Ft. Sumter: The First Act of Aggression

I am proposing this thought for members posting here to think on:

1. You own the property. (You = U.S. Government, C.S. Government, A State, A County/Township, an individual person).

2. Outsider. (Anybody to whom has no legal recognition by any of the above "You" --be it a Government, organization, individual - The Outsider = U. S. Government, C.S. Government, A State, A County/Township, an individual person, such as a neighbor, a criminal--any individual that is not in your immediate family/organization/government) --

3. You occupy a piece of property with legal deed issued/cash receipt and or any other proof of ownership.

4. Outsider claims the property by their sense of entitlement.

5. You listen to Outsider but, do not recognize their authority as they legally have no rights to it.

6. Outsider issues a threat to take the property.

7. You close your doors, windows and seek shelter.

8. Outsider takes Your property outside of the property and left tools that could be used against you, to which the Outsider has taken and claimed as theirs.

9. Your banker calls You and informs you that Outsiders have taken over the bank, taken all your money and you no longer have an account or credit. Meanwhile, You are sheltered inside your property.

10. Outsiders take over the National Armory, where weapons for the Country's defense paid by all taxpayers and claim such weapons as theirs. Now, adding to the Outsider's 'cash' of weapons and ammunition. The Outsiders now transport it to property surrounding Your property and--aim all of it at You on Your property.

11. You are informed by the Outsiders that all your mail is stopped and no longer are allowed to go to the store.

12. One of the many Outsiders while practicing with one of the stolen weapons, shoots at Your Property and strikes that Property.

13. Leader of the Outsiders demands that You cannot prepare for Your defense and won't allow You to evacuate innocent people--perhaps guests staying with You or workers on Your Property.

14. Your call to another member of Your inner circle, stating your plight and being surrounded and have no access to money, food and supplies to run Your property.

15. Outsiders threaten Your outside member source, that if they attempt to refill Your food supply, fuel to make things work on Your property -- they --the Outsiders will consider it a threat and will destroy Your property and--if necessary kill You and those around you.

16. You find all of Your communications have been severed. You have no fuel, no food and the Outsiders are still surrounding Your property...demanding that You give it up and let them have it without a fight, dismissing Your legal rights to occupy and possess, to control and to manage Your property.

How would You feel?

Something to think on --

Just my thoughts and opinions,

M. E. Wolf
Sounds like the outline for a Kafka novel; sadly it aligns with history.
 
Still incomplete after 35 years? No one gained


OK. Then maybe I should have said "Secession was considered a right "those in the South and the North "during that time period preceding the War for Southern Independence.

There were 2 types of secession under discussion in the antebellum era: Multilateral and unconditional. However the secession of 1860-61 was a unilateral secession not discussed.
 
“After plunging us in all the broils of the European nations, there would remain but one act to close our tragedy, that is, to break up our Union; and even this they have ventured seriously & solemnly to propose & maintain by arguments in a Connecticut paper. I have been happy, however, in believing, from the stifling of this effort, that that dose was found too strong, & excited as much repugnance there as it did horror in other parts of our country, & that whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, & that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators. Much as I abhor war, and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind, and anxiously as I wish to keep out of the broils of Europe, I would yet go with my brethren into these, rather than separate from them.” [Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 13 May 1797]

“Be this as it may, in every free & deliberating society there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties & violent dissensions & discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch & delate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusets [sic] & Connecticut we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the N. England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? are we not men still to the south of that, & with all the passions of men? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania & a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by eternally threatening the other that unless they do so & so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia & N. Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others.” [Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 4 Jun 1798]

“I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.” [Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 22 Apr 1820]
 
That great Virginian and Southerner Thomas Jefferson clearly didn't favor further secession, but as he indicated in his First Inaugural Address in 1801 there was the right and certainly no mention of a constitutional prohibition of secession.

First Inaugural Address

Thomas Jefferson
March 4, 1801

Friends and Fellow-Citizens,

Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.

[URL='http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/jeffersons-first-inaugural-address[/QUOTE']http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/jeffersons-first-inaugural-address[/URL]

But look again at that sentence you underlined: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Jefferson did not say, "If there be any among us who would wish to walk out without discussion and leave all debt and obligations behind, well there isn't much we can do about it." Jefferson is clear that any attempt to dissolve the Union would require discussions and negotiation.
 
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The “first acts” acts occurred on Southern soil, only the Yankee mind would considered defense of hearth and home aggression.

Bombarding a fort cannot be characterized as defending hearth and home, nor is seizing an arsenal a defensive reaction.

I know others have made this point before my post, but I think that the dogged determination to present launching an attack as self-defense in defiance of any ordinary use of the term in law or customary speech needs to be noted as what it is.
 
Still incomplete after 35 years? No one gained


OK. Then maybe I should have said "Secession was considered a right "those in the South and the North "during that time period preceding the War for Southern Independence.
35 or 50 or 100 years it doesn't matter as it wasn't South Carolinas or any other states to seize...Did the black Southeners think the war was for their independence?
 
So after 40+ pages those who feel that aggression and war started by the south have given ample, yet ignored, documentation. Those who wish, hope and dream it started in the union and by Pre-President Lincoln have opinion speeches, catch phrases and rhetoric that would only hold up on a bad episode of Law and Order.

Nope, not nearly good enough.
 
The CSA and the question of secession.
A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy at 34:45

Making secession legal was debated heavily, but the CSA took no action. Love to have the footnotes, but not in the book.
 
So after 40+ pages those who feel that aggression and war started by the south have given ample, yet ignored, documentation. Those who wish, hope and dream it started in the union and by Pre-President Lincoln have opinion speeches, catch phrases and rhetoric that would only hold up on a bad episode of Law and Order.

Nope, not nearly good enough.

It's heritage instead of history.
 
Yes. About 35 years. Here is government at work. Some of those years were used up in proving title.

Some guy claimed title to the sand bar on which the granite foundation was to be dumped. It took a few years for SC to fix that snag and deed the land to the US Government. It's rather specious to bring into the debate the years it took to bring it to the point it was.

The wheels grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
 
True. 42 pages and you still haven't produced a single page of evidence to support your position. The other pages are filled with documented sources that dispel your position. Maybe its time that you just accept the facts.
Dream on, Dan.
 
True. 42 pages and you still haven't produced a single page of evidence to support your position. The other pages are filled with documented sources that dispel your position. Maybe its time that you just accept the facts.
I don't know why one would expect evidence when the ones asking never have any for their opinion. Just the way I see it.
 
As moderator:

It appears to me that we are entering either a situation where some folks are either wanting to get the last word with mere rhetoric or just trolling to get the last word.

In any case let's wrap this up
 
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100% correct...official records, pages and pages of them posted by m.e.wolf including words from southern officials...ignored. Timeline after timeline posted to show that southerners were acting aggressively and talking about secession long before and shortly before Lincoln won a fairly contested election and was inaugurated...ignored.

In response, "Lincoln did it." When asked for proof, "Lincoln's regime had to have its war." Opinion "proved" by more opinion...no history. At this point, it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. Please close it.
 
100% correct...official records, pages and pages of them posted by m.e.wolf including words from southern officials...ignored. Timeline after timeline posted to show that southerners were acting aggressively and talking about secession long before and shortly before Lincoln won a fairly contested election and was inaugurated...ignored.

In response, "Lincoln did it." When asked for proof, "Lincoln's regime had to have its war." Opinion "proved" by more opinion...no history. At this point, it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. Please close it.

As moderator:
What I am looking for is closing statements summarizing their evidence and argument by everyone.

One statement per poster, unless new evidence shows up.
 
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