Wingmaster05
10-14-2007, 03:24 AM
A discussion blossomed today with a roommate that ordinarily wouldn't have occurred. It covered a multitude of events and topics, but a stalemate presented itself on the topic of the 'Civil War'.
I (who had just read James and Walter kennedy's The South was Right) preceded to tell him that much of the War for Southern Independence was precipitated by the government's infringement of the States inherent right to secede if they no longer were properly represented by the present government. The states, as individual, sovereign nations, joined together under one roof (or as the Kennedy's so frequently pointed out, "the unfettered consent of the governed") and surely if that arrangement is harmful to their situation they can dissolve it's connection to that Union. (I mentioned that Southern states were on the losing end of the economic set up of the Union but couldn't explain it in rational or substantiated terms).
He referred me to the Confederate's (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm )"Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union", in which the majority of the grievances are directly related to slavery. The part that truly didn't make sense was a statement within the document stating that seceding was necesary because the president was going to free the slaves in the South
from the South Carolina declaration:
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This struck me as strange because I knew from Lincoln's inaugural address that he... [has] no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so..
Lincoln appears to have flip flopped on the issue in the preceding years of the election. Is the inaugural address introduction against free slaves just to save face?
I remind myself how much credibility I lend to the speaker of the last few state of the union adresses... ;)
Also...
Was there a long term plan in place to stabilize the Southern economy for the switch off of slave labor? I can clearly see a problem if the 'Northern Congress', as Kennedy put it, exerted pressure on the South to end slavery and yet provide no feasible way to wean the labor force off slaves and to paid civilians.
I (who had just read James and Walter kennedy's The South was Right) preceded to tell him that much of the War for Southern Independence was precipitated by the government's infringement of the States inherent right to secede if they no longer were properly represented by the present government. The states, as individual, sovereign nations, joined together under one roof (or as the Kennedy's so frequently pointed out, "the unfettered consent of the governed") and surely if that arrangement is harmful to their situation they can dissolve it's connection to that Union. (I mentioned that Southern states were on the losing end of the economic set up of the Union but couldn't explain it in rational or substantiated terms).
He referred me to the Confederate's (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm )"Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union", in which the majority of the grievances are directly related to slavery. The part that truly didn't make sense was a statement within the document stating that seceding was necesary because the president was going to free the slaves in the South
from the South Carolina declaration:
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This struck me as strange because I knew from Lincoln's inaugural address that he... [has] no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so..
Lincoln appears to have flip flopped on the issue in the preceding years of the election. Is the inaugural address introduction against free slaves just to save face?
I remind myself how much credibility I lend to the speaker of the last few state of the union adresses... ;)
Also...
Was there a long term plan in place to stabilize the Southern economy for the switch off of slave labor? I can clearly see a problem if the 'Northern Congress', as Kennedy put it, exerted pressure on the South to end slavery and yet provide no feasible way to wean the labor force off slaves and to paid civilians.