This just in - Civil War!

After waking Marco up in the middle of the night to discuss American History this is what I gleaned. First, the Civil War really started not because of slavery but because of tariffs issue. Once Lincoln found himself in the middle of Civil War slavery became the visceral issue. The North was in perilous danger of loosing the support of border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware because of their agricultural dependence on slavery (or at least cheap labor.) The other Northern states were already self proclaimed "Freed states" and had no need of emancipation. Is it plausible that Lincoln bartered the alliance of critical border states, particularly Maryland because of the location of Washington D.C., with a delay in the emancipation of slaves in those states until official ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865? Maybe.

Which leads to the second point of discussion - the constitutionality of the Emancipation Proclamation. Remember that slavery is written into the Constitution. This was the compromise made to become a unified nation and a sticking point for Lincoln. Slavery was written as a constitutional right for the southern states. Once the South had seceded it was no longer part of the US and therefore not subject to (or protected by) the Constitution. At this point Lincoln could issue the Proclamation as part of going to war with a hostile nation. (Just like the US might say there can be no ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, for example.) Why would the South even care if some other country told them to no longer keep slaves? Isn't that why they seceded? What the Proclamation really did was allow slaves who escaped the South to the North to stay in the North not to be forcibly returned to their former southern slave-owners.

As for the slaves kept in border states, they had to wait for an act of Congress two years later that amended the Constitution in order to be freed. It was bummer for them but a slight perk for the land owners. This is why a victory for the North was so crucial. A loss would have possibly been followed by the southern migration of the border states to the slave owning country of Dixie and the US Capital would suddenly be surrounded by the South.

This touches on the much more current issue of Washington DC license plate tag line "Taxation without Representation". The Constitution states that the federal District of Colombia must stay independent of any one particular state of the Union for the very reason of finding its self absorbed by something like Dixie. It does not, however, say how large the District must be. Arlington was originally part of the DC but is now inside of Virginia. Some say the District should just be the Mall area from the Capital to the Lincoln Memorial. Others say DC deserves the same number of senators as any ordinary state. Additional Representatives in the House was just voted on and approved in House and still waits for Senate approval.

The deal is if DC gets a house seat so will Utah. It's a solid democratic seat for a solid republican seat and will therefore keep the balance of power. But Bush has said he will veto the measure. Utah stands to gain another congressional seat anyway after the next census of 2010 and then the Republicans get a seat with out having to give the Democrats one for DC. For any of you return missionaries from Utah who were serving missions during 2000 this has everything to do with YOU. The issue came about when the census counted the service persons from South Carolina living out of state as instate residents. That boost gave South Carolina population sufficient for another House seat. (I think it is one rep. per 100,000 citizens.) At the same time the feds failed to allow the 40,000 Utah missionaries living outside the state of Utah to be included as instate residents in the count and therefore, skipping Utah when they were dishing out servings congressional seats. The DC-Utah alliance was the compromise law makers came up with to deal with the obvious injustice.

This is as much as I could understand in the middle of the night on the subject/s. It may or may not be completely accurate. But hey, it's the Internet so I can write what ever I want.

Discuss.