Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire John Wilkes Booth

Exactly

[quote][/Your statement above is a crystal clear expression of the legal and moral positivism that undergirds everything you wish for just as it undergirds the entirety of the radical Democrat party of today---the same radical democrat party that once claimed human beings are actually chairs and dogs and oxen, just as they now claim a man is a woman and vise versa.
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You seem to be missing a lot. The Democrat party of old was nothing like the one of today. Did you not think it strange that the North/ Northeast and far West are now Democrat strongholds, while the old South is mostly solid Republican. In my view Lyndon Johnson presidency was when it turned. miles

I've often said if the civil war had been fought over any other federal power grab than slavery, absolutely no one would have supported the north.

Wow! You really bastardized that thought.
The declaration says the govt only gets "just power" if the governed consent.

Do read the US Constitution of the day and tell me then whose ass is the blackest.

He would have done the same thing that he had done his whole military career.

Nothing...

Some said he’d sue for piece

Here is the exact language: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

The Declaration appeals to a higher law---both "the laws of nature and of nature's God"---which are in agreement as to what constitutes morality. Notice that the Declaration does not say "deriving their powers from the consent of the governed". Rather it limits the power of government that can be so derived to "just powers" only. If only the "just powers" of government can be derived from the consent of the governed, it follows that consent cannot justify the government in doing anything unjust, which is to say anything intrinsically wrong or immoral. This is why both Jefferson and Lincoln taught that while the will of the majority is to govern, the will of the majority that is permitted to govern is only the "rightful" will of the majority. For example, the majority are not permitted to enact policies that deny the minority their equal rights.... This is also why the Preamble to the Consitution declares that the Constitution's purpose is to secure "the blessings of liberty...for ourselves and our posterity". A "blessing" is that which God wants you to have. It is something He thinks is good for you. The "liberty" which the Constitution seeks to preserve for ourselves and our posterity is therefore not "license". It is a liberty that is consistent with revealed religion (Judeo-Christian monotheism) and the laws of nature. Indeed, in the Declaration, the "laws of nature and of nature's God" are in agreement.

Once again, from whence comes your morality?

From the same place as the Declaration and the Constitution---Biblical morality (Judeo-Christian monotheism, i.e., the law of nature's God) and the laws of nature. What about yours?

Just as the television show "M.A.S.H." lasted longer than the Korean conflict, this thread has the chance of lasting longer than the war with which it deals. Just pointing it out; carry on.

BTW, the reason Lincoln was adamantly opposed to the Abolitionists was because abolition meant violating the right of southern states to hold slaves, which was a right guaranteed by the Constitution. The abolitionists hated Lincoln almost as much as the South! Once again, the will of the majority must be "rightful" and the majority cannot, with impunity, violate a right protected by the Constitution, including the right of Southerners to own slaves. This is why Lincoln was adamant that the States had the right to ensure that their "domestic institutions" (a euphemism for slavery) were protected. The Republican Party platform of 1860 explicitly guaranteed that protection because the Constitution guaranteed it.

It doesn't matter how many words you spill over it, you got the whole context wrong.

Sorry. Lincoln was amoral. He had zero regard for anyone's rights. All he wanted was revenue to boost his Northern industrialist/banker backers. He was the highest paid attorney in the world, and what would be considered a lobbyist today. He believed in nothing but swindling by eloquent oratory. No one has ever been better. He had no qualms against slavery, and said so many times. He had to understand the wealth of cotton required a lot of labor, performed by slaves at that time. He pretended to free them as a desperate face saving act that was mocked relentlessly at the time for the cynical ploy it plainly was. The war was a total failure for Abe's plans. It was economic disaster for the North and northerners, never on board, were fed up with it. The emancipation proclamation infuriated them. His murder softened their hearts a little and hostility toward the South began to build into the excesses of Reconstruction. It was almost impossible to produce cotton after the war and America lost that lucrative trade to Egypt and elsewhere. Share cropping came about as a work around but was very ineffective. In too many cases the tenants weren't capable or motivated enough to do their share. Africans and women were exempted from the "equal" consideration. Moreover, only male land owners over age 21 were allowed to vote. Imagine? School learnin' had to be dumbed way down to make slavery the issue and Lincoln the compassionate martyr who died saving his country.

Yeah I think the emancipation proclamation was a ploy b/c Lincoln won’t lookin to hot at the time Antietam was a draw not a yanky victory as some claim

I never thought it go 30 pages. I figured 10 or 12. Many of us are tried and true history buffs
But you have to take into account there’s 15 pages devoted to whizzing contest, mainly by people who never really studied the politics that brought on the war, and fed people into the meat grinder that drove it.
As I said you can’t deny that slavery drove 7 states to secede, but it’s also totally false to say that slavery caused the war. With VA, TN, NC, and AR refusing to join the Confederacy until after Lincoln called for war, I believe a compromise could have averted it.
Reon

The seven states had a peace delegation in Washington when the shooting started. Lincoln refused to meet with them.

I agree Reon

It's easy for us today to speculate about what might have or could have happened "IF." My personal feelings are that the South was justified in seceding, and that Lincoln was overstepping his bounds in doing what he did. To get back to the original question about Booth, I've always thought that the assisination came too far after the fact. If Booth felt compelled to kill Lincoln, then he should have done so about four years earlier. I believe that it only hurt the South for Lincoln to die, as it gave cause to punish it even more so. Also, as I have said many times, the only good thing about Lincoln was that he knew that the African slaves did not need to be here, and wanted to send them back. As to whether he would have followed through with that, we'll never know.

One of Jubal Earlys boys came very close in 1864