minoanmiss | Today I did something educational

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I read some of the The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States , or at least as much as I could manage to.

Interesting.

I also need to find and save a copy of the actual Articles of Confederation but I think I'll give myself a break first.

Current Mood: angry

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From:

princessofgeeks

This doesn't sound like much of a vacation!!!

ALL THE HUGS

From:

tibicina

Why the Articles of Confederation? (I think my copy - in a book with the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution is still back in Pasadena. - note 2/3 of the book is the California Constitution that thing is LONG, but at the time was even longer, they've since officially removed all the things where a later amendment repealed all or part of an earlier amendment to condense it again.)

From:

lemonsharks

Some of the MAGA-hat wearing bridgetrolls are holding up the articles of confederation as some kind of utopian perfect government illegally toppled in the constitutional convention.

From:

tibicina

If the states didn't ratify it, then they didn't end up part of the new United States. So... no.

Also, it wasn't a perfect government. It had a lot of problems. Some of which nearly led to open revolt by the former soldiers.

There's a reason it got replaced. Maybe they should go read the Federalist Papers. (if nothing else, that will take them roughly forever.)

From:

minoanmiss

Because I never have, and a recent discussion I read of Confederate "heritage" and "states rights" and "the war of Northern Aggression" made me curious, not least because the discussion excerpted a lovely section about how the 'African races' are better suited to heat and to labor and to not thinking than White people so the SOuth just wants to uphold the natural order of things. I feel like it's a deliberate omission from American education that the text isn't taught, so we can continue to uphold the lie that the South was fighting for anything at all besides the right to own human beings.

I kind of want to send a note back in time to myself to think of this when I was in high school and began arguing with the States' RIghts crowd. I could have saved a lot of time and energy and pain if I had simply been able to quote a few sentences every time someone babbled at me about Heritage and Culture and States' Rights etc etc.

From:

tibicina

Ahh. I'm not sure it's so much a deliberate omission as it is that our history classes have too much to cover and not enough time to cover it all and more every year and some things have to go. So the 'we tried this, it didn't work and we put together a different form of government' gets dropped by the wayside. As it is a lot of history classes don't even make it to the 1960 or barely make it there. Something has to get glossed over.

That said, obviously, I had a junior high school that had us at least read through them, though we didn't spend a lot of time discussing them. I must admit, I don't think I've done more than glance at them since then.

(insert timelapse here)

Annnnd, having just gone through and reread them, unless they are talking about some later articles among, specifically, the seceding states and not the government of the United States before the current one... that passage isn't in there.

If they /are/ talking about the government formed by the seceding states, then... yeah, I must admit we didn't really bother reading that. Then again, my schools also were pretty darn clear on the war primarily being about whether they were allowed to keep slaves or not. (Of course, I think the California position at the time could officially be summed up as 'we believe you have the right to secede, but we don't agree with your reasons for doing it, so we're not joining you'.)

Also, they lost that war.

From:

minoanmiss

The thing is, after the one hundred thousandth and one time I heard the South was fighting for Freedom and against Northern Aggression it occurred to me how convenient it is that we don't actually go over what the actual secessionists said (at least, you're the first person I know who has cited actually reading the Articles). If there really aren't references to slavery and Black inferiority I need to know that, too.

Also, they lost that war.

Did they, though? The Southern School of historians has been pretty much allowed to rewrite the history of the Civil War instead of getting laughed out of every university and institution as they deserved. Terence (you remember Terence?) told me the South was right, and I realized in that moment what he must actually think of me, descendant of slaves as I am. I look at the US and how Black people are often treated in this country -- the myth of our inferiority is alive and well. I'm not really sure the South actually lost the Civil War, at that. At least not culturally.

From:

tibicina

The Articles of Confederation weren't what the secessionists said. the Articles of Confederation were the governing document of the former British colonies in North America before the current Constitution which made us the United States of America. (There's actually a provision in them which would allow Canada to join the confederation, but not any other British Colonies.) We started out with a much looser confederation which had... a LOT of problems. The Federalist Papers were the argument for stronger government which resulted in our current form.

I believe the governing document for the secessionist was The Constitution of the Confederate States. Having gone to look... didn't read through all of it, but did look at a summary of the differences and I'm fairly certain the quote in question came from that.

Wait, which Terence? I'm not actually sure if I remember Terence.

It certainly wasn't taught how the Southern 'Historians' might like at any of the schools I attended, but... I went to private, liberal schools for the most part. But yeah, I can see why, given the treatment of black people both historically and currently, you'd question whether they lost culturally. I still think they have, but I also think really ugly things can hang on and fester for a long time and come back. People can be amazing and wonderful and kind and generous. People can be awful and horrible and cruel. (It hurts most when we see that the same person can be both in different contexts, sometimes even at the same time.)

I don't have an answer other than to keep telling the truth and working towards justice. But the truth is absolutely that one of the primary issues the secessionists had was that they knew they weren't going to be allowed to keep holding slaves for much longer and wanted to get out while they still could.