The southern states were traitors who tried to destroy the USA. They deserved to be crushed on the battle field, and many still need to have a boot on their neck, to keep them from destroying innocent human beings.
shareIf they fly a Confederate flag, they are traitors.
shareAnd you're a prejudiced bigot for thinking so. Well done.
shareBigoted? They rebelled and tried to cut away part of their country, they were the very definition of traitors.
shareThey rebelled and tried to cut away part of their country, they were the very definition of traitors.
That would be the Constitution of the United States which built on the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It's quite clear that the writers intended that the "more perfect union" would continue to be perpetual both from other contemporary legislation, like the North West ordinance, and the fact that they did not include any mechanism for secession.
I also note that contrary to your claim, the first acts of violence and the first shots fired were not from Federal forces, but by the secessionists.
Sorry intention is not law. Also the first shots were fired at trespassers on land that was no longer theirs after being given numerous opportunities to vacate the fort.
shareNo indeed. Law is law. One can't make a perpetual union more perfect by removing its perpetuity, and you have moved the goal posts from Unionists "attacking" the secessionists to Federal forces being the victims of an armed assault.
shareIf something is not strictly forbidden or allowed in the Constitution then it falls to the States and the People, according to the 10th Amendment, to decide for themselves. So either you agree with the Constitution or you agree with the North who violated it.
shareThe assumption here is that the Constitution exists in a complete vacuum without context. In fact, like all American law, it is part of a centuries old Common Law tradition. This means previous law and court decisions that rely on them and the clear intent of the writers matters. This means that the phrase "more perfect" in the Constitution is referential. It's an understanding that went back well before the war and it's one that the US Supreme Court upheld in White v Texas.
Now it might be that a Southern sympathizing court might have decided differently in 1861, but the secessionists did not take the issue to court. Instead, they decided to contest the issue by trial by combat - a tradition that predated the Common Law. Having lost the case in that court as well as subsequently losing in the USSC, Lost Causers have no leg to stand on.
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Actually several of the Southern States had provisions in their State constitutions that allowed for secession. The State's constitutions were in place BEFORE being accepted into the the USA. In other words, the United States federal government FORMALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THEIR RIGHT TO SECEDE if the State would so choose.
Do not get me wrong. I think it would have been disastrous to allow them to secede & am glad Lincoln kept up the fight. But make no mistake, the Southern States had the legal right to leave the Union. It was only AFTER the war that the States were forced to rewrite their Constitutions to include barring leaving the Union.
Which states were those and could you provide a source, preferably online, for those original constitutions please? I do note that Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia agreed in 1777 to be part of a perpetual union and that Texas made no such claim.
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Whatever you say man lol. Keep believing your revisionist lies like an obedient sheep exactly how they want you too. There are numerous examples of what gave them the right to secede but if you had actually bothered to research it you would have found them but apparently you're OK with allowing others to do your thinking for you. And another simpleton goes on ignore...
shareLOL! You're the sheep hiding behind revisionist lies. Keep waving that Confederate flag. You lost 150 years ago. Time to get a life.
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Sorry, but the land that Fort Sumter stood upon was deeded by the state to the federal government in perpetuity. The structure itself was paid for with federal funds. The state of South Carolina had no legitimate claim to it and the trespassers were the insurrectionists.
shareAnd another one. Thx. It's good to get all of the idiots ignored at the same time.
share"US"? who is "us" . You people are morons. You werent yankee. you werent confederate. you werent alive. And theres a very good likelihood your family isnt from where you live now.
shareSeems to me like you are living in the wrong State...bubba.
shareSo by your argument this means that the 13 colonies were traitors against Britain less than 100 years earlier right?
Right?
You seen anybody flying Union Jacks lately and claiming England should have won?
shareActually, plenty. There are still many people in the UK who think Americans are traitors and if you go by the standard definition of "traitor" they are exactly right.
shareI have never met anyone in the UK (where I live and work) who considers Americans "traitors"! This is a very bizarre statement which makes me think you've never even visited the UK...
shareIn my five decades living in the UK, I've never heard that opinion expressed once.
So, er, jog on, eh?
They make this stuff up as they go along. They hate to admit that Confederates were traitors.
shareThat's because they weren't the ones that ignored the Constitution. The North was.
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Tyghock said: "Thank god they got crushed."
Uhh...The North lost a helluva lot more than the South did. But they still lost because they had no replacements in the wing. The Southern loss almost wiped out a generation.
North: 365,000+ total dead
South: 290,000+ total dead
Regardless of who lost what, the war killed more Americans than any other war in our history. An important but sad epitaph on what happens when people, rebel groups, countries resort to violence instead of arbitration.
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My favorite: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
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If you asked anybody about it you'd find it's a common view that technically speaking they were traitors and terrorists just because look at the definitions, but at the same time it's not like anybody today actually cares.
It was an unpopular position for the government at the time so it's not like that would soften in the 21st century: because we're not nutty. Well, most of us.
The entire discussion had changed even by the time this movie was set anyway. Popular opinion in England at this time would have been supportive of the union; the union victory was one of the drivers of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1867 due to fear of our own civil war.
In my 40 years I have never heard a British person describe an American as a traitor (and I have lived in England my whole life). That is a truly ridiculous statement.
shareYou're responding to a troll who calls himself "Panzer Meyer". The real Panzer Meyer was a Nazi SS and war criminal. I don't think Nazis are familiar with what British people think.
shareJust as a heads up. We really don't think of you like that at all. Traitors? LOL The UK sees the US like the rest of the world:
As a super power.
As a vastly divided country that has unfortunately allowed Trump to come to power.
Capitalist to the point of unparalleled corruption and inequality.
Obese
Uneducated.
Isolationist.
War hungry.
Frankly we're pretty glad to have gotten rid of you. We don't think of you as traitors.
By the way, I don't say this from any sort of position of authority. my country just voted for Brexit (although I did not). So we're no prize either.
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You absolutely get involved in world affairs, you're the world's policeman. Actually Europe is pretty crap when it comes to pitching in. Although I'd argue that western foreign policy since WWII has had a largely negative impact in virtually every possible way and you're about two days away from starting WWIII with Russia in Syria and Eastern Europe and FYI they're our neighbours.
I mean isolationist in terms of your stance on immigration and the migrant crisis stemming from Africa and the Middle East. As a nation, you're more than twice the size of Europe and yet your population is less than half and proportionally, they're knocking on our doors and you scream about migration as much as we do - rightly or wrongly.
But yeah, the guy's a troll. If it makes you feel any better, his posts don't reinforce the views for me. The comments you should hear the majority of Brits make. I've spent a lot of my childhood in the US and there's lots to like, lots to dislike too. Same as anywhere really.
Shh that doesn't fit into their narrative.
shareSo by your argument this means that the 13 colonies were traitors against Britain less than 100 years earlier right?
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"our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".
shareno, we fled to find what we wanted in a new land which is what those racist slave owners should have done if they didn't feel like things here, not divide the country.
"If you don't like America then you can just get out!"
First, the southern states didn't try to do anything to the USA except leave it.
Secondly, being able to leave the union was one of the conditions of joining it.
But, like always, any contract is just as good as the STRENGTH of the party ENFORCING the contract.
Until the Civil War, states absolutely had the legal right to leave the union. When the Union decided to stop them militarily, that contract essentially became void.
Even today, the state of Texas has maintained the explicit right to leave the union. But nobody is going to try to exercise that right because that CONTRACT is only as good as the ability of Texas to ENFORCE it over the most powerful military the world has ever seen. So, it's null.
They deserved to be crushed on the battle field,
Look kids; an intelligent person on imdb.
shareAs a native Texan born and raised, I can state categorically that the notion that Texas has an explicit right to leave the Union is an utter and complete myth. I have heard it perpetuated my entire life but there isn't a shred of proof to it.
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Then you need to read up on the Compact Theory. Put simply it states that any state that entered into the Union had the rights of every other state already in the Union and every state already in the Union were granted the rights newly entered states brought with them. So when states were allowed to enter the union with the reservation in their state Constitutions that they could leave the union whenever they wanted every state in the Union then also had that right.
shareQuite rare to have a balanced, intelligent statement here.
Congratulation.
> First, the southern states didn't try to do anything to the USA except leave it.
They attacked Fort Sumter.
> Secondly, being able to leave the union was one of the conditions of joining it.
That's incorrect. There is nothing in the Constitution that provides for secession, except a Constitutional amendment to that effect.
> Until the Civil War, states absolutely had the legal right to leave the union. When the Union decided to stop them militarily, that contract essentially became void.
Incorrect. (See above.)
> Even today, the state of Texas has maintained the explicit right to leave the union.
Incorrect. No state can have a law that "overrides" the Constitution. That's why it's null.
Now, scurry back to your sovereign, alt-right, dominionist cubbyhole and stop using the Internet.
There's so much wrong here I'm not even gonna bother. Enjoy living in ignorance.
shareGood response and you're exactly right. People who don't understand history don't understand that what we had was a union of individual sovereign states.
shareSecondly, being able to leave the union was one of the conditions of joining it.
Until the Civil War, states absolutely had the legal right to leave the union.
It's really a shame that the South was so heavily invested in slavery, because that issue overshadows any other aspect of the independence movement.
Even today, the state of Texas has maintained the explicit right to leave the union.
It is no coincidence that five of the 7 Presidents of the United States of America, and 9 of the first 12 Presidents of the United States of America were from either Virginia, Tennessee or North Carolina.
The Confederate States of America were champions of state's rights and fought against a powerful, top-down, iron fisted, tyrannical, centralized government.
They were being true and consistent to the Founding Father's and founding principles of the United States of America.
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Ah You've learned your Yankee history well.
The Southern States would have NOT "expanded" slavery into areas where it was not profitable as did the Northern State who began the practice....
Also, the Southern states were a formidable power in the congress and, if they had remained in the Union, 1. The Corwin Amendment, which LEGALIZED slavery under the contsituation would have been ratified, and 2. They could have passed legislation to allow "expansion" as they wished!
"CPT Underpants Fights Alongside of Grant At Gettysburg" is not a good textbook to base your knowlege of the "Civil War" upon!
There has NEVER been (inlcuding the Revolutionary War)a "Civil War" in the United States of America!
Exactly, a "Civil War" is two parties fighting for control over the same Government. The South just left the Union and wanted to continue the Republic that our Founding Fathers created. In fact, the South is still, technically, fully and legally seceded. The great Robert E. Lee had no authority over the CSA to return to the Union, that was on the shoulders of Jefferson Davis.
Also, the notion that the Confederates got beaten on the battlefield is silly, since the Confederate armies suffered more than 150,000 less casualties during the War Between the States. I also think the slavery issue is a moot point and the expansion of slavery was irrelevant as the South had no claim to the Western Territories after Secession. If the South wanted slaves so bad all they had to do was adopt the Corwin Amendment. They would have slaves forever if they did. And the paper trail led directly back to the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. Hell, even the Union clarified their position for war in 1861 as being the preservation of the Union, not to abolish slavery, which didn't become an issue until later in the war; whilst the South was whoopin' those Yankees left and right.
Interesting. As a Southerner myself, I was unaware the South had won the war.
Also, I'd just like to point out you used an erroneous nomenclature. It wasn't the "War Between the States", it was the "War of Northern Aggression", n'est-ce pas?
Oh dear, what do you think about the fact that one Mississippi college after another is refusing to fly the Mississippi state flag on their grounds? Must be so galling to you.
The "great Robert E. Lee"... you mean the golddigger who married an heiress and who was charged by that heiress' father with freeing his slaves after his death... and who dragged his ass for 5 years before executing his rich father-in-law's wishes? That one?
In fact, the South is still, technically, fully and legally seceded.
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LOL! I guess the board is going to be invaded again by neo-Confederates with the release of the DVD...
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And not one of you Yankees can provide any solid evidence to refute the fact that Lincoln offered slavery as a permanent fixture in our American constitution as a resolution to the war, and the South said NO. He would have done anything to keep the Southern economy in the Union. You Yankee morons just want to push irrelevant speeches like it is the end all be all. The South was on the verge of secession since 1828, long before slavery ever became an issue. Abraham Lincoln himself said the war was over taxes in his first address to Congress in 1861. In his own words "My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861)". It was that 40% tax that prompted South Carolina to secede and so began the Southern Independence fight. If Lincoln had let the South go there would never have been a war and since the South made the international slave trade illegal, it is likely slavery would have also been abolished soon after. I'm not a Confederate Apologist, I just don't like idiots trying hoodwink folks with Liberally biased "textbooks". I also don't care about the politics of a few men, I care about the heart of nearly a million Confederate soldiers who fought for the South, who likely never owned a slave.
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"and since the South made the international slave trade illegal, it is likely slavery would have also been abolished soon after."
Really? The south had the authority to make slavetrade illegal internationally? Or was it just that they wanted to monopolize the national trade with homegrown slaves? however you wish to spin this revisionist history of yours, you come out stinking of sleaze.
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It was that 40% tax that prompted South Carolina to secede
since the South made the international slave trade illegal
it is likely slavery would have also been abolished soon after.
Abraham Lincoln himself said the war was over taxes in his first address to Congress in 1861. In his own words "My policy sought only to collect the Revenue
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Don't lose heart. The racists will all die out eventually. You of course got it correct. The south got beat and hard! Sore losers! The great Lincoln saw to that!
Jumping in on one point, IMO the Confederacy got two things right with their constitution:
1. One term presidency of 6 years;
2. Presidential line item veto.
The line item veto would prevent a bill designed to assist the military from building a bridge to nowhere in Alaska.
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Argle bargle tyrants HHNNNGGHHH!!!!! evil gubmint barglewhargle!!!
States right`s is the standard dogwhistle for dickwad *beep* trying to hide their racist *beep* Just like "religious liberty" is for gaybashing *beep* trying to bang the bible in your face.
Argle bargle tyrants HHNNNGGHHH!!!!! evil gubmint barglewhargle!!!
States right`s is the standard dogwhistle for dickwad *beep* trying to hide their racist *beep* Just like "religious liberty" is for gaybashing *beep* trying to bang the bible in your face.
And little did they know the Southern Group we all hate were democrats like George Washington who enforced Slavery and help kill thousands of natives.
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