Confederate Industrial centers.

Wolfpaw

Banned
When they saw how badly this was going under the articles of confederation they made something only somewhat better at holding us together.
Indeed. People tend to forget how the first United States constitution just failed miserably.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Indeed. People tend to forget how the first United States constitution just failed miserably.

Seems more like people tend to forget that we're told it failed miserably ;)

This is still off-topic, though. I'll go start a thread in chat.
 
And trust me, when the CSA gets the Boll Weevil in the 1890s (possibly earlier) then state-by-state abolition will kick into action fairly quick.

So you think people in debt would always give away their possessions, rather than sell them to pay the debts?:confused:
 
But there is nothing at all wrong in fighting for independence, there is nothing wrong in fighting for the right to settle the slave issue on the state level outside of all the controversy surrounding the greater nation because of it.

You are being very selective about what facts you are using.

Secession was never about the failure to let states decide for themselves this issue.

When Lincoln was elected, he made it clear - very clear - that he was not going to interfere with slavery where it existed. He only insisted that it would not be allowed to spread to future states. Nothing that violates state's rights there. Yet the Confederates seceeded anyway? Why would that be unless the real reasons were not as clear cut as you imply?

And of course, your statement makes zero sense in explaining why pro-slavery paramilitaries attempted to take over the New Mexico Territory, or why Confederate armies invaded Kentucky to force it to join the Confederacy. How exactly does that promote settling the slave issue on the state level?

Secessionists paid very little intention to preserve the state's rights of free states when it came to slavery issues. They overwhelmingly supported Dredd Scott Decision which essentially said that free states would be forced to have slaves, and kept wanting the Federal government to intervene in the northern states on the issue of fugitive slaves. The violations of state rights in the decade leading up to the Civil War was not about protecting the slave states from the Federal government, but protecting free states from attempts by the slave states to usurp their power.

You keep mentioning the failure to return escaped slaves as violation of the Constitutional. Of course, fugitive slaves were returned to the South. What was objected was the measures the slave states kept insisting be used to do so - especially in 1850 and after. Free states insisted that fugitive slaves be returned through a process of law they could respect instead of measures that trampled their own constitutional processes and liberties. Slaveholders hated having to work through the normal process of law and prove their case, and they much preferred actions that ignored habeus corpus, used only one party as evidence, and clearly treated the two parties unequally.

Secession wasn't spoken against in our Constitution, secession was an unspoken right passed down by our Revolutionary forefathers, why a "pragmatic" you wouldn't understand it, even seeing where you come from, is shocking enough. Conneticut and Massachusetts broke away from England in the same manner that the South did from the Union. I think it still should be a state right, and it is not treason. So there.

Secession wasn't mentioned, and it's possible it was one of the implied powers protected by the Tenth Amendment. Furthermore, one can argue that secession is a natural right.

However, if you accept this, it's important to note that it does not come lightly, and that there is a burden of proof on the revolutionaries that revolution/secession is the only way to protect those rights.

The Confederates clearly failed on this issue.

First, there was no mechanism to achieve legal secession. Even if one could legally secede does not mean that any attempt at secession would be legal. You would still need to distinguish that your secession was legal rather than illegal. Since there is no mechanism described, the Confederates should have moved very deliberately to support their claims. There was absolutely none of this. Could it be done through the state legislatures? A special convention? Direct vote? What about attempts by mobs to do so by force? Or the invasion of Kentucky by Confederate armies? The Confederates clearly did not attempt to convince people by reason that their theories and actions were legal. In every case, they attempted to do so by de facto measures that involved violence. No attempt was made to explain what would become of Federal property, of citizens who were against secession, or any of the other minutiae that would need to be addressed. Furthermore, seceding didn't address the major concerns of the slaves holders. If you are upset that the Federal Government is not doing enough to return escaped slaves in northern states, how will seceding resolve that problem? Wouldn't it make it worse because now there is zero chance of having such slaves returned?

If you go back to the Declaration of Independence, you see repeated specific claims of the specific rights violated (not theoretical violations that might happen in the future), and reminders that the colonies sent repeated peititions to redress those wrongs only to be refused.

Confederates did none of that because they couldn't. They seceded because they lost a Presidential election. I think it should be self-evident that elections are not invalid simply because your preference lost, or otherwise elections would be a joke. And it clearly cannot have been any action Lincoln took because he wasn't even inaugurated by the time the first Confederate states seceded. What exactly were the rights of the states supposedly violated by Lincoln being elected?

Instead, we got various ordinances of secession that basically complained in vague terms and alarmist language that the Black Republicans were going to make the black man equal to the white man.

South Carolina's ordinance did not merely assert state's rights, but radically created entire weird new theories of of the relationship between the state and the federal government and other states. It says that the reason for secession was not that the Federal government violated South Carolina's rights, but that other states had not fully complied with how South Carolina wanted them to do in returning fugitive slaves. It then goes on complaining about all the other anti-slavery feeling of other states.

Some of the reasons offered for secession were

1) People in other states have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery

2) Other states have permitted open establishment among them of societies who are against slavery

3) People in those other states have spoken out against slavery, even to the point where they have written books, drawn pictures, and sent mail!

It then concludes that since people in free states have elected Abraham Lincoln, that they have to secede.

It is a document riddled with half truths, debateable facts, and leaps in logic. It also makes plenty of use of saying that Lincoln or others "will" do things. In other words, it is not a coherent, rational argument that South Carolina was repeatedly violated of its rights. It's an emotional complaint that non-South Carolinians aren't acting like how South Carolina wants them to do, and that therefore maybe in the future their constituional rights may be violated..

It is a farce.

It certainly wasn't a principled attempt to protect their liberites.

It was a naked power grab by slaveholders who feared that their ability to control national government was over. Not being able to control the federal government anymore, they were determined to destroy it.
 
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