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Open Thread: Robert E. Lee

Thanks very much for bringing this to light. The Constitutional issue which propelled the South to secede was the differences between the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian visions of the role of the Federal government. The North was very much intent on growing the powers and reach of the Federal government and the redistribution of taxes (at the time, tarriffs). Look at who provided the most taxes from imports and exports and look at where the taxes were being spent - the biggest example is the railroad networks - they were mostly up North. The history of the North is based upon a utopian desire to force cohersion on the people and destroy any diversity which is not in line with their way of thinking. There is no mention of slavery in either Lincoln's nor Davis' inaugural speeches of 1861 and slavery was not abolished until 1866 - a full year after the Confederacy ceased to exist. Congress could have passed the 13th Amendment (not the original Corwin 13th amendment) easily between 1861 - 1865 if the true goal of the war was to end slavery; however, it waited until the Confederacy was defeated to outlaw slavery. Also, the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves in areas of control by the US government - it was a political ploy to isolate the Confederacy politically and create slave rebellions in the South, thereby disolving the Confederate Army to suppress them (which did not occur). However, the slavery issue is the pivotal issue in the moral justification for the Northern invasion of the South. In 1861, there were no calls for the ending of slavery, only the "preservation of the Union." If we believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which states, "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government..." then the Southern States did so in a form much more convincing than those of their forefathers in 1776 - by voting for secession. The invasion of these independent and sovereign states is a direct violation of the principles of this republic.