Posted on 11/14/2009 9:13:31 AM PST by radioone
All court decisions are made after the fact. Are all of them meaningless?
That is a PR stunt that no one takes seriously.
History, like case law, is indeed written by the victors. You have to marvel at the convoluted logic that the SCOTUS went to to arrive at their decision. They had to find both that Texas never seceded AND that the Reconstructionist state government installed by congress, not the citizens of Texas, was legitimate. The decision effectively nullified the secession, but did not declare it illegal.
Further convolutions included the finding that the seceding states had forfeited their rights, but not their obligations. The SCOTUS never addressed the question of how this could be if, as they contended, the States had never left the Union in the first place. If the Confederate States had never left the United States they would still retain all their obligations (White v. Hart) and all their constitutional rights.
The decision never addressed the fact that earlier Supreme Court decisions had declared Confederate State governments de facto governments (Thorington v. Smith, Delmas v. Insurance Co., and Mauran v. Insurance Co.) in all acts that did not further the aims of the rebellion.
While the SCOTUS could have found that acts supporting the secession could be punishable as treason (art. III, sec. 3) they never did.
[You, lying in your teeth again] Davis chose war.
No, Lincoln chose war -- according to the published testimony of his own personal secretary John Nicolay, who was "present at the creation" and came to the same conclusion stainlessbanner does.
Ordinarily I would offer you the courtesy of citing and posting Nicolay's relevant passages, but inasmuch as this has already been done for you repeatedly, and inasmuch as your bigotry against the South and its people will not let you give an inch of your false, politically sectionalist construct of a just war justly waged against morally unredeemed Southern knuckledraggers, I will do no such thing.
I will merely point out to lurkers and posters that we have all been over the origins of Mr. Lincoln's War, and while there remain a good many gray areas -- some of them concealed by Lincoln's own policy and secretiveness, a secretiveness that is not apparent in the actions of other players in that vast drama but is instead unique to Lincoln -- that will occupy students of the war for generations, nevertheless there cannot remain much doubt about the actual policy that Lincoln chose to pursue from the moment of his election, and even before that, which he carried into effect as soon as he entered office.
I would just caution new people on FR not to waste any time at all doing "homework" assignments for you, or looking things up, or citing and quoting, or doing any of the other courteous, diligent things that honest discussants can be expected to do for one another. You are an anaerobic ideologue, a grind selling the same old bad baloney cooked up by Thad Stevens and "Spoons" Butler generations ago, and your "truth" is a vast lie carved in a block of obsidian, doomed to shatter in a billion pieces when finally the pressure of revelation becomes too much for its brittleness.
There was also the politics of the decision, and the politics of Chief Justice Chase's appointment to the Court. He ought to have recused himself, having been a member of Lincoln's war cabinet and therefore a principal war-fighter.
The dissent was better law, but if one accepts the dissent as valid, then certain embarrassing questions arise about the actions toward Texas of Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet in the name of their neological theory of the Supremacy Clause and the nature of the Union.
Chase was there to cover Lincoln and himself politically. He wrote a political rescript, not a legal one.
Listen to yourself. An oxymoron in the round! Secession frees the seceding entity by definition from the toils of its former engagement.
Try again.
Oh, for heavens sake...it is a fun thing...I’m sure you have been to Key West...they love this about their history...their flag...their national bird...etc. I simply mentioned that to make the statement that those folks stood up to the government and said again “No” so we’re outta here....and proceeded to do so....whether it was a stunt or a stand or a whatever...it was people standing against an intrusive government.
This has just become tiresome and I am ashamed of my contribution or attempts at such. It is pointless to discuss historical “happenings” without our learning how to avoid the same problems in the future and with the election of a socialist President it is obvious that we have not learned that a strong people and a weak government is the best form of governing....we remain too stuck in our own beliefs and histories (me included) that it is easy to get our focus over the real issues diverted...look at this...this subject
has become another discussion of a past war of division..no matter what it is called. I prefer my title...others prefer theirs. We can’t settle our feelings related to our pasts unless we choose to but we can choose to learn from that same past so we avoid identical or similar horrific events.
Look I don’t have time to educate you. Look up this stuff yourself.
If your mama ever wants to run you off...I’ll adopt you. You obviously have a brain and know how to use it.
Rome, I agree that the right to secede may be covered in the 10th Amendment. But what’s the proper process to secede? The Constitution is silent on the matter.
The union was formed with the Constitution being ratified. Does it follow that in order to dissolve the union, a comparable process should be followed? Did the states who wanted out of the Union follow that process? Exactly what process did they follow, and was it legal?
To say the 10th Amendment covers the right doesn’t speak to the justness and legality of process. What process do you think should have been followed?
Ah'm from Tex-uss!
A very typical Southron response. Throw out any outrageous statement you care to make up and then when challenged to support it, you can't. It's impossible to take you people seriously.
Listen to yourself, yourself, sophist. There's no guarantee that the "seceding entity" will be freer or more democratic or more libertarian than the "entity" it secedes from. Hence there may be no increase in liberty.
Condition one: Entity bound by treaty/agreement/constitution to larger entity.
Condition two: Same entity, unbound.
Which is "freer"?
Point.
Thanks for playing.
It's impossible to take your stiff neck and prejudices seriously. People better than all of us on this thread -- better in argument, better in documentation -- have posted documentation and argumentation to you until they were blue in the face, and you turn around and play this "No, I meant the green broom of the Wicked Witch of the West!" game with them.
Nobody will ever, ever document or support any argument whatsoever to your satisfaction, that flies in the face of your self-service of your triumphalist narrative, that might made right in an evil South.
But go ahead, man. Keep storing it up. The accounts will be balanced eventually.
It's impossible to discuss historical 'happenings' when the 'happenings' that you claim did not occur.
..this subject has become another discussion of a past war of division..no matter what it is called.
And that was the point of your very first post, so you shouldn't be surprised.
Something you are the expert on.
No, Lincoln chose war -- according to the published testimony of his own personal secretary John Nicolay, who was "present at the creation" and came to the same conclusion stainlessbanner does.
Davis chose war when he ordered the firing on Sumter.
I would just caution new people on FR not to waste any time at all doing "homework" assignments for you, or looking things up, or citing and quoting, or doing any of the other courteous, diligent things that honest discussants can be expected to do for one another.
Primarily because you can't.
Because you can't. You offer Southron myth and opinion that you try and masquerade as fact. Let's see what we have so far. Throwing out for a moment the continuous claims that the war was solely Lincoln's fault, we have "Lincoln had no constituional authority to wage war to prevent the southern states from seceding" in reply 12 but no support for the claim; "Key West, Florida, seceeded in 1982 and the residents there still consider themselves independent of the United States..even issuing passports that were used to legally travel outside the country." in reply 19, a complete falsehood; "If one studies their “accurate” history they will find the South was getting ready to give up slavery." in reply 43; among others. And when asked to support such claims, y'all pitch a hissy fit.
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