Search Results for: Slavery in America

Slavery in America

Over one-hundred and fifty years after the Thirteenth Amendment[1] abolished involuntary slavery and servitude in America; slavery is still a very sensitive subject, especially for “African” Americans. Much of this apprehension has its origins in an historical view that Africans and their descendants are somehow less civilized, less intelligent or preposterously less “evolved” from assumed animal ancestors than their white counterparts. Yet, instead of looks of derision or treatment as second class citizens, all Americans owe the men and women who were enslaved in America and their descendants  a debt of gratitude equal to the gratitude bestowed upon patriots who fought to secede from England in America’s war for independence.

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The American Civil War, Just or Unjust?

Most modern Americans, who think about the nature of the American Civil War, consider the war to have been justly initiated against the South, because, as they most likely believe, it was a war perpetrated to end slavery. Yet even if Lincoln perpetrated the war to end slavery, the Civil War was neither civil nor just.

The Just War Doctrine, which western society has acknowledged for many centuries and to which the United States implicitly subscribed at its inception, is the only non-anachronistic standard by which modern American society can judge a western nineteenth century war to determine if it was justly commenced. One of the criterion of the Just War Doctrine is that a war can only be just, for the aggressor nation, if every other means to achieve a peaceful resolution has been earnestly attempted. Both Lincoln’s own words and his actions prove that he did not resort to war as a last resort. Another criterion of the Just War Doctrine is that an aggressor nation must have a just cause for war. While the abolition of slavery, under certain circumstances, could have been a just cause for war, Lincoln’s own words refute that he initiated the war for that purpose. The historical record shows that Lincoln, and the Northern States, did not use war as a last resort and that he did not have a just cause to go to war against the seceded Southern States, which makes the American Civil War both morally and legally unjust.

What-Caused-the-Civil-War

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Freedom in America: Our Cultural Heritage

From its earliest history, the United States has been identified as the land of freedom. In 1814, Francis Scott Key touted America as the land of the free and the home of the brave in his poem that later became America’s national anthem, but explaining American freedom has been problematic throughout our nation’s history. Freedom and liberty, although not synonymous, are very closely linked and many Americans differ in defining these terms as they apply to America’s brand of freedom and the liberties they think its citizens should possess.  Oddly, this battle has been waged long before America obtained its independence.

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A War to End Slavery

Roughly 150 years later, the war fought on American soil by Americans against Americans, which, including civilian deaths, cost over 700,000 American lives is still a very sensitive subject.

Much changed in American society as a result of the war. America went from being a nation of individual States with a limited government to an amalgamation of States with a near absolute government; from a diverse nation with a variety of local laws to a homogeneous nation with uniform local laws dictated by a central government. From a government that regulated commerce to protect the weak against the strong to one that interferes with commerce to protect the strong against the weak. From a nation that tempered the excesses of big business to protect citizens to one that promotes the excesses of big business that exploit citizens. From a nation that listened to the voices of all constituencies to one that rides roughshod over constituencies based on the unrestrained will of the majority. These changes are made somewhat palatable if Americans believe the war was fought for a good cause and so school children are still taught the war was fought to end American slavery.

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Just Emancipation

When Lincoln took office in March of 1861, then took our nation to war in April of that same year, he forfeited a golden opportunity to end the scourge of slavery in America without bloodshed. Due to the secession of seven Slave States, his party held a super majority in both the House and the Senate, which gave him a lot of latitude to take other actions to limit the exercise of slavery, or make it economically more expensive.

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The South Was Wrong!

From a twenty-first century perspective, it is difficult to imagine that any American could make a defense of institutionalized slavery as it existed in the United States from before its inception, as an independent nation, until 1865. Looking back through history, it is easy for anyone living today to see that slavery was wrong and that there is no Biblical, humanitarian, or rational defense for its practice. People living today might easily make such a judgment because they do not have their entire lives and livelihoods dependent upon it and because it is easy for anyone to make judgments about the ills of others while completely ignoring one’s own transgressions. All of us need to be mindful of these two facts when considering the issue of slavery in America. That being the case, the South was wrong about slavery, but it was right about secession, and frequently these issues are conflated in the minds of modern Americans.

Confederate Battle Flag

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Contents

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Note: Some articles are in multiple Categories in the column to your right, but every article in the blog is listed and hyper linked under only one category below.

Amendments

Gun Control

Stopping the Next Columbine

IRS Double Standard

Commentary

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Constitutional Relevancy

Just Emancipation

The Death of a Nation

Flag of Contention

Obama and Socialism

Slavery in America

US Senate’s Brain Hemorrhaging Clout

Education Policy

Fixing Public Education

Rotten to the Common Core

Environmental Policy

Climate Change

Foreign Policy

A War to End Slavery

The American Civil War, Just or Unjust?

The Case Against Secession

Constitutional Foreign Policy

Law of Nations

Freedom

Freedom in America: Our Cultural Heritage

Freedom in America: The Unifying Idea

Freedom in America: Paradise Lost

Religious Freedom

This Land is Your Land

Heritage

The Forgotten Founding Father

The Lost Eastern Christian Empire

The South Was Wrong!

Immigration and Naturalization Policy

Immigration Reform

Labor Policy

Union of Socialist Souls Revealed

Law

Are all Laws Necessary?

Can States Constitutionally Secede from the United States?

The Constitution of the United States

Impeaching Supreme Court Justices

Is Religion the Foundation of Justice and Law?

Is Roe v Wade the Law of the Land?

Ruled by Man not by Law

The Supreme Court in the Age of Relativism

When is the President the Commander in Chief?

Monetary Policy

America’s Cyprus

The Birth of a National Fraud

Constitutional Currency

Income Inequality

National Defense Policy

Women in Combat

Politics

Government Shut Down

Living in the Legacy of Lincoln

Restoring the Electoral College

Washington Gridlock

Rights

The Origin of Rights

What are Gay Rights?

Speeches

Butler Pennsylvania Second Amendment Rally Speech

Memorial Day Speech 2012 Westminster, MD

One Nation Back to God Speech 11 Aug 2012

Valor Speech

Tax Policy

Constitutional Taxation

Who is General Welfare?

Flag of Contention

In the wake of the Charleston, South Carolina Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shootings on June 18, 2015, Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the State capital’s flagpole. Regrettably, even if her call for action is successful, it would do no more to change the reasons behind the hatred that drives one human to kill others than legislation to ban the “N” word would go towards closing the inaccurately named “racial” divide.

Confederate Flag and Black Soldier

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This Land is Your Land

Most all major news outlets in America, if they even cover it, have couched the disturbance between the Bureau of Land Management and Cliven Bundy as one based on the Bundy Ranch refusing to pay for grazing rights on Federal property. Yet, a similar incident between the U.S. Forest Service and Kit Laney in New Mexico, in which the Forest Service claims part of the Laney Ranch is on Federal property, has the same basic principle at stake and it has nothing to do with grazing rights or boundary disputes. Those issues are moot points if we answer a more basic question; what legal authority and for what purpose does the Federal Government have to “own” property in the United States?

As Woody Guthrie’s ballad proclaims and in spite of his Communist beliefs,[1] the idea that public property is your land and is my land, is more in line with the original intent of the Constitution when understood in the context as being between the Federal government and citizens of the United States. In other words, public land belongs to the people, not the government and the national government’s authority over it is limited by the US Constitution.

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The Death of a Nation

Unfortunately, too many people today do not understand the actual historical causes of the war that set brother against brother and State against State. It is unfortunate, because that war encompasses many fundamental causes of current American problems and without understanding its true cause we will be unable to repair what went wrong or prevent it from happening in the future.

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