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Ronald Reagan on Charlottesville
pic.twitter.com/p5CDsnzZHp
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) August 14, 2017
Thirty-some years ago, the fortieth president delivered 50 seconds of remarks from which the forty-fifth could learn something. (As best I can recall, this was an ad-lib, not part of the President’s prepared text that day. He is speaking from the heart.)
Published in General
There is no legal mechanism. Secession is an extra-constitutional act. The Confederate constitution did indeed preserve slavery, but that does not negate the fact that not all Southerners supported the institution.
Amen. And my Confederate ancestors were Tejanos – that is, Spanish Texans who were descended from Spaniards who came to settle the area when it was still a part of the Spanish empire. They fought for the home they had built over several generations.
I think the moral justification is rather undercut by the institution of slavery.
This question is not so well defined as the question of the legality of US secession. The rights of the colonists were based upon English common law. The colonists were contending that these rights had been violated. The problem here is that English common law was not codified.
The Constitution is codified, and from this codification the federal government has clear mandates to enforce the law. It also lays out clearly the rights of citizens. Such a codification did not exist in England, and so your question is a murky one that lacks a yes or no answer.
What do you mean ‘They fought for the home they had built for generations”? Did they think that the Union was just going to destroy their property for the hell of it?
Uh….this point is rather undercut by Sherman.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
From the original founding document of the nation.
Are you comparing the desire to preserve chattel slavery with the desire to be free of British rule without representation?
They declare this, but whether or not they had such rights is difficult to say.
Watch the clip I posted of Condi Rice speaking about the monuments. I posted it because I agree with her views on the monuments.
Sherman did what he did to destroy the South’s capacity to fight. His army didn’t go rampaging like the Mongols.
I don’t believe I said anything like that and I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I was simply pointing the clear and undeniable reality that the founders of this nation thought they had the right to leave behind any nation which didn’t serve their rights and needs.
Absolutely true. And as a man had his back whipped to ribbons for trying to escape bondage, this thought must have been a great consolation.
Because every single Southerner, in fact every member of the white race, were collectively holding the whip.
In that case, disregard my previous comments.
Wait when did this become about the white race?
Why bring up the justification for the American Rebellion if not to somehow use it as analogous to the Southern Rebellion?
No, but every Southerner who fought was preventing the end of other Southerners whipping men in bondage.
I think this is all beside the point. The technical question of whether the American revolution was legal lacks a clear yes or no answer. The technical question of whether the South had the right to secede does not.
I’ll use small words. That passage details their right to leave a nation which they found oppressive. No standard for what constitutes oppression is provided, which can only mean oppressive by whatever standard they choose.
Again, anyone can declare anything. The legality of any move is a technical question, and the question of the legality of the American Revolution does not have answer.
Now now no need to get insulting. So you are analogizinng the oppression of British rule over the colonies without representation to the American government ending chattel slavery.
Please highlight the text where I said anything about chattel slavery. The quote I posted shows that the Founders believed in a right of secession. Period.
The founders did not believe in an unlimited right of secession but believed that certain circumstances (a long train of abuses…utter despotism etc) justifies secession. The reason for the south’s secession was to preserve the right to engage in chattel slavery. They rebelled against the “long train of abuses” of the north trying to abolish that institution. Therefore the analogy you are making is that the north’s efforts towards abolition constitute a long train of abuses leading to utter despotism and thus justifying the Southern Rebellion.
Circumstances that are entirely subjective, and that will be based on the viewpoint of the people on the receiving end.
As for the rest, I didn’t say that. You did.
What was the reason the south seceded? Please list the long train of abuses.
Whether the south was justified is not the point. The question was simple; whether secession was legal. Clearly, the Founders thought so.
If there were a long train of abuses, which they listed in their declaration to King George. It was not a blanket endorsement of secession.
See comment #85. And don’t bother responding again. I won’t.
They thought secession against a government that lacks a written constitution was justified. Whether or not it was legal, which was the original question, lacks a yes or no answer.