Where are are today with the scope and gluttonous proportion of our federal government can be traced back to one point in our history when state sovereignty and the great experiment in a constitutional republic died, and were replaced by an ultimate federal power and democracy (the opposite of what the founding fathers fought to birth in our nation). In an effort to preserve their original rights against unconstitutional federal overreach 11 states took issue with their state laws and sovereignty being usurped by federal threats, among other things a tension point was slavery and federal taxes on products and trade goods AND slaves. (the fed was supposed to get money from the slave trade, the southern states didnt think it should). But initially the war was not fought for the cause of freeing slaves by the north, but over the money the federal government wasnt getting on them, and it was not until the epic war was nearing its end that Congress argued that the conclusion of the enormous battle must result in freedom for slaves, and the documented arguments included that without such the south might not be economically crippled enough to be dependent. Ultimately the north, or Washington, fought to keep federal control of all states in the union, and thus preserve the seedling federal government which can be directly traced to the one we have today. But most importantly, what Lincoln and congress and the federal government as a whole gained from crushing the united states into a more singular democracy was a centralized banking system and federal currency, and ultimately federal income tax, and federal power over agriculture (the birth of the department of agriculture). So, in a way, we can thank Lincoln for our loss of freedoms today, and the ugly beginning of suspended constitutional rights. Should the country have split in two? At the end of the day there would likely have been no split, no war, and no need had the then federal government stepped down and allowed the sovereignty of individual states their constitutional place. Instead our children are taught that one day the south decided to leave the union to gorge itself on slaves, and Lincoln and the north stepped in as their champions and defenders and crippled the south to gain their freedom. In reality it was all about control of power and money, wherein the ONLY saving grace of the WHOLE tragic time was the (barely accomplished, in-under-the-wire) freeing of a long besieged and abused race of Americans.
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 14:09:45 +0000
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