Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861

[Ender]

Many people argue that the south seceeded because they believed in the right to break unions and they did not break away because they were trying to perserve slavery. The confederate constitution was almost an exact copy of the US constitution. All the parts about fighting a insurection and rebellions in the US constitution were also in the confederate constitution. The obvious and most glaring changes were about slavery.
Would you not believe that the confederation would have added a section in their constitution clearly stating the right to secession, especially when they were willing to fight a war over it? The fact that they refused to let east TN break away is supporting facts it was not about the right of secession.

The War between the States was about money- as has been every war on the planet.

 

[klamath]

The War between the States was about money- as has been every war on the planet.

Absolutely right...the wealth created off of the backs of slaves. A great deal of your profits vanish when you have to start paying for labor. Huge money.

 

[TheTexan]

DiLorenzo is flat out lying. Fort Sumter was a Union fort paid for by federal tax dollars and housing Union men. The Southern Confederacy confiscated a lot of Union forts and artillery. That is how they first armed themselves ... with Union property.

South Carolina paid their taxes. Unless you can demonstrate that South Carolina received more funding from the Federal government than they put in, that property belongs to South Carolina.

The Union is just an abstraction of states, Travlyr. The Federal Government does not have property. Only states do.*

(*Actually, only people own property... but that's verging on anarchist territory which might rile some angst in these here threads)

 

[Travlyr]

South Carolina paid their taxes. Unless you can demonstrate that South Carolina received more funding from the Federal government than they put in, that property belongs to South Carolina.

The Union is just an abstraction of states, Travlyr. The Federal Government does not have property. Only states do.*

(*Actually, only people own property... but that's verging on anarchist territory which might rile some angst in these here threads)

Fort Sumter was a Union fort with Union troops being held hostage with dwindling supplies. The South wanted to starve them into surrendering the Union property. Lincoln tried, like Buchanan before him, to send food and provisions peacefully to their men. If you were president of the Union, what would you have done? Defend your troops or surrender?

 

[Travlyr]

The War between the States was about money- as has been every war on the planet.

Yeah, like klamath said. Giving up slaves who do all your work for you would have not only impoverished the Slave Masters but their prestige of owning slaves went away too. The Civil War was about slavery.

Secession was specifically about slavery. The seceding states declare their intentions in their seceding documents.

South Carolina,

[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding [i.e., northern] states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad].

Mississippi,

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Alabama,

. . . the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America by a sectional party [the Republicans], avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama . .

Georgia,

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the federal government has been committed [i.e., the Republican Party] will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia [in favor of secession]. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican Party under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. . . . The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its [Republican] leaders and applauded by its followers. . . . [T]he abolitionists and their allies in the northern states have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions [i.e., slavery].

Louisiana,

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern Confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery. . . . Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws, and institutions. . . . and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. . . . The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery if Texas either did not secede or, having seceded, should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy.

Texas,

[Texas] was received as a commonwealth, holding, maintaining, and protecting the institution known as Negro slavery – the servitude of the African to the white race within [Texas] – a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

Virginia,

On April 17, 1861, Virginia became the eighth state to secede. It, too, acknowledged that the “oppression of the southern slave-holding states” (among which it numbered itself) had motivated its decision.

Arkansas,

No concessions would now satisfy (and none ought now to satisfy) the South but such as would amount to a surrender of the distinctive principles by which the Republican Party coheres [exists], because none other or less would give the South peace and security. That Party would have to agree that in the view of the Constitution, slaves are property – that slavery might exist and should be legalized and protected in territory hereafter to be acquired to the southwest [e.g., New Mexico, Arizona, etc.], and that Negroes and mulattoes cannot be citizens of the United States nor vote at general elections in the states. . . . For that Party to make these concessions would simply be to commit suicide and therefore it is idle to expect from the North – so long as it [the Republican Party] rules there – a single concession of any value.

North Carolina and Tennessee,

North Carolina and Tennessee became the tenth and eleventh states to secede, thus finishing the formation of the new nation that titled itself the Slave-Holding Confederate States of America. Southern secession documents indisputably affirm that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the driving force in its secession and thus a primary cause of the Civil War.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

South Carolina paid their taxes. Unless you can demonstrate that South Carolina received more funding from the Federal government than they put in, that property belongs to South Carolina.

The Union is just an abstraction of states, Travlyr. The Federal Government does not have property. Only states do.*

(*Actually, only people own property... but that's verging on anarchist territory which might rile some angst in these here threads)

Folks here are still responding to Trav? Successful troll is successful!

 

[robert68]

It never applied in the first place because "states" as such, do not exist. I invite any who disagree to demonstrate the existence per se of a state.

I am a sovereign being.

I kowtow to no man, group thereof, nor idol nor graven image of anyone's making save those of my own choosing. I answer only to the authority of my own conscience and to none other.

As such and because I never consented to the laws of this or any other arbitrarily constituted subdivision of humanity, I stand apart from them and withhold my permission to be governed by them at an time, for any reason. That such groups possess the material power to destroy me or otherwise violate my inherent sovereignty, it does not follow that they hold the right to do so. When they proceed in violation of my sovereign right to act as I will, they do so with no moral authority whatsoever. Rather, they act only with their collective brute force upon which they have sloppily pinned a shabby and threadbare veneer of lies, falsely claiming such authority to compel and punish those who have committed no crime but who have merely acted contrary to the corrupt, capricious, and non-authoritative will of a band of criminals.

The common behavior of such mobs as they mete their "justice" is analogous to adults being punished by a two year-old in the throes of a wildly out of control tantrum.

I was making a strictly legal argument in my response to Travlyr, using terms constitutionalists would use. I never suggested the state has moral authority to do what it does. My preferred definition of the state is, an agency that commits institutionalized aggression (on individuals), and that definition gives no party the moral authority to aggress on anyone.