Loki wrote:
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There were issues that the South never addressed. The whole country paid for the Florida territory that greatly expanded the South. So the South intended to take the property for itself and tell the rest of the country to screw. Whatever monies they paid for it was lost?
There were a number of federal forts along the eastern coast line, set up for the defence of the entire country.
These defences were paid for by everybody, did the South just intend to keep them for themselves and stick the rest of the country with the bill for a facility they're taking over for themselves?
You are missing a couple of points. Those forts were paid for with tax monies, from tariffs. 75% or more of those tariffs came from Southern states. The free population of the US at the time was about 27.5 million. Only 5.5 million lived in the seceding states, yet they provided most of the money for these forts.
The South didn't stick anyone with a bill. They had already paid far more than their share, given their percentage of the population.
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While they were a part of the union, they had the right to vote on foreign treatise and spend taxpayer money on any number of public pieces of infrastructure, some in the South, some in the North.
The South was outvoted consistently by the Northeastern industrial states, especially in the House. The taxpayer money on infrastructure was spent almost entirely in the North. The South, although they provided most of the money, got damn little in return.
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Was it their intention to force the country to spend monies on projects they favoured and then screw, leaving the rest of the country to pay for items they supported?
No, it was not their intention, it was to stop spending money on projects that benefited the Northeastern industrial states almost exclusively.
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As Lincoln pointed out, in any contract there is only two ways to break it.
One is by mutual agreement and negotiation. There had to be an accounting of monies spent!
The other is by breach of contract.
An accounting of monies spent? That was the problem. I'd say when the majority of the population gets most of it's money from the minority and spends that money on projects that have little or no benefit for the minority, that would constitute a breach of contract.
The North breached the contract repeatedly by voting against Southern interests and appropriating monies provided mostly by the cotton states for their own infrastructure projects.
The South was less interested in expanding slavery than in preventing an even more lopsided voting bloc.
Lincoln stated more than once that his main concern was the preservation of the Union. The status quo, in which the South paid for the North.
Concerning slavery, there were about 400,000 slaves in the border states that sided with the North. Nothing was said about freeing them until after the war had been concluded. Lincoln supported a plan to repatriate vast numbers of slaves back to Africa. How he planned to do this is a mystery.
Lincoln's clever legalese arguments ignored the fact that it was mostly the Northeastern states that were in violation of the contract, by virtue of the way that monies were appropriated.
****** br br i There were issues that the South ... (
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Nice try on the last part, but, the South was trying to expand slavery. Lincoln was trying to leave it as it was, where the forefathers found it.
The federal government had no authority to outlaw slavery, nor make slavery legal, even though it went against the very nature of the country, in that all men are created equal.
Despite their obvious philosophical differences, Jefferson understood just as well as Madison or Washington the fragility of a republican government.
The news of the compromise came “like a fire bell in the night…considered it at once as the knell of the Union.” The legislation drew a very literal line through the Union, dividing it with the majority of free states on one side, and the majority of slave states on the other.
Jefferson understands that this is not merely a political dividing line, but a line “coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated.” When the Kansas-Nebraska Act later attempted to obliterate that line, the result was bloodshed and unrest in those territories.
http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/tuesday-april-23-2013-essay-47-thomas-jeffersons-letter-to-john-holmes-guest-essayist-james-legee-graduate-fellow-at-the-matthew-j-ryan-center-for-the-study-of-free-institutions-and-the/*************************************
The History Place - Abraham Lincoln
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement. In the pro-slavery South it was strongly supported.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed in to settle Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election held there after the law went into effect. Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud by anti-slavery settlers, and the results were not accepted by them.
The anti-slavery settlers held another election, however pro-slavery settlers refused to vote. This resulted in the establishment of two opposing legislatures within the Kansas territory.
Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown. The territory earned the nickname "bleeding Kansas" as the death toll rose.
President Franklin Pierce, in support of the pro-slavery settlers, sent in Federal troops to stop the violence and disperse the anti-slavery legislature. Another election was called. Once again pro-slavery supporters won and once again they were charged with election fraud.
As a result, Congress did not recognize the constitution adopted by the pro-slavery settlers and Kansas was not allowed to become a state.
Eventually, however, anti-slavery settlers outnumbered pro-slavery settlers and a new constitution was drawn up. On January 29, 1861, just before the start of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state.
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm*************************
Speech on the Dred Scott Decision
Abraham Lincoln
Speech at Springfield, Illinois
June 26, 1857
I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was, in part, based on assumed historical facts which were not really true; and I ought not to leave the subject without giving some reasons for saying this; I therefore give an instance or two, which I think fully sustain me. Chief Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the Court, insists at great length that negroes were no part of the people who made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States.
On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in five of the then thirteen states, to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, free negroes were voters, and, in proportion to their numbers, had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had. He shows this with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth; and, as a sort of conclusion on that point, holds the following language:
“The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of themselves and all other citizens of the State. In some of the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those qualified by law to act on the subject. These colored persons were not only included in the body of `the people of the United States,- by whom the Constitution was ordained and established; but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and, doubtless, did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its adoption.”
Again, Chief Justice Taney says: “It is difficult, at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted.” And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says: “The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day, would be so understood.”
In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a mistake. In some trifling particulars, the condition of that race has been ameliorated; but, as a whole, in this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the five States-New Jersey and North Carolina-that then gave the free negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and in a third-New York-it has been greatly abridged; while it has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though the number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then, such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation, as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days, Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State Constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man’s bondage to new countries was prohibited; but now, Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.
Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did not at once, actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact, that they did not at once, or ever afterwards, actually place all white people on an equality with one or another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief Justice and the Senator, for doing this obvious violence to the plain unmistakable language of the Declaration. I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal-equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, nor for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.
I have now briefly expressed meaning and objects of that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that “all men are created equal.”
How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and Republican parties incidentally bear on the question of forming a will-a public sentiment-for colonization, is easy to see. The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage “a sacred right of self-government.”
http://teachingamericanhisto