Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Surrender at Appomattox.

Outstanding. Hats off to Birdwatcher and Antlers for having the moral clarity to see this issue for what it truly is. I'll post some stuff later this evening (if'n I get time) that shows just how uncompromising the South was on their requirement that the entire country accept their position that slavery was a positive moral good and how completely contrary and subversive was their new doctrine to that of the Founders.

Both sides were contending for what they believed to be the correct interpretation of the Constitution, since the Constitution of 1787 clearly made concessions to slavery. What the South would not accept however was that the compromises with slavery made in the original Constitution were prudential compromises made with the Constitution's genuine principles. By prudential, it is meant that those concessions were made in the service of a greater good---the formation of a Union of sufficient strength to place slavery in the course of ultimate extinction. The genuine principle was "liberty for all" not merely liberty for some and slavery for others.

It is astonishing beyond meausre that people who ostensibly favor limited government (and hence freedom) venerate a poliical movement and philosophy that was intended to enslave others as if they were cattle and that actually served as the philsophic progenitor of Nazi and Stalinist sponsored genocide. Let me repeat that, (in case anyone misses my point): Chattel slavery and Nazi and Stalinist sponsored genocide stand on exactly the same philosophic ground in their complete and utter denial of any moral authority to "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Jordan