Posted on 02/28/2008 10:39:14 AM PST by cowboyway
If that is true then why didn't the next 37 states join merely by holding a convention,ratifying the Constitution, and sending a bunch of congressmen and senators to Washington and say, "We're here?" Why did they need permission to join? Permission, I'll point out, which was sometimes denied them for years after they first asked to join. I will agree that each state has equal status with the other states, which is why I believe that all states would need the consent of a majority of the other states to leave.
We have allowed the Left to brand the War for Southern Independence as a type of race war for slavery. Slavery was little more than a flash point in a dispute between Federalists/Nationalists (like Hamilton) and those who believed in strong state sovereignty (like Jefferson). It wasn’t a Civil War, because the South didn’t want to rule the North, they just wanted independence from them.
The South wanted to revert back to the days of the Articles of Confederation. That’s why they called themselves Confederates. We can’t let the statist-minded Left reduce this to a PC war against ‘racists’ and ‘bigots.’
The Confederate flag is offensive to those who loathe state sovereignty.
If that is true then why did the confederates adopt a constitution almost identical in most respects to the real Constitution? Why didn't they adopt a form of the old Articles of Confederation?
The left has plenty of help from 'conservatives'. In wake of the death of WFB, Rush has been discussing the splintering conservative movement. The McCainite wing, if you will.
This wing of conservatives has a tendency to be politically correct and sides with the left on several issues, the Confederate battle flag being one.
The Confederate flag is offensive to those who loathe state sovereignty.
Yep. There are 'conservatives' on these threads that have stated that the union is more important that freedom, in so many words.
Agreed. The original 13 states operated under the same Constitution with the same powers and the same restrictions as the next 37 did.
What I think is more interesting is what would have happened had one or more of the states had voted not to ratify the Constitution after the first nine had done so---would the nine have sent troops to force them into the new Union?
I don't think so. North Carolina and Rhode Island dragged their feet for over a year after the Constitution had been adopted and I'm not aware of any military threats that were made against them. Economic pressure was applied but I don't see a war to get them to ratify.
It's been going on in one form or another for 232 years. If not perpetual then at least it's long lasting.
But the AoC were better for states’ rights than the USC. The Confederates tried to combine the best of the two.
That said, the delegates convening in Phil to draft the USC were actually not supposed to be doing so. They had not been elected and appointed to that convention. Drafting a constitution that would replace the AoC was a definite violation of the union of the states as it was then in force.
It looks like the RNC has decided to become a pop star rather than a force representative of the greatest number of people. I say this because Republicans lose when they run to the middle. They win when they stand for conservative principles. Everything the RNC is hoping to gain by moving to the middle/left it will lose. The DNC has that ground conquered and will not lose it. But the RNC can lose the conservative ground by Dem candidates that can successfully position convince the voters that national defense and sovereignty is most secure through less-hawkish means.
With all due respect I don't see any combination of the two at all. The Articles of Confederation had a weak central government, the confederate constitution had the same strong central government with the same powers as before. The Articles of Confederation had no judiciary while the confederate constitution required the same supreme court as before, though admittedly the confederates ignored that. The Article of Confederation gave the states the power over their own economies by giving them the power to create their own money, the confederate constitution took that away. The Artices of Confederation gave states the freedom to act in their own best interests, to enter into agreements with some states or to ignore the interests of other states. The confederate constitution didn't allow that. The Articles of Confederation gave states the right to operate their own military in their own defense. The confederate constitution did not. The Articles of Confederation said the states could tax or not as they wished. The confederate constitution gave the government the same right to tax the states that it enjoyed under the real Constitution. In short, the confederate constitution kept just about all the restrictions and granted none of the powers given up when the Constitution was ratified. About all it did was protect slavery to an extent never imagined under the U.S. Constitution.
It was called the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
"We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, "
Notice two things, "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character", which means that the drafters of the Confederate Constitution recognized that each state was in charge of its own destiny, and "form a permanent federal government" which is much different from "a perpetual union".
You seem to have overlooked that little 4 year break in there. That kinda resets the clock.
No it doesn't. Rebellion or no, the Southern states were still part of the Union.
The Confederates sought a return to the “con-federacy,” that is, an anti-national, state-sovereign existence.
The AoC had a weak central government. Part of the argument to pass the USC was that because there was no strong central government, issues like taxation for warfare had no enforcement. As a digression, this was a lie. The states gave more money than was asked of them and thus a ‘national enforcer’ was not necessary.
The USC is an excellent document as it was intended by the anti-nationalists. But the pro-nationalist forces (including G. Washington) were powerful enough, early enough to control the judiciary to sway the country to a nationalist stance. While the Taney court undid (redirected, actually) many of these nationalist changes, the current of the stream had been established.
The Confederates drew up their constitution using the USC as a base but with the attempt to revert back to the anti-nationalist stance that was adopted as ‘the’ underlying intent of the USC and that was the stronger effect of the far-weaker AoC.
that was the stronger = what was the stronger
I heard Hannity say that he was going to change his voter registration to 'conservative' from Republican.
When I get home in June I plan to do the same.
When Lincoln's political attempts to preserve the union failed, he used the military wing of his diplomatic corps to force the seceded states to return to the union. Furthermore, I would maintain that the union was severed for longer than the period between when the Southern states seceded and Appomattox. I would also include the military occupation following the war, ignobly known as 'Reconstruction'. Therefore, the union has had a continuous run of 133 years. Still not a bad run but with the socialists gaining control, it appears to be about over. (Osama Hussein Obama will do to the Constitution what Lincoln did to the 10th Amendment. What is it about president's from Illinois?)
secession - the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or political entity. Typically there is a strong issue difference that drives the withdrawal. The word is derived from the Latin term secessio.
How so? What changes did they incorporate into their constitution to accomplish this? How did it weaken the central government or return powers to the states?
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