If they can pass the bill I think they should! The federal government has way too much control over things they shouldn't even have their finger in. Being born and raised in the south, the Civil war has never really been over down here. It still gets talked about all the time, you see rebel flags everywhere and I personally don't have a problem with this. Part of the reason the south seceded from the union was they didn't want the federal government to become so powerful that the states couldn't govern themselves without getting the consent of the federal government. Now more than ever I can understand what they were talking about when the said state's rights. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not condoning seceded or starting another civil war at all. I am just saying the states need to have more freedom to do what the people in the individual states think is best with out having to worry about what the feds think.

Hopefully all states will fall in line and follow suit. Let the states govern themselves. Congrats to MT, thank you for having the balls, to start what should have been done along time ago, on this issue.

The Federal Govt. has nolegal authority to do anyhting in this case. The Feds can't even use the Interstate Commerce clause (that they tend to use to grab more power) because the guns will have never left the state of Montana. As for Rabbitpolice88's comments on the War of Northern Aggression, he is totally correct in the reasons behind the South's seccession, the only place I differ is that I believe that the Southern States had the legal right and authority to seccede, it was Lincoln who didn't have the Right to invade, and no the shots at Fort Sumter did not give Lincoln the right to invade (there were no casulties). If you read both the Declaration of INdependence and the US Constitution you will find many uses of the words "free and soveriegn states". Unlike Rabbitpolice88 I do condone seccession, it is lawful and every persons Right "to dissolve the poliltical bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the seperate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the seperation." (Thomas Jefferson first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence). We secceeded from the Brits, Lincoln used massive force to keep that from happening in the 1860s, but the Soviets allowed its States to secceed without them using force, but we condemn the Soviets. Anyways this is HEROIC of Montana, the giving of the proverbial finger to an ever growing and power hungry Federal Govt. which for years has broken the Law which holds this Union apart from every other, The Constitution, a Contract limiting the power and scope of the Federal Govt. and keeping the powers reserved to the States!

Those of us in the North use the unofficial name "The First War Against the Nazis" when we speak of the War of the Rebellion. Fashionable as it may be for apologists for traitors to pretend that it had anything to do with some abstract noble cause, the plain fact is that the southern states seceeded because they wanted to impose slavery in new states added to the union. It's there in there articles of secession for anyone to read. Trying to pretend that the Confederacy was "for states rights" is like trying to pretend that Al Qaida is "for religious freedom."

Google Lincoln's Innaugural Address and read that and Google Virginia's Seccession for two examples of how the war wasn't exactly over slavery. I could give more (and will if asked) but I have to go back to work, but those are two important and overlooked sources.

If the state passes it, is it possible for the federal government (specifically the pres) to veto the bill?

Nate

As for everyone concerned about this being a loop-hole for criminals, let's not forget that they would still have to break other enforcable laws to get around. The fake I.D. as an example. You could use a fake I.D. anywhere to buy a gun. Not to mention stealing a gun from someone else. Criminals are going to find ways. We can't let the feds treat us all like we are criminals because we want our gun rights.

One nice thing about small gov't is that it doesn't have the means to become really intrusive, WAMtnhunter. For a long time I didn't understand objections to, say the mission of the DoE or HUD; they're good missions. But over the years I've come to understand why people don't think those are necessarily matters for Federal jurisdiction.

Jcarlin,

The reason people don't pay attention to state and local elections is because they don't understand the seperation of powers between the States and the Fed.

The reason States have more power (supposed to anyways) than the Federal Govt. is because the Founders believed in self governance. All 50 States have thier own Constitutions, some like Virginia predate the US Constitution. So the States have just as much limitations as the Fed, with the power not enumerated in the State Constitutions being left to the People. Its easier to pay attention to the needs of ones state then to the need of 300 million individuals throughout thousands of miles. Its easier to rally and protest at the State and local levels for most (outside of people who live in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and South Pennsylvania who's proximity to DC is advantagous).
To rally DC you need huge numbers for them to pay attention, because if you don't bring the numbers then you don't look like a big enough portion of the population for the politicians to pay attention. But with State populations being inherently smaller, when you make a stand with 100,00 individuals, the elected reps. will be more likely to take notice.

jcarlin - as for the feds not being able to step in if the states are infringing upon our rights is not what should be going on. If the states infringe, it is the feds responsibility to protect our rights. That is our botto-up design. We can self regulate as long as the local government is not violating our constitutional rights. That is what makes us free and independant states. And that is exactly what we canNOT expect from our current administration who feels the need to rule from the top.

Ken,
Don't apologize for your differing views, logical people should be weighing both sides. It's not hypocritical to see that either system has flaws. The difficulty is nearly always in the balance.

Btw, I too am amazed at the view of the Civil War held by some, not all, of our Southern friends.

We as individuals are able to have more influence at the state level, so we as citizens will be able to keep our local government for going against our beliefs based off of who we elect into office. Whereas with the federal government, it doesn't matter your opinion unless you live in NY or CA. If you don't like the curriculum at your child's school, send them to private school. Or God forbid, maybe teach them a few things on your own and not expect the governmant to do it for you.

I must say that I am enjoying this conversation. In my opinion, it is the quintessential mark of intellingnce to entertain many points of view, similar, opposite,and diverse.

I typically just lurk and read, but felt compelled to compliment the readers/writers here.

WOOF

Not patronizing. I agree completely.

and please don't read into that and see the parents who push off their parenting responsibilities on the schools.

Parents are responsible for teaching their kids respect, manners, and morals.

The schools are responsible for teaching them trigonometry, biology, calculus, etc...

ken.mcloud,
The south never would have lost the majority in the senate because of the 3/5ths clause. The clause was past in reference to represintation for the slaves in the south. the 3/5 part means that one black slave was equivalent to 3/5ths of a white persons represintation. Basically this gave the representatives a lot more people and there for power in the districts than if it was only whites only. In GA there was about 1000 blacks to one white so you can see where this was going. It gave the slave states way more power with out have to do anything with the slaves. The only reason i brought up the Civil war in the first place is I was saying I am understanding more why the south was concerned with state's rights. It is late and I should be asleep so if this is not clear I do apologize.

Also you can find tons of letters from the men themselves in the war. On both the North and the South, from Generals Grant and Lee all the way down. Read what they had to say about the war they fought and why they were fighting the war. There are many books that compile (Adam's is one) these letters, and of course there is always Google!

rabbitpolice88-

The 3/5th's rule pertained to the House of representatives. In the House of representatives, each state gets a number of representatives proportional to their population.

In the Senate each state gets two representatives no matter how big or small.

And FYI, I just looked up the actual numbers. At the time of Lincoln's election in 1860 anti-slave states already had a majority in the House. Lincoln was elected on the platform of not allowing any of the new states to come in as slave states.

In 1860, the pro-slave states had a majority in the senate, but Lincoln's policy on new states meant that it was only a matter of time before they lost that majority. Having the House, Senate, and White house all controlled by the anti-slave states was unacceptable to the pro-slave states.

(p.s. I did not know any of those numbers before we started this conversation, I looked them up, I encourage you to do the same, verify what I am telling you.)

(also, Like I said before, I'm willing to have my mind changed on this, but the evidence has to at the very least display a basic understanding of how the legislative branch is put together)

Scottdamott-

I see one major flaw in your reasoning that I need you to clear up for me.

You say that the south seceded as an act of civil disobedience, like the civil rights movement of the 60's (oh!, I'm swimming in irony!).

Here's my problem, Blacks in the 60's were having some of their basic human rights violated, they couldn't vote, send their kids to good schools, or even drink from the same drinking fountains as whites.

What human rights violation were the pro-slave states protesting? The right to violate other peoples human rights? The right to own other people as property?

Please enlighten me.

"I call it the war of Northern Aggression because the timeline works out."

And I call it the First US War Against Nazis because the shoe fits. The timeline doesn't work all that well. The Articles of Secession *ALL* to the last give promulgation of slavery as the primary reason for secession. "States Rights" was window dressing added later as a marketing ploy to get non-slave holders in the south something to rally behind. It's hard to motivate poor farmers with the cry "Uphold plantation owners' rights to treat humans like cattle." Even more difficult to advertise that for overseas political support.

In contrast, most northerners fought to "maintain the union." It wasn't for them about slavery other than the fact that but for advancing the cause of slavery the south would have no reason to secede. By the time the war had ended, though, it clearly WAS about slavery and oppression, since the south so obviously made it about that, with the threat to enslave any captured U.S. troops who were also black. And wasn't it Beauregard who threatened to execute them if captured, along with any white officers?

A hundred plus years of spinmongery have succeeded in dressing up the "confederacy" with trappings of nobility. At least the German survivors of the Third Reich have come clean on their purpose and track record.

Go Montana!!! About time states start to put a halt to the over reaching of the FEDs. Most matters are better resolved at local levels than at the Federal level, as it should be. I for one am tired of the Feds using our public ground in Western Mountain states for their social and enviromental experiments. Some of us still live in areas where firearms are a tool for our trades, not weapons for shooting one another, and if we do need to defend ourselves, we have only ourselves to depend on as law enforcement can be hours away if reachable at all.

rabbitpolice88-

We're getting sidetracked with Mike's Nazi comparison. (By the way, I'll bet our friend Mr. Diehl has been called many things in his days. but that might be the first time anyone has called him a liberal.)

My opening premise was that I am willing to be convinced. I love conspiracy theories, please convince me. The trouble is that, being a rational thinker, I need sound evidence in order to be convinced.

So far you and scottdamott have made some pretty grand claims about attempts to re-write history and brainwash us northerners.

Grand claims require grand evidence and so far all I have gotten is that you don't understand how the legislative branch is set up and that it looks like Scott thinks that owning slaves is a basic human right?

first off, I wrote that last post before Scott's most recent one was posted.

Scott-
Though I might disagree that most people smoke pot as a form of civil protest, I certainly agree with most of your points on government drawing its power from the governed.

But again, we are getting off the topic. The question at hand is weather the southern states seceded to protect slavery or to protect the state's rights afforded to them in the constitution.

If I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that they seceded because protectionist tariffs were imposed by the federal government. these tariffs were harming their international trade. Is this correct?

Ken McCloud,

"The Tax Road to the War of the Rebellion

The tariff became the primary tool to raise revenue for the federal government, and finally, in 1834, the national debt was paid off. It was long struggle, but with a frugal government, and only one short war, the finances of the federal government were slowly being put in good order.

The tariff had been used for some protectionist purposes in the beginning, but in 1828, northern industrialists pushed through a high tariff, greatly resented by the South. They called it the "tariff of abomination," a biblical term meaning the highest evil. In 1832, when this high tariff continued, South Carolina nullified the tariff as unconstitutional. There was a brief threat of war by President Jackson, but cool heads prevailed, the tariff was to be reduced, and the nullification ordinance passed away.

The hatred for the tariff was universal throughout the South. It made Southerners vassals of the North, being just a sophisticated form of tribute. The argument went like this: The tariff prevented competition from Europe, which meant that Northern industrialists could charge excessive prices for their goods sold in the South, thus shifting a large part of Southern wealth to Northern interests. If the South should chose to buy foreign goods with the high tax, this put Southern moneys into the federal coffers to be spent on Northern projects, in effect another form of tribute from the South to the North. Either way it was an injustice upon the Southern people and their economy.

Compromise, however, prevailed up until 1860 when the new Republican Party held its convention in Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln as the Republican candidate for President. The platform of the party included a demand for a high tariff, and when the tariff issue came up before the delegates for approval, there was so much yelling and hoopla, it was "as if a herd of buffalo had stampeded through the conventional hall." The noise of that stampede must have been heard all the way to the Southern States. The Southerners got the message, and while the new Republican nominee for president, reassured the South, time and time again, that slavery was in no danger, no doubt their economy was – with the proposed high tariff. The first thing the Republicans did when they arrived in Washington in March of 1861, was to push through a high tariff, called the Morrill Tariff, the highest in history, with rates of over 50% on many items. This tax, more than anything else, probably made any reconciliation with the seceding states impossible.

In Lincoln’s first inaugural address, he made a clear demand on the seceding states of "taxes or war." With slavery he was conciliatory, never even mentioning the Republican demand to end slavery in the territories. He went so far as the state that he had no personal inclination to interfere with slavery. He even said he supported a constitutional amendment (ironically #13) to protect slavery forever in the states where it existed, and that would have included New Jersey, Delaware, and the border states. But on taxes he was committed – there would be no invasion of the South he said, except to collect taxes and recover any federal property. Many Southern newspaper editorials saw this and correctly interpreted this as an appeasement to slavery, but a call for aggression to collect the high tariff on imports to the South. Lincoln and his party had resurrected the old animosity with a new and more severe "tariff of abomination." To the South this came as no surprise considering the platform of the Republican Party adopted in the summer of 1860.

The war, however, got started over another tax matter – the free trade zone in the Confederacy. Lincoln, even if he had been a strong advocate for abolition in the nation, never would have received the support, especially the financial support he got from the banks, Wall Street, and the commercial powers of the North. Abolitionists were a small minority that had been repudiated in all the elections in the North. This war, like so many wars, had economic factors that overpowered all other considerations. What was at stake for the North, was not freedom for the slave, but the prosperity and commerce of the North.

At first, few Northerners saw the danger of a free trade zone in the South. The New York Times, for example, its editorials up until March 20th, proclaimed that the confederacy was no threat to Northern prosperity and commerce. On the 21st of March, after months of taking the opposite view, the economic editor changed his tune dramatically. He argued that the South would destroy the commerce and prosperity of the North with its free trade zone vis-à-vis the high Morrill Tariff. Trade from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia would shift to Southern ports, and it already was doing so, as New York importers saw their trade contracts cancelled and rebooked to New Orleans. The President has got to blockade all Southern ports and bring utter ruin to the confederacy, wrote the chief economic editor of the New York Times. At the same time the leading newspaper in Philadelphia expressed the same view as did newspapers in Boston and elsewhere. The demand for war replaced demands of "letting the South go."

Shortly thereafter, in only a week, Lincoln called his cabinet for advice on reinforcing Fort Sumter. It was almost unanimous that any such show of force would provoke war, and Lincoln then made the decision to do so. As expected, he did provoke a foolish assault on the Fort. The North rallied around the President’s call for 75,000 troops for four months to put down the South. Little did he or anyone know what horrible carnage would be unleashed on the United States, with consequences that have lasted to this day.

In December of 1861, Charles Dickens, who gave us the Mr. Scrooge and scores of marvelous novels and writing still in print today, saw through the Civil War, and wrote this in a weekly London paper, All the Year Round:

So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils.

We can say that the trigger for the Civil War was the press, just as it triggered the war with Spain in 1898 with its cry of "Remember the Maine" In 1861, it was remember Fort Sumter, and remember your prosperity, and what Southern freeports will do to it. What makes the start of the Civil War of especial interest to the economic historian, is not just a single tax factor, like so many other revolutions and revolts, but two tax factors in conflict with each other. It apparently took the two of them – the Morrill Tariff and the free trade zone – to act as the fuse that set off this terrible war and the suffering, carnage, and destruction it brought to the nation, including tragic moral and spiritual tosses as well.

Charles Adams in an address delivered to the National Archives April 12th 1994, called A Brief Tax History of America. Adams is a noted Tax and economic historian andhis book "For a Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization" is a very excellent.

Ken.mcloud,
I didn't call Mike diehel a liberal, go back and read the post again.

I always lean towards freedom, so I say let the states decide wmongst themselves, to have gun control. LEt the people who are nieghbors and such should decide how they should live, as long as it doesn't impose on other's Rights. According to "The Essential Second Amendment Guide" by Wayne LaPierre (executive vice president of the NRA) the States of California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York do not have "right to bear arms" amendments to thier State Constitutions. So if the people of the above mentioned States decided that guns had to go these States could go ahead and take the guns away. The rest of us whose State Constitutions explixitly tells the State that it cannot impose on the right to bear arms will be safe on both the Federal and State levels. We can then see what happens in those States where the people have voluntarily chosen to be disarmed. If violent crime sky rockets or ceases to exist, if the State becomes totalitarian or free. If the people of these States choose to do this to themselves it is thier choice, they could always move to a freer State. The Constitution was designed to be a free trade agreement amongst the States and a for the Common defense against Attackers. The States were supposed to be little Experiments in democracy and republicanism, each to be self governed by the People of the State. In a free world you are free to take the actions necessary to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, so long as these actions don't interfere with the Rights of other Individuals. Voluntary is the key to this, if you Voluntarily give up your property there is no one to be mad at but yourself. If you Voluntarily give 1/3 of your paycheck to someone/something, this is not enslavement. Its only through means of Force are these actions evil whether done by Individuals or a Collective. If these State Governments were to become totalitarian by the use of Force instead of through voluntary means. For example if one particular political party decides to use force to throw out the other and set up a dictatorship, then the Federal Govt. can step in and help as long as there was consent in the Congress (i.e. a declaration of war). Men are free to make mistakes but on the same hand men are free to have to live with the consequences of thier mistakes.

"You were not raised in the south so I do not expect you to understand."

I wasn't raised in Third Reich either but I don't feel a whole lot of sympathy for nazis.

"Also all you have ever heard about the Civil war is what you were taught in northern liberal schools."

I was educated in an extremely conservative northern school. Conservatives everywhere abhore the antebellum south.

"Have you ever had an in depth conversation about the Civil war with a true southerner?"

Depends on what you mean by a true southerner. I've talked about the civil war with people born & raised in, for ex, Georgia. Some of 'em were fruitcakes who tried to rationalize enslavement, theft of federal property, and firing on American soldiers as some sort of noble act.

"You remember this too, we southerners are Americans too."

Never suggested otherwise. I'm merely pointing out that from an factual point of view, people who try to argue that the rebel states attempted to secede over "states' rights" when all their articles of secession carry on at length about the unfairness of not being allowed to treat people like hogs are full of beans. Well, "beans" is here a substitution for another word I was thinking.

"The fact that you compare the Civil war to the World wars is laughable."

Only laughable to an ignoramus.

"They were nothing alike, the Germans were going for world domination and for a superior race of arians."

Leaving aside the pathetic inability of the "CSA" to globally dominate west of the Ohio River, the comparison is otherwise apt. Race of genetically superior beings accorded the right, by God, to do what they will with those deemed genetically inferior. CSA <--> 3rd Reich, the only difference was in the scale of the misery these morally bankrupt organizations and their mentally deficient leaders were able to inflict.

"Calling it the first fight with the Nazis means you are narrow minded and ignorant of many historical facts about all three wars."

I am QUITE confident that I could whup your rear in any test about WW2.

Only 18 more years, and I can collect my Pension(assuming the fund doesn't collapse) and move to Montana. I know they have some whitetails. Do they make any good guns there?

"Why is the South only condemened when all 13 colonies had slaves (many New England States up until the 1850's)"

Because only the south started a war that killed upwards of a million Americans over the institution of slavery. I'm curious though which New England states you imagined allowed slavery in 1850?

"Why was slavery at the time of the address tolerable in the Union (1863) but untolerable in the CSA?"

Because at the time of the Gettysburg address, slaves were being used to keep the war industries of the south running so that the south's more technically trained lower and lower-middle class could be sent to the front. Freeing southern slives during the war made good military sense, at least in re encouraging slaves to leave the south and undermine southern war production. If Lincoln had instead access to B-17s, I doubt that emancipating the slaves would have happened until the war ended.

"Also why would Lincoln state in his innaugural address taht he would "do nothing to the institution of slavery in the states that it already exists"?"

Because Lincoln didn't feel it necessary to start a war over the institution of slavery. One supposes he was a whole lot smarter than Jeff Davis, and noticed that the world economy was going to leave American plantation farming in the dust.

"As Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley on Aug. 22..."

Conveniently you omit the sentence where he says if he could save the union by emancipating all the slaves he'd do it as well. No need to google it I've read the letter several times, although not in the last couple decades. The point I made was never that the Union demanded the end of slavery as a condition for peace. My point was that the rebel states' elites made EXPANSION of slavery into the west their cause for secession and war. The war was, therefore, literally "all about slavery." It's quite plain in the articles of secession. Had a bunch of six-fingered neanderthals in South Carolina seen expansion of slavery into new western states as a potentially lucrative means of personal gain, there'd have been no secession and no war.

As JIm webb pints out in his book "Born Fighting: how the Scots-Irish shaped America" Webb comes to the conclusion "It is impossible to believe that such men would have continued to fight against unnatural odds [the South was outnumbered in adult male population by more than four to one, and in wealth by three to one] – and take casualties beyond the level of virtually any other modern army [70 percent] – simply so that the 5 percent of their population who owned slaves could keep them . . . . Something deeper was motivating them, something that appealed to their self-interest as well" (p. 223).

Webb clarifies one particularly telling fact about the average Confederate soldier: He knew that slave-owners in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky – and in other union states – were allowed to keep their slaves when the war began. Indeed, when Fort Sumter was fired upon there were more slave states (and more slaves) in the union (eight) than there were out of it (seven). Consequently, "in virtually every major battle of the Civil War, Confederate soldiers who did not own slaves were fighting against a proportion of Union Army soldiers who had not been asked to give theirs up" (p. 223). This fact spoke volumes to the Confederate soldier about the cause of the war and the nature of both Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party regime.

So why did the Confederate soldier fight? Because "he was provoked, intimidated, and ultimately invaded" and "his leaders convinced him that this was a war of independence in the same sense as the Revolutionary War" (p. 225). The "tendency to resist outside regression" was "bred deeply into every heart" of the Scots-Irish, and had been for centuries. That’s why they had to fight.

Thomas DiLorenzo explains,
At the outbreak of the War to Prevent Southern Independence there was a vigorous secession movement in what were known then as the Middle States – Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey. During the war there were thousands of Northern "peace Democrats" who opposed Lincoln and his Yankee cabal. These people, who were essentially Jeffersonians, had one thing in common with the Southern Confederates: they despised the arrogant, pushy, greedy, and insufferably self-righteous Yankees. They were ruthlessly censored and imprisoned by the tens of thousands by the Lincoln government. When they rioted over military conscription, the Yankee army shot them dead in the streets by the hundreds if not thousands (See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots).

But the notion of a morally superior New England Yankee nation is all a myth, as is explained in great detail by Joanne Pope Melish in her book, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780–1860 (Cornell University Press, 1998). The truth of the matter is that slavery existed in New England for more than 200 years (beginning in 1638) and it was every bit as degrading and dehumanizing as slavery anywhere. In mid eighteenth century Rhode Island slaves accounted for as much as one third of the population in many communities. Newport, Rhode Island, and Boston, Massachusetts, were the two biggest hubs of the transatlantic slave trade. Many slaves worked in the shipping industry in New England. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were the three biggest Northern slave-owning states.

Virtually all of the household and farm labor of New England’s aristocracy was done by slaves, Professor Melish shows. "These servants performed the dirty, heavy, dangerous, menial jobs around the household, or they acted in inferior roles as valets and maids to masters and mistresses of the upper class" (p 17).

Professor Melish documents the pervasive sexual abuse of slaves by their New England slave masters. The famous New England cleric Cotton Mather advised his fellow Yankees to Christianize their slaves so that they will become even better slaves. "Your servants will be the Better Servants," Mather preached, "for being made Christian servants" (p. 32). Christianize your slaves, and they will be "afraid of speaking or doing any thing that may justly displeasure you." All of this history has been whitewashed and hidden by politically-correct, Northern historians for generations.

With the growth of industry that required a more and more educated and skilled labor force, slavery became uneconomical. So, beginning in the late eighteenth century gradual emancipation laws were introduced in New England. In general, these laws stated that the children of existing slaves would be freed upon reaching a certain age, usually either 21 or 25. In principle, a one-year old slave in the year 1784, who had a child at age 25, would remain a slave for life, but his or her child would be freed in around 1834.

Slaves were included in the New England population census for 1840, and as late as 1848 Rhode Island was passing new laws outlawing slavery. New Hampshire passed a new law outlawing slavery there even later – in 1857.

Some New England slave owners kept their slaves in ignorance of the gradual emancipation laws, or never told them exactly when they were born to keep them enslaved as long as possible, in violation of the laws.

Many New England slave owners did not free their young slaves upon reaching age 21 or 25, but sold them to Southern plantation owners. Slavery may have ended, but these men did not free their slaves.

As for the shots on Fort Sumter, when Lincoln brought in a naval fleet to blockade the Charleston port Jefferson Davis saw this as a declaration of war and ordered the shot at Fort Sumter. Do you think Lincoln would not have done the same thing if the CSA blockaded Baltimore, Philly, or New York?

"Something deeper was motivating them, something that appealed to their self-interest as well" (p. 223)."

I think he was correct. That something was institutionalized bigotry combined with effective propaganda from the rebellious states' institutions of leadership. It's the age old question: if you want to motivate people to go fight a war that doesn't "sell itself" so to speak, what's the most effective way to keep them going? The secessionists answered that question effectively through 1864. Less so in late 1864 as the chickens came home to roost in Sherman form. The Germans answered that question in 1939. Iraq answered that question in the 1980s. There's probably a whole branch of historical analysis devoted to that phenom.

"Also am I correct in my assumption that you feel slavery was ok in Northern States because it wasn't as economically viable?"

No. It wasn't OK in the north or anywhere else. But it wasn't the northern states who seceded over the issue of slavery. The writing was on the wall: slavery, as an institution, was becoming economically unviable becuase of rapid industrialization elsewhere, and droves of immigrants arriving mostly in the north (staying there or moving west). The articles of secession all clearly state that the secessions occurred primarily to continue to promote slavery and to encourage the expansion of the practice in newly added states.

Once you have secession because of slavery, you had a war to end secession (from the North's p.o.v.) that eventually became ABOUT ending slavery, since it was so obvious that slavery was the south's reason for fighting. After all, you couldn't fight that war, and then NOT emancipate the slaves... that'd just set up the same inevitable conflict at some future date.

But the war was NEVER about "Northern Aggression." That's like saying that the Nazis were "forced into war by Poland" or that the Japanese were "forced into war against the US because the US refused to aid and abet them in their genocidal efforts in China." Apologists for a lousy cause, especially a lousy LOSING cause, often try to shift the frame of reference by concoting some mythological nobility to what was basically an ugly purpose.

State rights, rules and regulations are influenced by the federal government. The federal government's solution to many problems is to pass new laws which they cannot or do not enforce entirely. They all too often turn their heads to ignore a matter of law or a party line problem. A good example of this would be: Positive proof of the native born status of the sitting president. Was he or was he not fully qualified to run for the office of the President of these United States? I have read about a private lawsuit to answer this question but nothing coming from the federal government. Lastly, why does it not matter enough for the federal officials, responsible for determining eligibility, to force the required proof to this issue? Of course, all of Mr Obama's actions since acquiring this position would be illegal, unenforceable and create a situation for the federal government that they probably would find difficult to solve. Ignore it and it might go away.
Before anyone suggests it, this is NOT a racial matter, it is our rule of law.
Chiefatk
Killeen, Tx

I'd be very surprised if this went anywhere, even if it is passed. Eventually, it's going to a Federal court and there's no way they're going to rule against the feds.

As for state's rights, they're gone forever. Blame the behavior of State government during the Civil Rights era.

It's the Bubblegum Paradigm. If kids in school were allowedto chew gum, most of them would throw it out properly when they were finished with it. But, there's always a few jerks who end up sticking under desks and chairs, throwing it on the floor and making a general mess. They ruin it for the rest of us. Because of them, no gum for everybody.