tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-641473647873767935.post2999370250636914379..comments2023-09-22T05:25:18.096-07:00Comments on Loblolly Log: So, What About Those Mississippi Democrats in 1869?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14177267684105105969noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-641473647873767935.post-63073175943515184012016-05-25T05:48:56.905-07:002016-05-25T05:48:56.905-07:00The Fifteenth Amendment is the voting rights amend...The Fifteenth Amendment is the voting rights amendment and its main purpose was to ensure the right of the Freedmen to vote in the South. It was a brainchild of the Radical Republicans and its ancillary purpose was to keep the Republicans in power across the South. The most sinister part of the Amendment, as was the case with the Thirteenth and the most insidious of all these reconstruction amendments (the Fourteenth), is the final section giving Congress the right to decide how they would be enforced in ALL the states. This was egregiously unconstitutional and that section in these amendments ended Federalism as the Founders intended it to be. Congress had taken powers meant for the states alone and usurped it--and made the Constitution applicable to the states. That short, final section in each is the reason the Federal government can interfere in the states today—the Fourteenth gives it carte blanche. At the time, some Northern states realized the unconstitutionality of the Fifteenth Amendment. Without the ratification votes of the Southern states, the Radicals could not have gotten it ratified. They had to offset rejection in those Northern states with approval in the Southern ones, which is why they had to control the Southern legislatures. That was the purpose of the Reconstruction Acts. It was all calculated. It’s also why Congress linked ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to MS, VA, and TX being readmitted to the Union—both conditions unconstitutional. The Fifteenth Amendment was one of the milestones on the road to democracy and centralization.<br /><br />The Proscription clauses that the Radicals in MS put into the state’s 1868 “progressive” constitution disfranchised anyone who had supported the Confederacy from their right to vote or hold public office—forever. The stipulation was that anyone who could not swear to the Iron Clad Oath was disqualified. You can find that thing online, but basically, it says if you lent “any” support at all to the Confederacy you perjured yourself. Of course, people throughout the South supported the Confederacy on a day to day basis; it was their government. This legally disqualified a bunch of Mississippi taxpayers forever. The "forever" was above and beyond what Congress had stipulated in the Reconstruction Acts forbidding Confederate leaders from ever holding public office again and the vote was restricted across the board, but not forever. <br /><br />Now, plenty of Southerners had received amnesty since the end of the war, prior to the Acts. After enactment of the Acts, the state Republican Parties (it was the same across the South) constantly sent memorials to Congress identifying individuals for whom they wanted encumbrances removed so these new devotees could serve the Party. The requests were granted. So, if one swore allegiance to the Radicals’ “brave new world” he could get his vote back and hold office. Many Southerners wouldn’t do it, and though I haven’t seen it, I consider that maybe those (Dems) had their own lines of getting the encumbrances removed through Democratic friends in Congress. This would have worked primarily, I would think, for the politically connected, not every poor Southern boy who raised arms in defense of his homeland. It would be an interesting study. I don’t know legally how they would have gotten around that Iron Clad Oath. The government had started that requirement way back during the war for Yankees. I mean, really, the assumption that a spy or a traitor would be above swearing to a lie? Bureaucrats! LOL. Perhaps their knowing Southerners to be men of honor, they automatically assumed the oath to be a security check?<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14177267684105105969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-641473647873767935.post-57759657940652540042016-05-23T18:14:08.304-07:002016-05-23T18:14:08.304-07:00What were the proscription clauses? Clauses requir...What were the proscription clauses? Clauses requiring former Confederate soldiers to renounce the Confederacy? What was the main objection to the 15th Amendment? Sorry for my ignorance.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15525686507075560185noreply@blogger.com