“To the soldiers of the Southern Confederacy who died to repel an unconstitutional invasion, to protect the rights reserved to the people, to perpetuate forever the sovereignty of the states.” A tribute to the Confederate soldier written on a monument somewhere in the South
I cannot count the number of times over the years I have been criticized, cursed, and ridiculed for continuing to fight the “lost cause” of my Confederate ancestors. The wording on the Confederate monument mentioned above states in a most concise manner what the soldier of the South was willing to die for and it certainly was not for the perpetuation of chattel slavery.
Had those 7 states of the South who had voted to secede by the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March of 1861 seceded simply to continue slavery, all they would have had to do was to cancel their papers of secession and rejoin the Union for Lincoln had worked behind the scenes to arrange for a proposed amendment to the Constitution called the Corwin amendment. Said amendment would have made chattel slavery legal in perpetuity and outside the powers of Congress. Here is the wording of that amendment which had already been sent to the states for ratification.
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
Lincoln’s support of this amendment can be found in Lincoln’s first inaugural address here. To wit:
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution–which amendment, however, I have not seen–has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
Lincoln patently lied when he stated he had not seen the Corwin amendment, if fact it was William Seward who had been instructed by Lincoln himself to not only get the Corwin amendment written and ratified but to also get a federal law passed to repeal the personal Liberty laws of several Northern states which had been written to oppose the Fugitive Slave laws.*
Lies and treachery have been the parents of war throughout history. With the possible exception of the Revolutionary war, that has certainly been the case in every war in this country’s history. Lies and treachery by Lincoln and Stanton brought about the bombardment of Fort Sumter; lies about the sinking of the USS Maine was used to promote the Spanish-American war; lies about German soldiers bayoneting babies was used to promote the First World War; documents created by British agents and given to FDR were used to promote a war against Germany along with FDR keeping secret, even from the commanders at Pearl Harbor, the imminent attack by Japan on our forces there; there were the lies and propaganda that was the Gulf of Tonkin incident that lead to the debacle that was Vietnam; the false stories about babies being thrown from incubators in Kuwait was used to promote the First Desert Storm; the false and misleading stories of “weapons of mass destruction,” Saddam’s involvement in the events of 9/11, and yellow cake uranium led to the most horrific foreign affairs mistakes in the Middle East. Posted on Author michael.d.gaddy@gmail.com