On May 11, 5:29 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> AlfredMontestruc<montest...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > I agree 100% that the whole business of slavery was and is wrong,
> > but the fact of the matter is that the methods used in the US South
> > to control slaves was more psychology, and control of education and
> > information from early childhood, and less direct force or threat
> > of it.
>
> True. Most slaves believed they owed to their masters whatever their
> masters said, just as most people today believe they owe to the state
> whatever the state says.
>
> After the 1831 Turner rebellion, it was made illegal here in Virginia
> to teach slaves to read or write. (Books were allegedly the cause of
> Turner getting "uppity" ideas.) There were similar laws in most other
> slave states.
>
> > My take on that is that the opinion of most slaves on such matters
> > as secession was what they thought the master wanted it to be given
> > the environment they were raised in.
>
> Right. In fact the justification, after the Civil War, for keeping
> blacks from voting, was that they didn't know what they were doing,
> and were all under the influence of various white people, so allowing
> them to vote would just be giving some white people more votes than
> other white people.
>
> Nevertheless, a government which does not allow all of its adult
> citizens to vote is not in any sense democratic, and doesn't even have
> the pretense of legitimacy. It's especially hypocritical of states to
> count people they do not allow to vote for purposes of representation.
> At least they uses to only be allowed to count people they forbid from
> voting as 3/5 of a person. I don't think they should be allowed to
> count us at all. If a state wants to disenfranchise some percentage
> of its population, it should lose that exact same percentage of its
> influence in Congress. Fair is fair.
I see your point and agree with it, however it was not in the interest
of white southerners to give up the added representation, nor in the
non-slave holding southern white people's interest to allow slaves to
vote as for all practical purposes given the situation the slaves
would vote as told by their masters and that would give the slave
masters more political power than they already had, which was too much
in the opinion of most non-slave holders in the south.
I gather that northern free states agreed to it as when it was agreed
to much more than half of the states had legal slavery. I know that
Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey were all slave states as of
the writing of the constitution in addition to those that were still
slave states in 1860. That made a majority of both states and white
population, so I imagine the delegates from New England thought they
were doing good to get the 3/5 compromise rather than get slaves
counted as one man each for representation purposes.
Politics is the art of possible compromises.
> > However, for the reasons I list, and also the fact that the secret
> > ballot type election was almost unheard of and unused in English
> > speaking nations till it was adopted by striking miners in Australia
> > 1854 and gradually spread over the English speaking world. It had
> > not gotten to any part of the USA by 1860.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot
>
> In "The Constitution of No Authority" in 1870, Lysander Spooner makes
> a good argument *against* secret ballots. He argued that people
> should take full responsibility for their actions, and not hide behind
> anonymity like a thief in the night. (The full text of his essay is
> available online.)
I see his point, but we are not holding citizens responsible for
voting any given way at all.
I also see the founders arguments against universal suffrage as having
merit as well. They looked at Rome and that one of the reasons for
the collapse of the Roman Republic was mobs voting for bread and
circuses having more votes than taxpayers.
I see the land owning restriction to voting, if taken as meaning to
restrict the vote to people with a stake in the community as not
totally unwise.
If I were to rewrite it now it would be more along the lines of you
must be a net contributer to society, say that to vote in a given year
you must have paid more in taxes in the last year then you got federal
government in any form of payment. As in military and civil service
types who are not independently wealthy, do not vote, neither do
people who take significant amounts of federal assistance, even if in
a disaster like Katrina for example. Or people who provide goods
directly to the federal government and only to the federal
government. So if the feds buy say ammo or airplanes you make, but
you pay more taxes than the government buys, you can still vote. Not
otherwise.
>
> > My point is that these votes were structurally the same as the
> > procedures by which those states entered the Union, if entry into
> > the Union was proper by those procedures, then exit was just as
> > proper. If the procedures are improper, then the union was improper.
>
> I agree. During the Civil War, *both* sides were in the wrong.
I agree that the south was wrong to continue slavery, and wrong to
secede over that issue, but not wrong in principle to secede.
I guess I divide it up like this, those that seceded only over the
election of Lincoln, and their fears over slavery, were in the wrong
those who (like Virginia) when presented with a choice of either fight
for the union against the rest of the south, or join them in secession
were not.
I think Texas should not have seceded for the reasons given (slavery
and the preservation of it), but could have correctly given the reason
that one thing the US government was supposed to do (implicitly) for
Texas vis-a-vee the annexation of Texas in ~ 1845 was assure public
order, and peace between the states, and protect Texas from Mexico and
Indian nations, and obviously as of late January 1861, the federal
government was falling down on the job.
Texas could then say when ever the hell you get your act together
again we might consider rejoining, otherwise buzz off.
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