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There was a lot of political disputes among the leaders in the CSA. The political basis of states right swung so fully in that direction that it made it impossible for the federal CSA government to function. I fully expect that had they won the war the CSA states would have divided into separate countries and most possibly fought wars against themselves.
I've also always thought that, I figure it probably would've started out in the states with the dual governments (Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia). Who knows... glad it never happened though.
Would you be shattered to learn that you are presenting nothing with which I am not already familiar? That there is no conspiracy to keep this information from the public?
How did you learn about it if the information is being concealed? Did you buy it from a black market street vendor? How did you elude the History Police when they stopped your car and had their Weigley sniffing dogs inspect it?
How would you compare the steps that the Union took to insure that western Virginia remained under Federal control despite the wishes of the majority to the steps that the Confederates took to making sure that eastern Tennessee remained under rebel control against the wishes of the majority of that population?
Actually, almost nothing of what I posted is to be found in any books on West Virginia history. If there is a book that says that most of West Virginia's delegates signed the secession ordinance I would be interested to learn. In one recent book on the state history a lot of the information came from my website. In the recent WVU Pub. Broadcasting special "The Road to Statehood" they quoted a false text for Pierpont's telegram. As I said in my second post, I attribute all this to laziness and indifference on the part of historians., I'm sorry you want to cast me as a conspiracy type.
, I'm sorry you want to cast me as a conspiracy type.
You did that yourself by presenting a video called "The Secret History of West Virginia" which featured information available elsewhere to anyone who wanted it.
"Secret" has many meanings, "unknown" being one, it was also an attention getter to distinguish it from the many videos on Youtube. You will find many educational videos using the word "secret" without meaning conspiracy, such as "Secrets of the Dead". If you want to interpret it that way, fine. If you watched the video there was no mention of conspiracy at all, and documents cited were displayed for the viewer as much as practical to keep the video under 15 minutes.
You still haven't told me of a book that states that most of West Virginia's delegates signed the ordinance of secession. The information is not in any West Virginia history that I know, and I have been doing this for a decade and more. The information is absent from the WV Archives website, and the WVU Online Exhibit has none of this information, it is "secret". If the information is so publicly available, as you say, yet the WV Archives and WVU provide none of it, it is truly "secret". The people who've watched the video, mostly West Virginians, are astounded by the information, at least the ones who contact me about it. And they are my target audience.
I have been through every West Virginia history I could get my hands on, and this material is in none of them, until recently, thanks to my website. It plays no part in the telling of West Virginia's history from any official website. You only have to look at the WV Archives online exhibit "A State of Convenience", which presents just one side of the history as if it were to total story.
I am at the point of repeating myself, so I will just leave it. In light of James Loewen's book, "Lies Across America", I made another short video showing how monuments distort our perceptions of history. I once corrected Mr. Loewen about a WV memorial he mentioned in his book, and he was quite nice about it, as he did not understand West Virginia's history either.
You still haven't told me of a book that states that most of West Virginia's delegates signed the ordinance of secession.
Why would I? I have advanced no such argument. My notation was that the information is not something which hasn't been previously available, not that it was a pile of lies.
And you have not answered my question....
Quote:
How would you compare the steps that the Union took to insure that western Virginia remained under Federal control despite the wishes of the majority to the steps that the Confederates took to making sure that eastern Tennessee remained under rebel control against the wishes of the majority of that population?
The point is....it was a civil war, a time of competing claims of ultimate sovereignty within a single nation. You cannot expect that under such conditions, all will be as it was in times of peace. There was no language in the Constitution which spelled out the lawful process by which a state may secede, so the states that wished to do so simply made one up and declared it lawful. When President Lincoln suspended writs of Habeas Corpus in order to retain Federal control over Maryland, he was acting outside of the law, only Congress may suspend those writs in emergencies according to the Constitution. Lincoln advanced the argument that since Congress was not in session, the executive had to act in the emergency. Later, when Congress was convened, they retroactively validated all that the president had done. That wasn't any lawful procedure either, retroactive validation, but Congress did it anyway.
What was lawful about the southern seizures of Federal property in the southern states? They simply seized and claimed it was lawful on the basis of having seceded, which in itself also wasn't lawful.
See the pattern here? When normal legal processes break down, in order to get things done you need to get creative. Both sides in the war got creative.
The creation of West Virginia was not a "democratic decision". In actuality, West Virginia represents the first, and probably only, successful example of a US Government backed junta.
Government back "junta" I suppose if the argument that the western counties voted 34,677 to 19, 121 against secession (Richard O. Curry "A House Divided", pg. 147)
Pierpont himself told Lincoln in Dec. 1862- "The Union men of West Va were not originally for the Union because of the new state." The telegram is in the Library of Congress. The state was created with only a minority support of the residents.[/quote]
Secessionists from the Tidewater and Piedmont tried three times to pass an ordinance of secession. Unionists delayed the first, on March 8, on procedural grounds. On April 4, as Unionist delegate John Baldwin met with Abraham Lincoln in Washington to discuss how war might be averted, the convention voted a second ordinance of secession down by a two-thirds majority. On April 17, after troops in South Carolina fired on Ft. Sumter and Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, delegates from Virginia voted to secede from the United States, 88 to 55.
The two votes for secession followed striking geographic patterns. Most delegates west of the Blue Ridge mountains voted to stay in the Union on April 4. Of the western delegates who voted to secede, most represented one of a number of contiguous counties west of the New River. Many more secessionist delegates called the Piedmont and Tidewater home, though delegates from counties closest to Virginia’s northern border tended to vote against an ordinance that, by then, was certain to hasten civil war.
In international law, a State is a sovereign. A Union is a voluntary league of sovereign States, joined together for certain common purposes, for the good of all the member States.
The founders of the USA were quite familiar with the use of these words. We did not become the United Provinces of America in 1776, nor in 1789 with the new constitution.
The States never renounced their sovereignty. There has never been a national sovereign.
When delegates at Philadelphia in 1787 proposed putting into the US constitution federal authority to coerce States, the motion was tabled without a vote. In Federalist Paper #40, Madison himself admitted the States retained their sovereignty under the US constitution.
The Civil War was simply a war of Northern aggression against the Southern States.
Just as the sovereign States had a right to secede from the British Empire, and later seceded from the Articles of Confederation, so too the Southern States seceded from the Union defined by the constitution of 1787.
I understand why this is so hard for Yankees to understand. Yanks want the Union to be unbreakable, so they imagine it is. The North wanted to believe the Union was unbreakable, but their was no warrant for this view anywhere in the history of the United States or its constitution.
The old flag was glorious because each star on it represented a sovereign State which had freely joined the Union. After the Civil War, the Union was dead, replaced by that cold monster we call the United States Government. With the Union died democracy, replaced by a plutocratic oligarchy.
In international law, a State is a sovereign. A Union is a voluntary league of sovereign States, joined together for certain common purposes, for the good of all the member States.
The founders of the USA were quite familiar with the use of these words. We did not become the United Provinces of America in 1776, nor in 1789 with the new constitution.
The States never renounced their sovereignty. There has never been a national sovereign.
When delegates at Philadelphia in 1787 proposed putting into the US constitution federal authority to coerce States, the motion was tabled without a vote. In Federalist Paper #40, Madison himself admitted the States retained their sovereignty under the US constitution.
The Civil War was simply a war of Northern aggression against the Southern States.
Just as the sovereign States had a right to secede from the British Empire, and later seceded from the Articles of Confederation, so too the Southern States seceded from the Union defined by the constitution of 1787.
I understand why this is so hard for Yankees to understand. Yanks want the Union to be unbreakable, so they imagine it is. The North wanted to believe the Union was unbreakable, but their was no warrant for this view anywhere in the history of the United States or its constitution.
The old flag was glorious because each star on it represented a sovereign State which had freely joined the Union. After the Civil War, the Union was dead, replaced by that cold monster we call the United States Government. With the Union died democracy, replaced by a plutocratic oligarchy.
You have a very banal view on a topic which has been debated endlessly on this forum...
Pick anyone you want and you'll find the lengthy contributions from various people shredding your argument.
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