Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Battle flag uproar

I'm not recalling that the question was aimed at you at all.

But re: Geo. Washington et al., what proportion of the population of the Thirteen American Colonies were law-abiding and loyal British Subjects when that revolution broke out?

...and what happened to these people during and after that war?

I still want someone to answer where Lincoln got his constitutional authority to use force to preserve the Union?

Where does the Constitution say the POTUS may do that?



I was so hoping Birdwatcher would answer this for me.

What's the matter? The Constitution got you by the tongue?

I disagree Jeff.
History is being discuss.............pivotal American history..........along with our Constitution, our 16th President, and the motivations that led to the bloodiest domestic conflict in our young nation's history.

As Edmund Burke warns,"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

IMO this has been one of the better threads on the 'Fire in a while.

Naah, I was waiting for you to answer the question....

Do you wish that this nation had divided in 1861?

You avoided that question and countered with another to the effect of do I think the ends justified the means....

Well, I gotta say, having walked the fields and hillsides where the dead lay in windrows a century and a half ago, I wish that the South had not been collectively stupid enough to pour most all their economic eggs into that one evil and divisive basket. Heck, since EVERYONE was talking secession for decades prior to the actual war, I might also wish that the South woulda had the collective smarts to develop their own industrial centers.

But yeah, out of respect for all of those brave young men, in this case I gotta believe the end justified the means.

Ok, for a third time?

Do you wish the South had won?

Birdwatcher

i think he answered you BW... do you feel ike the flag shouldnt fly on statehouse grounds at a confederate monument?

If a free people decide that they no longer want to be governed by the governing entity, all it should take is an announcement.

The fact that it usually results in war is because the tyrannical government which presides over the people refuses to release them from their bonds.

To sum up, you're not free. You're owned. The government will kill you before it sets you free.

That's the lesson of the American Civil War.

You didn't answer Hillbillybears question you only posed another. You have no answer. You look like a liberal to me.

He is not a liberal. He is a great guy. He is an academic, but kinda feisty for an Irish guy.

The question pertained directly to the issue of the motivation of the Confederate Soldier. My hypothesis is that in many if not most cases they had no real choice BUT to sign up, the Confederate South was notably intolerant of dissent, between that and slavery among the more UNFREE places in America...

Egad! look how the vote over Secession was handled in Virginia... I gotta say a genuine disappointment (from Wiki)....

Virginia's ordinance of secession was ratified in a referendum held on May 23, 1861, by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451.

The referendum was a perfunctory endorsement of the Governor Letcher's decision to join the Confederacy and was not a free and fair election.

The Confederate Congress proclaimed Richmond to be new capital of the Confederacy and Confederate troops moved into northern Virginia before the referendum was held. The actual number of votes for or against secession are unknown since votes in many counties in northwestern and eastern Virginia (where most of Virginia's unionists lived) were "discarded or lost." Governor Letcher "estimated" the vote for these areas.

Many unionists feared retaliation if they voted against secession because it wasn't a secret ballot and Virginia's pro-confederate government would have a record of their votes. Unionists who did attempt to vote were threatened with violence and even death on some occasions.

Birdwatcher

*Sigh* Read my post again, I specifically answered Hillybillybear's question.

source?

You still, as I expected, dodged the question but I will humor you with an answer. There should have been no war. Nobody wins a civil war.

Had Lincoln restricted himself to his constitutional authority there would have been no war. But, much as Obama is currently doing, Lincoln did what was politically advantageous to him and his political backers/financiers and fellow political ideologues. Rule by fiat and dictate not rule by law and constitutional authority.


The Southern states willingly voted to join the Union and there is nothing within the Constitution that says they were not allowed to likewise vote willingly to leave the Union.

If they did so vote there was no provision to legally force the South to remain by armed invasion.


Since Lincoln chose to totally ignore the Constitution, the Southern states should have most definitely left the Union.


As to the development of an industrial base, the advancing industrial revolution would have forced the South to convert from manual labor to industrial production in order to survive.

Most likely by 1870-1875 economic realities would have addressed the slavery question. Unfortunately, Lincoln and his fellow radicals preferred to resort to force of arms.

Then the thirst for revenge during during the Reconstruction period just exacerbated the effects of a long bloody war and sowed the seeds that allowed the rise of Jim Crow.

I think it is ludicrous to suggest that people fly that grand old flag out of "racism". I think it is also ludicrous to suggest that flying that flag necessarily implies the owner wishes the South had actually won. That would be about like saying that everyone who wears a kilt and plays the pipes wishes the Celts still lived under the vicious and decidedly UNfree clan system.

OTOH I got a Black co-worker, a retired Military Officer, who says that the people who originally flew that flag enslaved his own ancestors and, more importantly, the ancestors of his children and grandchildren.

Hey, build a Confederate memorial on yer own property and fly what you want.

But on public property? A public referendum and vote is the only lawful way to settle it.

You and I would vote to keep the Stars and Bars in place, my friend would probably vote differently.

Birdwatcher

Should a free people have the right to peacefully separate from a government?

Are they free if they don't have that right?

I'm down with that. Time for a drink.

Wikipedia says whatever those who contribute to it says.

It wouldn't hold up in a court of law.

Indeed they should.

But, I'm still glad that the North won, and I would have fought on the Union side. Abolition alone would be a worthy cause worth dying for.

"But Lincoln weren't an Abolitionist." folks will doubtless chime in... hey, tell that to the South in 1860.... and he sure as heck became one as soon as he was realistically able.

Birdwatcher

Class is over.