Alabama Division Education Conference - Part 4

Donald Kennedy continued his presentation on "Slavery - Smokescreen for Tyranny".

Slavery before the War for Southern Independence morphed into sharecropping after the war.  Donald showed photos before and after which were absolutely identical in their depiction of the human subjects. In 1860 there were 4 million chattel slaves in the South.  In 1930 there were 8.5 million sharecroppers with 66% of these whites who were left in these very poor conditions from/after the War.

Slavery became a weapon against the Constitution. The Constitutional principle of state's rights was Lincoln's stumbling block which was overcome by concentrating on the idea of a crusade of emancipation.  The War of Southern Confederacy was therefore not a war of defense but a war of conquest and the extension of federal government along the philosophy of Karl Marx. The abolitionists believed in the supreme authority of the federal government and that state's rights were slaveholder's ploy.

But were Southerners the only people who believed in state's rights?  St. George Tucker of Virginia was a very strong advocate for state's rights.  He was a delegate to the Annapolis convention which predated the Philadelphia convention.  He was an advocate that states were sovereign noting we cannot leave our states but a confederation of states as a nation was possible.  St. George Tucker was a Southern abolitionist condemning the institution of slavery in his "On the State of Slavery in Virginia".  He condemned laws discriminating against blacks and defined chattel slavery as political slavery denying people the right of self-governance.

William Rawle was an abolitionist who helped establish the Maryland society promoting the abolition of slavery.  He authored a textbook in 1825 on the Constitution.  Lincoln wasn't even born when Raule was leading his abolitionist work so who should we believe?  A Constitutionalist who was an abolitionist or Lincoln whose clear objective was the abolition of state's rights.

Lincoln appointed foreign born Marxist Carl Shurz as a Union general and even he noted that centuries of slavery not been sufficient to make enemies of the whites and blacks in the South. The Northern abolitionists wanted to deport freed blacks to colonies in Africa to ensure that blacks in the South would not swell Southern representation in the federal government/Congress. Southerners after the War were largely uniform in their support of enfranchisement of blacks in the political process. So the abolitionists thrust was to promote hatred between the races.

Lincoln claimed the Southern states did not have the legal basis for secession but, Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution supports that Lincoln defied the Constitution as he did noot have authorization from the states to send troops to quell any "rebellion" and that he illegally raised war against citizens of his United States. Lincoln could not declare war against the Confederate States of America as that would have recognized the legality of the states' secession.

Article 5 of the Constitution provides the means whereby the states can abolish the Constitution.  Today we are finally legitimately discussing nullification. People are finally recognizing that the states have all the power.  The so-called supremacy clause of the Constitution is cited by many espousing the authority of the federal government but they conveniently the portion, "which shall be made in pursuance of the Constitution". The federal government can only make laws in persuance of the Constitution otherwise states can nullify these laws.