Posted on 09/11/2014 11:24:25 AM PDT by C19fan
Right today if Texas seceded claiming all federal assets within it's boundaries, relinquishing all financial claims on the US and disavowing all financial liabilities to the US, assuming all liabilities to its citizens previously held by the US, Texas would be in great financial shape and the US would be hurting bad.
If you expanded it to a gulf coast coalition of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, the disparity in the financial and economic condition of the coalition vs. the remaining US would be staggering.
A good point.
What about liabilities run up by the country while Texas was a part? If you divide up the national debt by population then Texas's share would be around a trillion dollars. What will that do the Texas's financial condition? Then there's the $10 billion or so per year in Social Security payouts of all kinds that Texas would then be on the hook for.
Which is especially impressive when you consider that Lincoln wasn't even elected to Congress until 1847.
“Noticed Soros is going ape crazy trying to stop Scottish independence. Based on that fact alone, it must be a good idea.”
If that sociopath is going crazy because of Scottish independence, imagine how much worse he’d be if Texas pushed for secession.
soreass would have a stroke.
Which is one more good reason for Texas to file divorce papers with the US. :)
Texas would probably be better off going it alone. In all that group, and I assume you also meant to include Mississippi, only Texas receives less in federal spending for every tax dollar it sends out - $0.79. Of the others, Louisiana gets $1.37 for ever dollar it sends to Washington, Mississippi gets $2.34, Alabama gets $2.46 and Florida gets $2.02. Texas would be tying itself to a group of economically dependent states.
Texas leaving would weaken the remaining states and might start a stampede.
I think Soros might be down with that...
Why should Texas assume any liability for debts of the US if they are no longer part of the US. The balance of payments over the full history of Texas would show that Texas provided more in revenue to the Federal Govt. than they received in revenue from the Federal Government. All Texas would need to do is assume any liability towards its citizen formerly held by the US. They could easily pay the SS, military and other pensions for its citizens out of current revenue.
Because those obligations were entered into by the nation as a whole, and maybe also because two Texan presidents - LBJ and Bush - where more responsible than any others for the policies that ran up the tab? But go ahead and walk away from debt obligations. Let's see how well your new country does attracting investments in the future, having welched in the past.
The balance of payments over the full history of Texas would show that Texas provided more in revenue to the Federal Govt. than they received in revenue from the Federal Government.
I would love to see your support for that claim. As recently as 2012 Texas was receiving more money in federal spending than they sent to DC in taxes. Link
All Texas would need to do is assume any liability towards its citizen formerly held by the US. They could easily pay the SS, military and other pensions for its citizens out of current revenue.
Plus Medicare, disability, VA care, so forth and so on. And don't forget, you're paying it for Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, too. Those four were bigger drains on the federal coffers than Texas was.
From an economic viability standpoint, that a skewed perspective. Their is a tremendous amount of economic activity from the Gulf states that as is does not show on their books. If Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas were a single economic entity, I estimate they would control over 60% of the food, raw materials and manufactured goods required by the US. They would probably control close to 70% or more of the energy required by the US. Under the current economic system many of those states net only a modest amount of the benefit. As a new country, they would net 4 to 5 times what they currently do. They would be like the Walmart of everything the US needs and there wouldn't be any Target or K-mart competing.
You would be wrong in that. In 2013 their combined GNP was $2.885 trillion, or about 17% of the nation's GNP. Link
They would probably control close to 70% or more of the energy required by the US.
There is no doubt that they are large energy producers, with Louisiana and Texas leading your pack.
Under the current economic system many of those states net only a modest amount of the benefit. As a new country, they would net 4 to 5 times what they currently do. They would be like the Walmart of everything the US needs and there wouldn't be any Target or K-mart competing.
Again, I think you badly overstate their importance in that area.
You could have a point there Ho-Tep.
Your hero was actually against defending Texas from invasion by the Mexican army. Ironic when considering how Lincoln would launch the Civil War while Congress was out of session:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3672
Abraham Lincoln Protests the Mexican War
Digital History ID 3672
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Date:1847
Annotation: Elected as a Whig to Congress in 1846, Abraham Lincoln gained notoriety when he lashed out against the Mexican War, calling it immoral, proslavery, and a threat to the nation’s republican values. President James K. Polk had called for war, accusing Mexico of shedding of “American blood on American soil.” Lincoln responded by introducing a series of resolutions demanding to know the “particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed.” One of Lincoln’s constituents branded him “the Benedict Arnold of our district,” and he was denied renomination by his own party.
Document: Whereas the President of the United States, in his message of May 11, 1846, has declared that “the Mexican Government not only refused to receive him, [the envoy of the United States,] or listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil:” And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that “we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our citizens:” And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that “the Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.” And whereas this House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil: Therefore, Resolved By the House of Representatives, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House —
1st. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the Mexican revolution.
2d. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.
3d. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army.
4th. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.
5th. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or the United States, by consent or compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way.
6th. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the messages stated; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the enclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.
7th. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.
8th. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas.
Source: Abraham Lincoln, “Spot Resolutions,” December 22, 1847
Boy you got us there! That rascal Lincoln should have demanded that the south suspend their insurrection until congress could be reconvened.
Reading through the comments the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction) was the first thing that come to my mind. Unless Texans undertook the route described in Publius’s post #110 MAD would almost inevitably be the result.
Secession isn’t simply spinning around three times while shouting “I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee!” There’s a ton of things that must be negotiated as a necessary part of any organized withdrawal.
Our time would be better spent finding ways to minimizing the power of leftists.
Lincoln's not the one who chose to launch a war while congress was out of session. That was the confederacy's decision. I guess by your reasoning, if Pearl Harbor had been attacked, or 9/11 happened while congress was out of session, the president should have just done nothing until they were back.
And the War with Mexico isn't exactly the most glorious chapter in American history. The Polk administration looked for an excuse to seize large amounts of territory and found one. In his memoir, U.S. Grant called the war, "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
Back to 1861.
Had the South returned their representatives and senators to Congress to negotiate an amicable divorce, there would have been three burning issues.
That last one would have been a critically nasty bone of contention in congressional negotiations. The Southern attitude would have been that slaves are property, property is sacred, and thus runaway property should have no protection simply because it crosses a new international boundary. The North would have accepted none of that. A number of historians have stated that that one point alone would have guaranteed an inevitable armed conflict over secession.
There would be bones of contention today, and federal land and debts owed to the federal entity would be among the largest. Thank God we don't have slavery to fight over.
As Lincoln understood, a constitutional amendment and its attendant debate would provide the proper platform to set the terms of divorce. It would be the one technique to get around the Supreme Court's 1869 decision in Texas v. White, where it stated that the Union was permanent and indivisible.
Thanks for the reply Publius. My reference to MAD wasn’t merely nuclear - it was more more towards the likelihood of an armed response - whatever arms at hand.
And I hadn’t even considered #3 but I agree that it would of necessity enter any negotiations aimed at amicable secession.
So, basically the south wanted to become their own country, but still have control over US law.
What's fascinating to me is that escaped slaves were a minor nuisance given the amount of political heat they generated. The generally accepted number is about a thousand a year--out of a population of 4 million slaves.
The South would have wanted a treaty on that issue as part of the amicable divorce. The North would never have countenanced it. That issue raised hackles on both sides for its symbolic value. Even Henry Clay, who was an emancipationist, understood that when he wrote the Fugitive Slave Law that was part of the Compromise of 1850.
“And the War with Mexico isn’t exactly the most glorious chapter in American history. “
I guess not as long as you think that Colorado, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and New Mexico would be better off as part of Mexico. If Congressman Lincoln had gotten his wish that would be the case.
“Lincoln’s not the one who chose to launch a war while congress was out of session. That was the confederacy’s decision.”
Is that the church of Lincoln’s current position? ‘They made him do it!’ Poor Abe, he had no choice in the matter.
Putin makes pretty much the same argument when he explains away his responsibility for sending troops into Ukraine. Some politicians just can’t stand secession and will send in troops and then blame the fighting on their targets.
And good try with the Pearl Harbor/ 9-11 rationale. Ft Sumter was located in Confederate territory, quite the opposite of the Pearl Harbor and Twin Towers situation. What Ft Sumter does resemble is Boston harbor 90 years earlier, where King George was sending occupation troops into Boston harbor and the colonists were firing on them.
Lincoln of course was looking for an excuse to launch his war and he gladly seized on Sumter. The sole casualty at Ft Sumter was a horse.
Had Congress been in session, or had Abe waited for them to return, it’s unlikely that they would have agreed to plunge the country into a civil war. There had been previous cannon fire on Ft Sumter in January with the Star of the West and Congress made no move to declare war on the Confederacy.
But with Congress safely out of session Lincoln called up 75,000 troops, blockaded ports, declared martial law, and suspended habeus corpus all on his own. He did this with a series of Presidential Proclamations that resemble the Executive Orders so beloved by Obama. It must be an Illinois President thing.
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