Who is this "Martin Luther King" and why does he have his day off today?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Yeah, if those states hadn't been stupid enough to rebel they wouldn't have had their slaves taken away without compensation.

And you conveniently ignore ol' Abe's willingness to hang the slaves out to dry in a heartbeat if that brought states back to the union. And it took nearly two years, too, to issue that brilliant piece of Macchiavellian hucksterism, because the yankees had to actually first appear to come close to not utterly losing a battle in the theater that counted.

[MRT144]

Naw, the south can go **** itself forever for all the reasons.

[MichaeltheGreat]

We you too, sugar plum. :kissmyass:

[SlowwHand]

Now, now. It's bad to lump ethnicities together, but blanket statements about a geographical part of the country is OK. Get with the program.
I know. One would think that all generalizations are stupid, but, we'd be wrong.

[giblets]

The forces who marched to inglorious defeat at First Manassas were not state miliitias.

The modern Posse Commitatus Act was enacted at the end of Reconstruction. The English common law concept of Posse Commitatus dates back to the early 15th century, and applied in the colonies as well as the early US until the Reconstruction Act. Under the common law, in accordance with the Mansfield Doctrine, a federal soldier engaged in civilian law enforcement had the same legal status as any civilian member of a sheriff's posse - i.e. he had state level civil and criminal liability for his acts, and no official status or immunity. As a practical matter, until the Reconstruction Act, any federal army or navy personnel engaged in civilian law enforcement at federal behest, but in opposition to local officials, was lawfully subject to arrest and trial by those local officials. Since the Reconstruction Act specifically created statutory law which superseded the historic common law, it was necessary for a statutory Posse Commitatus law to restore what had been the American (as well as English) legal standard from the days of the first colonies until the passage of Reconstruction.

Sorry, I knew you and gribbler thought you had my ass, but you didn't.

edit - BTW, an illustration of the application of the common law of Posse Commitatus and what came to be known as the Mansfield Doctrine was the Massachusetts colonial trial of British soldiers in connection with the Boston Massacre. In the absence of common law Posse Commitatus, those soldiers would have been immune from prosecution as agents of the Crown.

Is "civilian law enforcement" really the same thing as suppressing a rebellion? I don't see how 'Posse Comitatus' makes it illegal to use federal troops to stop a rebellion.

[MichaeltheGreat]

A "rebellion" is a group of citizens rising in defiance of lawfully constituted government. When the lawful government of a sovereign entity decides to terminate its voluntary association with other sovereign entities, it's not a rebellion as contemplated in the Constitution. The Whiskey rebellion was a rebellion. The problem is unless the "mob"/"patriots" are in line formation acting as an armed force, they're just civilians standing around with a musket. If they're just marching down the road, you could order them to disperse, but inciting riot or disturbing the peace are civilian crimes, not military.

The Whiskey rebellion is a good illustration of constitutionally correct handling of an actual rebellion. Washington responded to formal requests from the proper state authorities, and the army raised consisted of federalized militia called to enforce the law based upon those requests for assistance.

Secession was never explicitly contemplated, it was just a convenient yankee fiction to label it "rebellion." I believe (fun and trolling aside) the most of the framers thought secession was permissible, as they'd effectively done it by dissolving the Articles of Confederation and starting over. The Constitution by its own terms only became effective when a supermajority of nine states ratified, and given the political structure of the time (with state legislatures electing Senators, etc. and all the dual sovereignty provisions), I think the evidence is pretty strong (though indirect) that you never would have seen ratification if there had been any discussion, let alone an explicit provision, that once a state ratified the Constitution, it was forever bound to the United States. We'd just fought a war to get out from under a dominant central government, no way in hell 9 of 13 states would say, ok, this is it, we're bound forever. The ratification decision had to be made by the state legislatures themselves, not their delegates to the Constitutional conventions. The majority of state legislatures were not Federalist controlled by any means.

[MRT144]

Now, now. It's bad to lump ethnicities together, but blanket statements about a geographical part of the country is OK. Get with the program.
I know. One would think that all generalizations are stupid, but, we'd be wrong.

Yeah, not all southerners are apologists for their awful awful history.

[Lancer]

Now, now. It's bad to lump ethnicities together, but blanket statements about a geographical part of the country is OK. Get with the program.
I know. One would think that all generalizations are stupid, but, we'd be wrong.

Was that a generalization about generalizations?

Nice to you still fighting the rebellion MtG, keeps the juices stirring.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I think we're all better off for the end result, 150 years down the road, but that was neither apparent at the time, nor was it (the yankee instigation) legal under the law of the land.

It's fun to still be able to rile up the yankees, though.

[Lancer]

I think we're all better off for the end result, 150 years down the road, but that was neither apparent at the time, nor was it (the yankee instigation) legal under the law of the land.

It's fun to still be able to rile up the yankees, though.

I guess we'll never know which way the world is better off. For now we have our assumptions based on misinformation to teach the kids. Just glad the slaves were freed, though that certainly must have occurred somewhere in history had the Confederacy outlasted the North's will to fight. I wonder if Lee had not invaded Maryland (and met up with Gettysburg) but instead had gone west to stop the invasion developing there, might that have been the solution?

If there are an infinate number of universes, (doubt it) might find one that's better where the Confederacy and Union live side by side. Might have prevented excesses on the part of the US such as Vietnam by tieing down forces to a long border. Might have ended up being a border like Canada, virtually undefended. Wonder what effect such an outcome might have on the world wars. All speculation. Fun though. The North had most of the Germans, dividing the country would put them in majority. So in WW1 the North allies with Germany while the South goes with UK and France...

Whole thing ends in a draw so an insignificant corporal named Hitler someday makes sarge.

[molly bloom]

This is the most useless thread in the history of Apolyton.

Until Sister Wendy Of The Blessed Incompetence's next one.

[kentonio]

Had those states returned to the union by January 1, 1863, those "contrabands" would have been returned to servitude.

Which absolutely no-one thought was going to happen.

It's unconstitutional for the President to order the states to raise and equip "volunteers" to be turned over to Federal control.

This is the same MichaelTheGreat who in the other thread was talking about how remote killing American Al'Queda members was fine because '**** those traitors' right?

[Dr Strangelove]

And as Brown eloquently stated, separation is inherently unequal. The divisions were there to ensure that this was kept in place.

As for the rest of this:

You're seriously going to look me in the eye, and saying that your single act (which wasn't even your act, but your fathers!) of standing up for someone other than yourself is the equivalent of growing up deaf? Really, MtG?

I'll tell you one story. I had a teacher - an English teacher in high school. She wanted to take the class to europe, so we had to work and save up and fundraise. Which is fine. So I did, right along with all the other students for the whole year. We actually made our goal. I was quite surprised, I didn't think we would make enough, but there it was - by the end of the year, enough to go. So our teacher was very happy with all the announcements. Passed it out around to all the students, the list of stuff they needed to put together for a trip itinerary. Save one person.

Me.

I asked her - why she didn't hand out a paper to me? She said she'd speak with me after class. So I waited, she took off. The next day, I got their early and I asked her - what was going on with the trip. She told me this:

"I did some thinking, and I decided, you aren't going to go." "Why"

"Because I don't want to cart around someone deaf on a trip to a different country."

"Well, then you ought to have told me that before I helped fundraise. I worked along with everyone else. I should have the same opportunity."

"I'm sorry, I changed my mind on you going. Thanks for all your help!"

That was wrong and you or your family should have complained. Unless they were planning on having you fly the plane or drive the bus there's no way her decision could have been justified. I'm certain that American law would have been on your side, I imagine Canadian law would also have been on your side. In the US the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990 protects Americans with disabilities from unreasonable discrimination. The equivalents in Canada are the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, passed in 1982 and the Candian Human Rights Act passed in 1985.
If Martin Luther King had been alive and had been aware of your plight he would have supported you.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Which absolutely no-one thought was going to happen.

Of course. Considering the yankee's abysmal record on the battlefield in the theater people actually paid attention to, yes. My point is that the Emancipation Proclamation is given this very sugarcoated "oh it's such a wonderful thing" up there with the Magna Carta, etc., when it really is a cynical piece of political gamesmanship

This is the same MichaelTheGreat who in the other thread was talking about how remote killing American Al'Queda members was fine because '**** those traitors' right?

If they're on a foreign battlefield, yes. Was al Awlaki grocery shopping in Minneapolis and the drone tagged him in the parking lot at WalMart?

If ol' Abe wanted to do it the correct way, it would have been real simple. Recognize secession. Lincoln (being a very Macchiavellian type) wanted to have it both ways - pretend secession didn't exist, but use force to suppress sovereign state governments to force them back into the union.

[kentonio]

I'm not following your logic. By not recognizing secession he wasn't fighting against sovereign states, he was fighting against rebellious traitor states that were still legally part of the union.