Nonsense, the constitutional arguments were addressed by our Founders, especially Madison, but none ever supported unilateral unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.
Lincoln's position was the same as outgoing Democrat President Buchanan & others which was: states had no "right of secession" at pleasure, but the Union should do nothing militarily to stop them.
FLT-bird: "Ridiculous.
Of course they seceded in 1776.
They left a larger political entity...they declared independence."
But in effect Founders had already been declared independent by the Brits -- that's what a declaration of rebellion & war is.
It means they are no longer governed by British law and must be defeated militarily.
So our Founders merely recognized the "secession" Brits had already declared them in.
And there was nothing even remotely resembling those 1776 conditions in late 1860 or early 1861.
FLT-bird: "Hell, the colonies had never been recognized as sovereign.
They were on far worse legal footing than the states which left in 1861."
In fact our Founders had no "legal footing" at all -- zero, zip, nada footing -- except, except the one thing that truly mattered: necessity.
They were declared outlaws -- outside the law and subject to hanging if captured.
The only issue was, as Patrick Henry expressed: "liberty or death".
So they chose liberty.
And nothing remotely resembling that 1776 situation existed in late 1860 or early 1861.
FLT-bird: "By 1776, the colonies had taken up arms against the Brits.
Lexington and Concord and all that? 1775."
You have it exactly backwards.
By 1776 the Brits had taken up arms against our Founders, revoked their charters of self government, declared them in rebellion and waging war:
So in 1776 "secession" (our Founders said "disunion") was already a fact accomplished by Brits making their Declaration a necessity.
FLT-bird: "They took up arms the year before declaring independence."
Only in response to British "injuries and oppressions" (remember that Va. phrase?) making resistance necessary (as NY said).
No situation even remotely resembling that existed in late 1860 or early 1861.
FLT-bird: "Mutual consent in 1788? WTH?
The Treaty of Paris was in 1783.
By 1788 the colonies’ sovereignty had been recognized by treaty for 5 years already.
The British parliament and king certainly did not consent to the colonies declarations of independence in 1776.
So much for 'mutual'."
Sorry, my fault for assuming you understand the basics of American history, will try not to do that again.
1788 was the year our Founders "seceded" from the old Articles of Confederation by mutual consent to adopt their new Constitution instead.
Necessity and mutual consent are the two (and only two) legitimate reasons our Founders acknowledged for dissolving one polity and forming a new one.
Neither condition existed in late 1860 or early 1861.
FLT-bird: "What they did was almost exactly like what the sovereign states did in 1861 only by 1861, the states had already long been recognize as sovereign while the colonies had not been prior to 1783."
There is no language recognizing the states as "sovereign" under the US Constitution, just the opposite.
FLT-bird: "Who was to determine “necessity”?
The states of course.
The right of secession is unilateral.
They nowhere agreed to subject themselves to any other state’s or the federal govt’s permission before 'resuming the powers of government' as they phrased it."
So the Fire Eaters & secessionists of 1860 claimed, but in fact our Founders had a very clear idea of what the word "necessity" implied, it meant what they experienced in 1776 and was starkly contrasted with "at pleasure" declarations which no Founder ever supported.
FLT-bird: "This is simply false and there is no textual support for this claim."
Wrong, every text supports it and no text contradicts it.
There is simply no example of any Founder ever supporting unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.
All assumed that disunion could only come from mutual consent (i.e., 1788) or serious necessity (1776).
Neither condition existed in late 1860 or early 1861.
FLT-bird: "The aggressor is one who invades the land of another - not one who fires to drive an invader away.
Lincoln ordered a heavily armed flotilla to be sent into South Carolina’s sovereign territory."
No more an act of "aggression" than the US today sending "heavily armed flotillas" to resupply or reinforce the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Communist Cubans don't like it, don't recognize our right to be there, but if they start war over it, that's on them, just as the Civil War is on Jefferson Davis.
FLT-bird: "Think George Washington would have tolerated the Brits maintaining a heavily armed fortress in the middle of New York harbor?
Of course not."
Of course he did.
Brits remained in New York City for two years after their "unconditional surrender" at Yorktown.
They even lingered for four months after receiving orders to evacuate.
Washington was patient, and waited for negotiations to take their course.
And New York City was far from the only place Brits left their forts & troops on US territory.
In upstate New York, Ohio and Michigan the Brits still had dozens of forts and trading posts for 15 years until finally negotiated away by John Jay, in 1796.
The fact is that neither George Washington nor any other Founder after 1781 ever used British forts & troops on US territory as excuse for starting war.
Only Jefferson Davis considered that a matter of Confederate "integrity" being "assailed" and reason enough to launch Civil War.
BroJoeK
Nonsense, the constitutional arguments were addressed by our Founders, especially Madison, but none ever supported unilateral unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.
Lincoln’s position was the same as outgoing Democrat President Buchanan & others which was: states had no “right of secession” at pleasure, but the Union should do nothing militarily to stop them.
Nonsense. The 10th amendment was added to ensure that nobody could claim that the federal government was delegated powers not stated in the constitution by the Sovereign states and 3 states made express reservations of their right to unilateral secession. Furthermore, several presidents thought states did have the right to secede.
“The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.” – Thomas Jefferson
“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation” over “union,” “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” Thomas Jefferson
In his book Life of Webster Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge writes, “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.”
A textbook used at West Point before the Civil War, A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, supports this view. It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed. —William Rawle, Chapter 32, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America
Another who agreed that states did have that right was Ulysses S Grant:
“If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1992, reprint, p. 131)
“If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 130)
President John Tyler likewise believed a state had the right to leave the Union. So did President John Quincy Adams who tried to organize the New England states to secede in the 1820’s.
As for James Buchanan,he thought the federal government had no right to use force to prevent secession:
United States President James Buchanan, Fourth Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union December 3, 1860: “The fact is that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force.”
The Northern Federalists’ Hartford Convention declared in 1814 that a state had the right to secede in cases of “absolute necessity” (Alan Brinkley, Richard Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams, American History: A Survey, Eighth Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 230).
Uhh no. The Brits did not recognize any legal separation or independence by the colonies. That’s why they went to the trouble of sending troops after all.
1776 was the same as 1860-61 except the colonies had never been recognized as sovereign while the states had. If anything, the secessions/declarations of independence of 1860-61 were on much firmer legal ground.
The sovereign states determined they had “necessity” just as the colonies did before them. The situations were analogous in many ways as Robert Barnwell Rhett laid out in his address which was attached to South Carolina’s Declaration of Causes. In both cases, the minority was being taxed by the majority for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of the minority community and the votes of the minority (the Brits offered a few seats in Parliament) were insufficient to protect them from this economic exploitation for others’ benefit.
“... plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death...”
So in 1776 “secession” (our Founders said “disunion”) was already a fact accomplished by Brits making their Declaration a necessity.
No you have it backwards. The Colonies refused to be governed by the Brits any longer and took up arms against them in 1775. They weren’t even sovereign like the states were. Their power to determine “necessity” was no greater than that of the sovereign states of their grandchildren 85 years later.
The one who obviously lacks historical knowledge here is you.
Patently false. They had after all seceded from the British Empire in 1776 without consent.
The sovereignty of each was recognized by name in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. It was recognized by the Constitution’s two biggest Cheerleaders Madison and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. It has been recognized numerous times in by the SCOTUS. You have absolutely no historical backing for this argument.
It is up to each state to determine necessity for itself. Its nonsensical to argue that a colony which was not sovereign could determine necessity for itself but a state which was sovereign could not.
WRONG. See the quotes above. The artificial distinction you are trying to draw between 1776 and 1861 for the same act is laughable. The Brits never consented to the secession of the colonies prior to the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Yet the colonies declared independence anyway. So much for it being mutual.
Nope! The US has a signed treaty with Cuba in which the terms of a perpetual lease of Gitmo are laid out in 1903. The analogy would be the Brits maintaining a fortress in a major harbor like NY after the 13 colonies’ secession from the British Empire, not a signed treaty between two sovereign countries for a lease.
And New York City was far from the only place Brits left their forts & troops on US territory.
In upstate New York, Ohio and Michigan the Brits still had dozens of forts and trading posts for 15 years until finally negotiated away by John Jay, in 1796.
The fact is that neither George Washington nor any other Founder after 1781 ever used British forts & troops on US territory as excuse for starting war.
Only Jefferson Davis considered that a matter of Confederate “integrity” being “assailed” and reason enough to launch Civil War.
The Brits were required to pull their troops out of US Territory in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. That was 2 years after Yorktown. The Brits did leave some troops in border areas and yes that was a source of friction. There was still wrangling over compensation to be paid to loyalists who had had their property seized also.....mainly the Colonies had not coughed up the money agreed to compensate them. It did take further negotiations for both sides to live up to all the terms they had agreed to years earlier.
It was Lincoln who started the war and furthermore he did so deliberately.
“Lincoln and the First Shot” (in Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John Denson), John Denson painstakingly shows how Lincoln maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. As the Providence Daily Post wrote on April 13, 1861, “Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor” by re-provisioning Fort Sumter. On the day before that the Jersey City American Statesman wrote that “This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South.” Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, clearly stated after the war that Lincoln successfully duped the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter. And as Shelby Foote wrote in The Civil War, “Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down or else to fire the first shot of the war.”
Lincoln’s letter to his naval commander congratulating him for starting the war:
” , May 1st, 1861. Washington
Capt. G.V. Fox:
My Dear Sir, I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground ; while, by an accident, for which you were in nowise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent, was, you were deprived of a war-vessel, with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprise.
I most cheerfully and truthfully declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort have greatly heightened you in my estimation. For a daring and dangerous enterprise of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man of all my acquaintances whom I would select. You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.
Very truly your friend, A. LINCOLN.”