Joined: 10-21-2000 Posts: 55,444
|
RayR wrote:Yikes! I must have triggered somebody. Ya, the Cooper Union speech and Stephens' Cornerstone Address, I've read them before. So how about you telling me how Lincolns Cooper Union speech "almost resonates today but for different reasons" and the contrast with Stephens' Cornerstone Address. I can't read minds so when I don't know where you're going with this, so I don't go there. You know that Lincoln, God he was boring with that speech, I know he was a Whig corporate lawyer and all, and he must have been able to put a jury to sleep or in a comatose state with all that meandering prose and supposed history. The thirty-nine, the thirty-nine, the bloody thirty-nine! He sounds just like one of Alexander Hamilton's fanciful interpretations of the Constitution, that of "implied powers", instead of the Constitution specifying only specific enumerated powers allowed to the federal government as the document does, he turns things upside down and claims if the Constitution doesn't specifically forbade the federal government from doing something then that means they can do it. Amazing! I wish he could have just skipped all that fumbling BS and just got to the point that he never did, what was the REAL REASON that he and other member of the Republican Party didn't want slavery extended into the Western territories? Inquiring minds want to know. PS: ALL wars create debt and corpses too...lots of it! You didn't "trigger" anyone. All you did to me was show that you lack the ability to reason and read. You employ a snippet mentality that is pervasive amongst most of society today. That is where your wannabee "Libertarian" structure based on a house of rolling papers shows. There are several Libertarians here on this site and you are not even close to what they post. They actually make sense, make clear points and read opposing viewpoints of further education. The 39 was a driving point that obviously stuck out to you but you don't have the ability to move past the number. You didn't read it at all. Here. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm And here is Stephens speech. https://www.owleyes.org/text/the-cornerstone-speech/read/text-of-stephenss-speech#root-10 Lincoln clearly dictated with utter clarity what the South and the Confederacy meant to survival of the USA. Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.
But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty;" but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.Stephens clearly showed that the Confederacy myth of "states rights" was a veiled disguise only to keep slavery. But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."One was a campaign speech, the other was from a conspirator of a rebellion. As for your war comment. You know you're wrong. There have been bloodless wars. As for your debt remark...only for the losers. Only for the losers.
|