Gil, if you consider what the Union did for those supposed freed slaves as freedom, then you need therapy. Thousands of Africans died from dysentery, malaria and all kinds of diseases following their so called liberators. Your Yankee friends had control over all aspects of public life, and did nothing to improve the condition of the African. They only made things worse with their vagrancy laws, and any and everything they could do to use the Black man against the Southern White man, to include laying the economic institution of slavery on him, when they knew full well that they were up to their necks in complicity, as was the whole of the so called civilized world.. Your Yankee friends have been in control of the national treasure, the jurisprudence system, the education system, and what has that done to improve your lot. You’ve had the turbulent civil rights periods, most of your young men are imprisoned, social vertical mobility is on a flat scale, Even King said that the people in Illinois could teach the White man in the South how to hate. Don’t even talk about Constitutions when it was the federal Constitution that legalized slavery, and it is still legal on the books of several Northern states today. Up until the very days of the War against Northern Aggression, States like the Commonwealth of Virginia were working on plans to emancipate the African in dignity so that he might care for himself and his family. If you want to talk about constitutions and evils of slavery, then you had better look towards your Yankee friends and their purging of the North of the African, and their total disdain for his being to this very day.You give a whole lot of accuses for your Yankee friends, and the bigot Lincoln, who gave the authority to Sherman and grant to burn, loot, rob, rape and murder defenseless old men, women , and children . Their actions were criminal, and should never be forgotten as their historians along with your help are trying to dismiss.You want to get rid of a flag because of slavery, then you better look at France, Great Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Spain, Brazil, and the list goes on. And when you get through looking; if you just happen to be Southern, then you better get down on your knees and thank God.
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 6:16 PM, Gil Viator < nonameentered@gmail.com> wrote:
I was given my information by reading the Confederate States Constitution. It legalized and protected slavery.
In regards of President Lincoln and the Corwin Amendment:
Slavery was entirely a function of state, not national law. Intrinsic to the compromises reached in the formation of the Constitution, the federal government, including the president, was powerless to interfere with slavery as it existed in any state. Slavery in South Carolina for example, could be abolished only by the people of South Carolina. In President Lincoln’s first inaugural address delivered more then a month before the South fired upon Fort Sumter, President Lincoln stated clearly “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Neither President Lincoln, nor anyone else in the federal government had any authority to interfere with slavery as it existed within the states. This is why President Lincoln indicated that he would not oppose the Corwin Amendment. This was a last-ditch effort purposed by Congress during the final days of the Buchanan administration, attempting to mollify Southerners by expressly prohibiting Congress from interfering “with the domestic institutions [of any state], icluding that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state”.
President Lincoln understood that such a amendment would merely reiterate the principle of federalism already secured by the Constitution: with or without the Corwin Amendment, the national government had no justification over slavery in South Carolina or any other state.
In regards of President Lincoln and colonization - He was concerned that after slavery ended that when American white people saw African-Americans, they would immediately associate them with slavery, and therefore assign to them an inferior social rank; When American black people saw American white people, they would immediately associate them with the masters who oppressed them. Thus, President Lincoln feared that widespread manumission might lead to a terrible race war in the United States of America.
Fearing that black and white people would never be able to live together freely and peacefully, President Lincoln looked to some kind of plan for colonization to solve the American race problem that slavery had created. If slavery could be eliminated from the United States of America, then colonization would be necessary for two reasons:
1. It would protect White-Americans against possible retaliation from former slaves seeking revenge.
2. Colonization would offer security for Black-Americans, who as free people might not be protected in the U.S.A. to the extent they were when they were consider to be valuable property as slaves.
The only colonization plan President Lincoln actually sponsored was an 1863 expedition to the Caribbean in which black people participated voluntarily and which the U.S. Congress funded fully. When after only a few months it turned into a debacle, President Lincoln sent a ship to bring the colonists back to the United States. And after seeing over 200,000 African-American men volunteer and fight for the United States Military during the American Civil War, President Lincoln fully dropped his support for plans to colonize freed slaves. Never again did he speak seriously about colonization for black people, pressing instead for white and black people to learn to live together in the United States as free Americans. “Lincoln gave it [his latest colonization scheme] up and in February, 1864, ordered a ship to return the surviving colonists [from Ile A' Vache, Haiti] to the United States. Congress gave the coup de grace to colonization in July, 1864, by repealing all provisions of the legislation of 1862 appropriating funds for colonization purposes.” [James M. McPherson, "Abolitionist and Negro Opposition to Colonization During the Civil War,"Phylon, Vol XXXVI, No. 4, Winter, 1965, p. 398] Lincoln signed this measure.
David H. Donald wrote of Lincoln, “the failure of his colonization schemes had taught him that African-Americans were, and would remain, a permanent part of the American social fabric. He believed that the more intelligent blacks, especially those who served in the army, were entitled to the suffrage. Hence he encouraged the education of the freedmen, and he supported the Freedmen’s Bureau to protect them from exploitation by their former masters.” [David H. Donald, Lincoln, p. 583]
As Gabor Boritt wrote, “Colonization was dead and Lincoln did not mourn. He did not march backwards.” [Gabor Boritt, "Did He Dream of a Lily-White America? The Voyage to Linconia," in Gabor Boritt, ed., The Lincoln Enigma, p. 17]
On 1 July 1864, John Hay recorded in his diary that Lincoln had “sloughed off” all these notions of colonization: “I am glad the President has sloughed off that idea of colonization. I have always thought it a hideous & barbarous humbug.” [John Hay in his diary, in Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, p. 203, quoted in Paul David Nelson, "From Intolerance to Moderation: The Evolution of Abraham Lincoln's Racial Views," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol LXXII, No. 1, January, 1974, p. 3]“ One more question for you please Sir: How come black Confederates never *legally* fought in any battles?
What led the Confederacy to allowing African-American men to serve in the C.S. Army came about after Confederate soldiers saw how well black troops were fighting for the Union. So the Confederate government thought, “Why couldn’t some of the black men we still have as slaves not do it for us?”
They knew that some black people were willing to go through great risks all to earn their freedom, and would do almost anything to get it, even fighting for the same government that desired to keep other black people slaves. But by the time the Confederacy came to this conclusion, the rebel army was already beat.
No more then a few dozen black men were ever enlisted under the banner of the Confederacy. Sixty black men from Richmond Virgina’s, Jackson hospital came under fire at Petersburg, Virgina on March 11, 1865 as members of the Jackson Battalion, composed of three companies of white convalescents and two companies of black hospital workers. That was two days before the Confederate Congress legally authorized black enlistments.
On very rare occasions throughout the war, black men, such as those at Jackson Hospital, had been pressed into combat service, often with guns at their backs and their loved ones held hostage in slavery.
I am also aware that there are plenty of cases of brain-washed slaves fighting for the rebs, but no black units ever saw combat as congressionally authorized Confederate soldiers and no regiments of Confederate States Colored troops were ever formed.
Over two-hundred thousand black men had joined the Union by March of 1865. Hundreds of thousands of black people were already free. Those still in slavery knew the rebels were whipped, and that they’d be free soon. The black people needed no favors from a near-by dead Confederacy to secure that freedom. So if you were around during that era, you wouldn’t be wearing that gray uniform you own. You’d be working in the big house or out in the fields
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