Were Confederate soldiers terrorists?

Strom was a man invested in paving his path to hell through a lifetime of political travesties. He and Byrd are now doing hard time together, despite ending their pathetic lives in different parties.

I also want to give a big shout-out to the morons of SC and WV for continuing to re-elect them. Fuck you all, here's hoping your states never see another happy day.
 
Granule said:
Of course they were. And today's Democrats are direct political descendents of these shepherds of enlightenment. ;)
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Get educated, you twit! The ideology of slavery switched parties LONG time ago (look up Nixon's "Southern Strategy"). What few Democrats that are left that still adhere to that old bilge have LONG been identified as "Dixie-crats"....and they are the SILENT MINORITY in the Dem party. Deal with it.
 
Threedee said:
I wish Lee had gone underground. We could have killed another 100,000 traitors at least. He was no gentleman, he was a traitor to the greatest republic on Earth, derelict in his duty, and an oath-breaker.
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No he was one of this country's finest gentleman. He understood 'ours is not the reason why, but to carry out orders, suffer and die'.

Don't let reality distort your view of history though. I greatly appreciate the amusement.
 
Lee is like the 19th Century Saladin. Even staunch Pro-Americans of the Civil War always praise him to me. I'm like, an oathbreaking traitor is still a scumbag, however you dress it up.
 
Taichiliberal said:
Get educated, you twit! The ideology of slavery switched parties LONG time ago (look up Nixon's "Southern Strategy"). What few Democrats that are left that still adhere to that old bilge have LONG been identified as "Dixie-crats"....and they are the SILENT MINORITY in the Dem party. Deal with it.
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Are you trying to tell me that your objective is to teach African Americans how to be self reliant? Show me how you assholes aren't trying to do the same thing as your predecessors, but in a more subtle way (poverty as opposed to literal chains).
 
The ideology of slavery switched parties LONG time ago (look up Nixon's "Southern Strategy").
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Wow, I never knew Nixon advocated slavery! I also never knew that the strategy to garner Southern votes by the Republican party, who seldom got Southern votes, was anything more than political strategy to get more Southern votes. Were Southerners in 1968 demanding we re-institute slavery? Seems to me, if that were the case, the candidate who would have been most likely to promote the idea, would have been George C. Wallace, the Democrat-turned-Dixiecrat, who ran as an independent against Nixon and Humphrey. No???
 
Where the Confederate soldiers terrorists?

First of all, any "soldier" serving a valid nation with a uniform and flag, can not be a terrorist. They may terrorize people, and they may even do the same things as terrorists do, but by definition, they are NOT terrorists. The term "terrorist" applies to persons who are not affiliated with a national military, who are attempting to affect political change through terrorist acts. Clearly, Confederate soldiers belonged to the militia of the CSA, a nation which had declared independence from the United States. Clearly, the CSA was not seeking political change, they were seeking independence and sovereignty.

Were the Confederates traitors?

No. This is established as natural law by our founding document, the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This paragraph establishes, as a matter of natural law, that people have the right to declare independence over a government that no longer represents the people. Not only does it say they have the "right" to do this, it says they are "required" to declare the causes. This is precisely what the CSA did, and it doesn't violate the law, it follows the natural law as established in the Declaration of Independence.

So they weren't traitors and they weren't terrorists, they were people who formed a new nation and declared their independence from the United States. The soldiers were simply men who happened to live within the borders of the new nation, they had little to do with the decision and really didn't have much choice in the matter. Regardless of how any of them felt about slavery, they almost universally shared the objective of protecting their homes and land.

SLAVERY: It is important to note, the issue of abolishing slavery was not raised until well after the war started. Before the war, Lincoln had made several proposals regarding slavery, including a plan which wouldn't have outlawed slavery until 1911. Another brilliant idea of Lincoln, was to repatriate former slaves to other parts of the world, and he even had Congress authorize the purchase of lands in Central America, where freed slaves were actually sent for a while. Lincoln stated, in his debates with Douglass, that he didn't believe the negro would ever 'hold station' with whites in society. Lincoln thought it was preposterous to consider a black person equal to a white person. His Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Southern states, which were (at the time) out of his jurisdiction, because they had declared independence from the US. It wasn't until the 13th and 14th Amendments were ratified, that slavery was abolished in America.

Nowadays, we like to look back on the Civil War and say it was about slavery, but that is intellectually dishonest. The issue of whether or not we should enslave other humans, had been under debate for decades. Years before the war, the US had outlawed slave markets, there were no more slave ships, that had stopped completely. With the advent of the cotton gin and other technology, it was clear to see, the days of manual field labor were coming to an end. There was no resentment or animosity toward this from the cotton growing plantation owners, they welcomed new technology, and looked forward to the day they wouldn't have to maintain slaves. The real ISSUE was a matter of principle, a matter of law, and a matter of government. It was the US Courts (not the CSA) who had determined slaves to be "property" of those who owned them. Southerners didn't make this outrageous claim, it wasn't a matter of opinion, or subject to interpretation, it was what the court had decided and ruled to be the law of the land. According to US Courts, slaves were legitimate property. Now, that being said, the Constitution (4th Amendment) prohibits illegal seizure of your property. So the idea, in 1860, that the US government could come take property from individuals without cause, was the primary issue which compelled the separation. It would be no different than today, if the government up and decided they could come take your home.
 
Our Constitution disagrees with our Declaration when it comes to treason, Dixie. I do agree that the Confederate troops wore uniforms and operated under strict military law, and hence were not terrorists whenever they engaged American troops.

What do the secession documents say about the reasons for secession?
 
Threedee said:
Our Constitution disagrees with our Declaration when it comes to treason, Dixie. I do agree that the Confederate troops wore uniforms and operated under strict military law, and hence were not terrorists whenever they engaged American troops.

What do the secession documents say about the reasons for secession?
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How can the document which is the foundation and basis for our existence as a nation, be in contradiction with our Constitution? How did we ratify a Constitution which totally invalidates the argument made for our independence? The Constitution does speak of treason, but treason is not what the Confederacy committed. They declared independence, they didn't seek to overthrow or destroy the US government.

The secession documents of the time, mention slavery quite often, but it's not because slavery was the issue. It was because the United States courts had determined that slaves were property. Well, if they are property, the government doesn't have the right to free them or do anything else with them, they don't belong to the government. Now, I really do wish, with all my heart and soul, that the US government had NEVER determined slaves were property, but they did, and to deny this or ignore it, is just plain dishonest. So we have to examine the events and documents of the time, in the context of what was then the law of the land, and not by some modern standard which we understand today. Yes, it is abhorrent that our courts would rule slaves to be property, but that's what they did! It wasn't the slave owner who did this, it was the United States of America, the Supreme Court, the US Congress.

You and others like to pretend that we lived in a society that had outlawed slavery, and the southerners were just being rebellious and refusing to give it up, so we had to go to war. That's simply not factual. Owning slaves was perfectly legal and had been upheld by the courts and laws for decades. Again, this was not something done by the CSA, the CSA didn't even exist yet. Southerners owned most of the slaves because that is where cotton grows. If cotton could grow in cold weather, there would have been as many slaves in the Northern sates as the Southern, maybe even MORE!
 
Threedee said:
Right, Dixie. You know the motives and reasons better than the authors of the secession documents and the assemblies which ratified them.
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No, I know the motives better than you. Again, the issue and motives were not about the practice of slavery itself. Lincoln made the war about that, after the CSA very nearly kicked his ass. You see, this whole Civil War thing, wasn't a popular idea. You think Bush was unpopular because of Iraq? He didn't hold anything to Lincoln and the Civil War. New York, fucking threatened to secede! Lincoln said, if I can keep this nation together by keeping slavery or ending slavery, it doesn't matter. Lincoln had to turn the tide of public opinion on the war, so he issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not free any slaves held in the North, and he made the issue of the war, about the practice of slavery. From the Southern perspective, the war was always about Constitutional property rights, and slaves were property according to the US Courts. In other words, they had a legitimate and compelling argument, which is why their declaring independence wasn't treason.

Okay, imagine if today, a group of environmentalist politicians decided that we need to outlaw internal combustion engines to save the planet. They plan to confiscate everyone's cars and trucks, but a few states rebel and say, fuck you... they are our property and you can't just come take them. They secede and a war starts, a bloody and long war, one that is very unpopular. The environmentalists are losing the war, so they decide to issue a proclamation which effectively makes the war seem to be about global warming. Is the war about global warming or property rights? Even if the secession documents mention internal combustion engines and the environment, is the war fundamentally about global warming or is it about property rights?

Now, we can look back on this and say, that's horrible, how could they have stood on the principle that slaves were property? Well, it's because the US Courts had made this determination, not the CSA. Was it "right?" NO! But it WAS the LAW! We can't pretend it was not the law, and Southerners were doing something illegal and not allowed, because that is the case today.
 
Dixie said:
No, I know the motives better than you. Again, the issue and motives were not about the practice of slavery itself. Lincoln made the war about that, after the CSA very nearly kicked his ass. You see, this whole Civil War thing, wasn't a popular idea. You think Bush was unpopular because of Iraq? He didn't hold anything to Lincoln and the Civil War. New York, fucking threatened to secede! Lincoln said, if I can keep this nation together by keeping slavery or ending slavery, it doesn't matter. Lincoln had to turn the tide of public opinion on the war, so he issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not free any slaves held in the North, and he made the issue of the war, about the practice of slavery. From the Southern perspective, the war was always about Constitutional property rights, and slaves were property according to the US Courts. In other words, they had a legitimate and compelling argument, which is why their declaring independence wasn't treason.

Okay, imagine if today, a group of environmentalist politicians decided that we need to outlaw internal combustion engines to save the planet. They plan to confiscate everyone's cars and trucks, but a few states rebel and say, fuck you... they are our property and you can't just come take them. They secede and a war starts, a bloody and long war, one that is very unpopular. The environmentalists are losing the war, so they decide to issue a proclamation which effectively makes the war seem to be about global warming. Is the war about global warming or property rights? Even if the secession documents mention internal combustion engines and the environment, is the war fundamentally about global warming or is it about property rights?

Now, we can look back on this and say, that's horrible, how could they have stood on the principle that slaves were property? Well, it's because the US Courts had made this determination, not the CSA. Was it "right?" NO! But it WAS the LAW! We can't pretend it was not the law, and Southerners were doing something illegal and not allowed, because that is the case today.
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What piece of legislation were these days afraid of? What specific bill was on the House floor in Dec. 1860 when the Southern states began seceeding?
 
Threedee said:
What piece of legislation were these days afraid of? What specific bill was on the House floor in Dec. 1860 when the Southern states began seceeding?
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You seem to be asking incoherent or irrelevant questions. I've already explained the slavery issue, and why it was an issue. Had Justice Taney ruled differently in 1857, when the SCOTUS heard the landmark Dred Scott vs. Sandford case, there might have never been a Civil War. But the ruling declared slaves to be property, and deemed the court had no jurisdiction. The SCOTUS didn't even recognize Scott's right to bring the case before the court, even though freed blacks had Constitutional rights in free states, including the right to vote and hold public office. It is arguably the worst decision any SCOTUS has ever made, but it's important to remember they did make it.

Even before Dred Scott, there were moments where the legislators and leaders could have stood up for abolition and recognized slaves as people who had constitutional rights, but that didn't happen. Repeatedly, the legislature and courts upheld the institution of slavery and found in favor of the slave owners. We can't conveniently excuse all of this history, and make the South our scapegoat. The South had nothing to do with these rulings or the previous 85 year history of upholding the institution of slavery. They merely stood on the principles found by the SCOTUS, which ended up being nullified by the 13th and 14th Amendments.
 
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