legitimate to Protect Innocent Human Life.

If there was a block of states in which a majority of the people wanted to abolish legal abortion, and if those states could secede peacefully, or at least in a manner that would pass muster under the Catholic Just War doctrine, then that seems possibly legitimate from a moral point of view.

Seceding Probably Would Never Be Legitimate to Get Lower Taxes & End Redistribution of Income.

On the other hand, seceding or attempting to secede, just because you don’t like the tax rates, or certain government social programs, would seem to violate the Catholic Church’s Solidarity doctrine and Just War doctrine.

The American Revolution (1776-1781) and the Confederate States’ War of Secession (1861-1865) do not seem to be moral wars as seen through the prism of current Catholic doctrine.

The Confederate States started a war against the U.S. government just because they feared that the Northern states would eventually become so dominant in the U.S. Congress and would come to win every election for U.S. President, and so would pretty soon pass federal laws abolishing the right to hold human beings as property and use slaves for commercial gain. I don’t think anyone even tries to defend that anymore.

The 13 American colonies started a war against the government because they thought the tax rates were too high, because they didn’t have representatives in Parliament (where the tax laws were passed), and because the government was forbidding expansion west of the Allegheny mountains. But since there were members of Parliament who were conciliatory towards the colonies, and were working on a way to reduce the taxes and find some way to allow the colonists to participate in the fashioning of tax laws for the colonies, the high threshold necessary to justify the taking the lives of innocent government soldiers seems to not have been met.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India all got independence from Great Britain without a war. The American colonists could have done the same thing. It is serious business to shoot and bayonet and kill a fellow human being. The Christian presumption is always again war, except as an absolute last resort to protect life.

But those are just my opinions, based on my study of the Church’s Just War Doctrine and the Church’s Social Doctrine.

Offered for the Glory of God and the Salvation of Souls.

 

[april32010]

.Why was the preservation of black slavery so important?

why doesn’t anyone ever answer that question,and the states right argument was the whole rationale behind segregation in the 50’s and early 60"s

 

[april32010]

The Confederate States started a war against the U.S. government just because they feared that the Northern states would eventually become so dominant in the U.S. Congress and would come to win every election for U.S. President, and so would pretty soon pass federal laws abolishing the right to hold human beings as property and use slaves for commercial gain. I don’t think anyone even tries to defend that anymore.

i wouldn’t be to sure about that

 

[ThatOrthodoxGuy]

The Confederate States started a war against the U.S. government just because they feared that the Northern states would eventually become so dominant in the U.S. Congress and would come to win every election for U.S. President, and so would pretty soon pass federal laws abolishing the right to hold human beings as property and use slaves for commercial gain. I don’t think anyone even tries to defend that anymore.QUOTE]

Umm I not sure about that. There is a lot more to it than that:ehh:

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Bartolome Casas;10007513:

The Confederate States started a war against the U.S. government just because they feared that the Northern states would eventually become so dominant in the U.S. Congress and would come to win every election for U.S. President, and so would pretty soon pass federal laws abolishing the right to hold human beings as property and use slaves for commercial gain. I don’t think anyone even tries to defend that anymore.QUOTE]

Umm I not sure about that. There is a lot more to it than that:ehh:

I learned recently that when Lincoln won the presidency the first time, he did so WITHOUT CARRYING A SINGLE SOUTHERN STATE.

So Lincoln did not look like the President of the United States, but the President merely of the Northern States.

Apparently that is why the Southern States felt they had to secede right after Lincoln’s election.

Lincoln ran on the platform of leaving slavery undisturbed in the Southern states where it already existed, but of opposing slavery in all the new territories of the West.

So, the Southerners could see that as more and more of the Western territories became states they would all be in the Republican Party camp, since they’d be non-slave states. The Southerners projected all this forward, and saw that they’d never again be able to elect a Southern pro-slavery person a U.S. President, and would gradually come to be a permanent minority in Congress.

They correctly predicted that this Republican-dominated Presidency and Congress would pass law after law to favor the Northern states and to the detriment of the Southern states.

Their only chance of preserving their Southern way of life (meaning, above all slavery) was to get out of the Union.

To me, their reasoning was sensible. They were wrong in the moral sense, but not irrational.

If anyone but Lincoln had been president, the North would have probably given up and let the South go after a year or two of war, and the whole plan of the Southern rebels would have worked out as they wished.

 

[Seeker1961]

This is the page of the most recent petitions, where I got the other petitions from: petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions

Did you look at the other petitions and the amount of signatures they have? Labeling genetically modified food, outlawing insults to prophets of major religions, not allowing FDA regulations on cigars…interesting stuff.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Did you look at the other petitions and the amount of signatures they have? Labeling genetically modified food, outlawing insults to prophets of major religions, not allowing FDA regulations on cigars…interesting stuff.

Yes I did. I don’t want to get too off topic from this thread though, so I didn’t say anything.

Please forgive me fellow posters if I do veer off topic a bit here, but if you get how this is done (somebody comes up with a petition and somehow gathers the first 150 signatures or so, by asking for help on Craig’s list, maybe Tea Party sites (if the issue is more of ‘right’ sort of issue), or Democratic Underground (if the issue is more of a ‘left’ issue) or someplace and once the magic 150 mark is passed the petition jumps to the most recent petitions page whereupon the numbers mount up much more rapidly if people are attracted to it), it occurs to me that some of the major frustrations of people here regarding the HHS mandate etc. might be more constructively dealt with than just posting on a forum and praying. I mean, you could try to craft a petition, get people to sign from here or other places, and eventually get to the magic 25,000 mark whereupon you might be entitled to a response of some sort from the administration.

I’m not saying that the sort of prayers suggested elsewhere with regard to the HHS mandate won’t do any good – I think they will. But you might be able to do a little bit of prayer and action too. I mean, instead of just praying for ‘the White House’ to come around, you might pray for you and your fellow posters to be inspired by the Holy Spirit with regard to the verbage you come up with on a petition that might be crafted by people right here on CAF.

Anyway, I think you can see where I’m going with this – let’s have CAF craft a petition that addresses the things you most dislike about the HHS mandate.

Just my :twocents:.

OK, back on topic now.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

If anyone but Lincoln had been president, the North would have probably given up and let the South go after a year or two of war, and the whole plan of the Southern rebels would have worked out as they wished.

I doubt that actually, but even if it were true I think it would have been a bad thing. This is not to say that a lot of what the North did at the end of the war was justified of course-only that secession, if made permanent, would most likely have led to the ruin of both the Union and Confederacy.

 

[GEddie]

I doubt that actually, but even if it were true I think it would have been a bad thing. This is not to say that a lot of what the North did at the end of the war was justified of course-only that secession, if made permanent, would most likely have led to the ruin of both the Union and Confederacy.

And even if it didn’t, the CSA, in order to survive, would have ended up just a smaller and poorer version of the USA.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Arkansas:we petition the obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Arkansas to withdraw from the United States and create its own NEW government

That’s 20, I believe, although there are some duplicate petitions (Georgia, for example, among the most recent petitions list) which might make it seem a bit more than 20.

 

[rossum]

Thank you for that Ana v.

Please look at post #133 and post #143 in this thread. Post #143 in this thread shows that both South Carolina and Michigan have joined the list I made in post #133 last night, so that makes 17 so far.

Here are South Carolina and Michigan:
we petition the obama administration to: The State of South Carolina to Secede from the Union and form it’s own Government as a Sovereign State

we petition the obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Michigan to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

When trying to keep up with this secession business, you might as well go straight to the link provided in post #143, because that’s where the latest petitions past the 150 mark signature threshold are.

South Carolina I might grant you, but Michigan? Did you look at the results from Michigan? Obama beat Romney 54.3% to 44.8%. Why on earth would people who voted that way want to secede?

rossum

 

[exnihilo]

And did not free any slaves in the North at all. It only applied to the seceded states.

Actually it only applied to Confederate states *and *only to territory within those states that were not Union occupied. You can read the exceptions for yourself here. You will notice parishes of LA and counties of VA exempted. The reason for this was this territory was at the time under Union control. So Lincoln freed slaves only where he had no power. Where he did have power he maintained it. He didn’t even free all slaves in ‘rebel’ states. At best he was trying to start a slave rebellion to help him win the war.