Good stuff
Declaration of Session, by Georgia, from the Union
Materialist history is the most madly incredible of all histories, or even of all romances. Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in the soul; that is something akin to religion. It is what men feel about life and about death. A man near to death is dealing directly with an absolute; it is nonsense to say he is concerned only with relative and remote complications that death in any case will end. If he is sustained by certain loyalties, they must be loyalties as simple as death. They are generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The first is the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguely known as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thing that threatens it. The first is far more philosophical than it sounds though we need not discuss it here. A man does not want his national home destroyed or even changed, because he can not even remember all the good things that go with it; just as he does not want his house burnt down because he can hardly count all the things he would miss. Therefore he fights for what sounds like a hazy abstraction, but is really a house.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility. The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.
Ah, the War of Northern Aggression. That oft repeated phrase by individuals of modern America, in which contains it a sea of knowledge and ignorance alike.
“A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility. The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him.”
There are a lot of reasons Georgia put down as a declaration against the North.
Some of it makes sense, for the times, but most of it is jumbled up logic predictable to those who lived in a narrower world. One less enamored of change or adaptation.
This particular reason, is of interest in the sense that the Southern States, having had all sorts of complaints against the Congress for these United States, now complain that the federal government has not the authority to compel Northern States to obey.
They didn’t win much of anything at the end.
If the South wanted to keep their property and not have it stolen by the North, they might want to think about why they should be given such protections when they provide none to their workers in the fields. The idea of paying their workers even near a fair wage never came up. The idea that maybe if they gave the blacks a reason to stay in the South, they wouldn’t be running into the North where all those anti-slavery activists are at, never came up. If the South wanted the feds to stay out of their business in keeping their “property”, they should have fixed their own problems and fast.
But it didn’t happen.
Back to the point, secession is extra-legal. A Constitutional Amendment is legal and so is the Constitution. Violations of the Constitution in whatever form, by the North, is a legitimate avenue of contest. Knowing that the anti-slavery faction won a political victory and then quitting the Union based upon this, is just foolishness. Lincoln wasn’t even a rabid anti-slave individual in the first place. They could have worked with him, if they tried. They didn’t try. The whole reason for elections is that people you don’t like will win. Yet we keep with the system because ultimately we gain more from peaceful power transitions than whatever regime we can force upon the White House
Part of why violence is not legitimate in removing Obama is precisely because it is extra-legal. Something other than legal. So is removing a state from the jurisdiction of the federal government. Both would naturally involve war and violence, even in these “enlightened” times. People back then knew just as well what would come. They just didn’t know the Northerners had the stomach for it. Their mistake to make. They can call it what they wish. Won’t change the end.
“In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.”
That’s why you called it “confederate”. The federal government naturally lacks the power to compel Northern states to do whatever it and the Constitution says is valid. You can reinforce the Constitution by working in the confines of the Constitution or you can attempt to break out using warfare and mass destruction against those Northern authorities that are so disliked. After all, if property is so important, go get those responsible. The tree of liberty requires blood, not people walking away when they dislike the rules of the “game”. If they want liberty, they must pay the price. All other ways are foolish.
“It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren”.
Ask Sherman that much?
I wonder which one the South will pick now, under Obama. Your duty, if you call yourself a Southerner, is to protect those individuals that are allied with the South. Failure to do so, cannot be wiped away by bringing up any wars of Northern Aggression. Period.
There are declarations from the other Southern States as well at the link.
Explore posts in the same categories: History, War
Sake White 
July 24, 2010 at 12:15 am
Yes Arizona has no reason to complainabout Obama’s immigration policies. I mean there is the law, and there is law.
The South was just evil. That’s why it imposed tarriffs on the South that Lincoln depended on that placed 90% of the burden exclusively on the South.
Would you be annoyed if 90% of all revenues were imposed on one small segment of society? But don’t we do that to the top 5% of wage earners today?
Some things never change and some people never learn.
By the way I see nothing in your analysis that refutes anything Georgia declared.
July 24, 2010 at 4:18 pm
“By the way I see nothing in your analysis that refutes anything Georgia declared.”
That’s cause I’m in Georgia and everything they said was the truth as far as I have researched. That doesn’t mean war was the answer.
Because if war was the answer, letting Sherman march through Georgia and burn Atlanta, probably was an indication that they chose wrong. The South, having discarded Democrat race, identity, and victim politics, is much wiser now. Hopefully, they won’t get snookered by half baked ideas on race or politics, again.